Tough Love

How we view God’s discipline is so important. It may be one of those things we think we can skim over when reading Hebrews 12. We may think we get the “basic” idea and that’s all we need. Hebrews 12:6 says that God disciplines the one’s He loves. 

If we stop there and go no further. If we base our view of God and his discipline on this and this alone, then we will fail to bring people to Him that we could have brought. This is what I mean... If we listen to only this part of the scripture than we think God disciplines EVERYONE because He loves EVERYONE. We go about our day thinking “Tough Love” is what everyone needs because we assume that’s how God would do it.

We look at people and their lives and we say “Man, if they only had some structure” or “If they only had some discipline” they might get it. They might do something different. So we try to give people that don’t understand “tough love” discipline. We tell them the things they are doing wrong and how to fix them. We try to be helpful because after all this is what GOD does with us. He rights our wrongs. He brings our sins into light. 

But then we read further. Hebrews 12 continues on and says “He Chastises every SON whom He receives. So if we have been living on the first line of Hebrews 12:6 than our approach to our brothers and sisters and people who don’t know Jesus has been all wrong. 

Remembering the saying, Iron sharpens Iron... I think of how as Christians, we want to sharpen each other and teach each other how to live according the God’s word. We want to see each other strengthened. We know if God can do great works in us, we want to see everyone doing the works we know they are capable of. But what happens when the person your “helping God” discipline isn’t Iron? What happens when that person doesn’t know who God is? What if that person is a dainty daisy...with a flimsy stem.... with not so deep roots. What happens when Iron tries to sharpen a daisy? It cuts it down. It bends and breaks it. That’s what we do to a lot of people when we believe we are helping. 

Sometimes that person just needs an encouraging word; they need someone to speak life into their situation. We can’t try to sharpen an Insecure person...They don’t need to know their faults and their weaknesses... Insecure people know those already and they think about them daily... We don’t need to point them out and then try to tell them how to fix their life. No, We need to point them to the WORD. Insecurity will only disappear when we look IN Security. (the word) 

As much as we want to see people succeed and be the best person they can be, the best thing we can do for them is point them to God & His love. We don’t take them only one mile, we take them two. We don’t try to help only if it’s benefiting us, we help until they finally get it. We don’t give up on people...because God never gave up on us.