Good morning,
Our
Enemy has done a wonderful job of teaching angels and men to think
backwards and call it forward thinking. Somehow in the distant past,
the enemy of our souls was able to convince holy angels that the God of
Heaven was not to be trusted and that the only solution to this problem
was to put “their champion” in his place. Now that God has created a
beautiful earth surrounded by awesome heavenly stars and planets, this
same Enemy does his best to convince us that God’s divine plan is full
of traps and false information. Since every human being is fighting
with sin, and often find ourselves trapped by Satan’s lies, it’s easy
for our accuser to twist every aspect of God’s plan to in some way turn
us against the Lover of our souls. For example, we are taught to think
that when difficult circumstances show up in our lives it must mean that
we are being punished for our bad actions. Then again, when we have
come up with a good plan for our lives, and suddenly all the parts of
our plan come apart, we hear the Enemy whisper “You just can’t trust God
to give you the good things you deserve.”
For those of us who
are God’s kids living in this rebellious generation, religious leaders
have been trying to train us to think that if we are faithful to follow
our Savior, our lives will be one set of blessings after another.
Success is assured and pain and sickness will only be short lived and
wonderfully healed. The writer of Hebrews tells us a whole different
story. God’s divine plan calls for regular discipline that forces us to
change our hearts and minds about what is right and wrong and about how
we are supposed to live out our faith. God insists that we learn that
freedom and truth are only available to those whose hearts have learned
to lean on his strength and willingly obey his standards for daily
living. His discipline teaches us what real love is about. His
discipline prepares us to live our lives like Jesus lived when he was
here on earth with us. His discipline gives us security and obeying him
gives us joy that will only grow as we get closer and closer to him.
If we insist that God has no right to treat us this way, we are giving
away what we believe in our hearts. We show that we really don’t belong
to God and that we think that the Devil was right after all. Please
Lord, rescue us from backwards thinking.
Hebrews 12:7
As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you
as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined
by its father? 8 If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his
children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his
children at all.
Roy Wisner
