Discipline: Hebrews 12:11

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” – Hebrews 12:11 The verse right before this one talks about how an earthly father disciplines a son and we respect them for it and how much more the Father should be respected for disciplining us, so it automatically makes me think of punishment. But then the end of the verse talks about how later on a harvest is produced from the training. I feel as if it takes a whole new approach when looked at. As if every moment, no matter how hard, we are being trained up for something… trained for something that we don’t (and can’t) see the full picture of because we do not have that viewpoint. We see everything up close, as it is happening. Our small human nature just does not have the viewpoint to be able to see things the way God can see things.

So when we are going through the training and the discipline we get discouraged, easily discouraged as if nothing matters and we aren’t getting anywhere and today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow but we just have to have hope that God is training us up for something, something we cannot see yet. And in the proper time we will produce a harvest of righteousness and peace and whatever God has us working for isn’t just in vain but is for his Kingdom and is truly better than anything we could ever imagine. We just don’t have the vision to see what He sees.

And truth be told as hard as it is sometimes do we want to see the full picture? I think sometimes if we saw all the struggles and problems we had to encounter, no matter how amazing the end result it may make us want to run and hide in the other direction. God knows what He is doing even when I don’t!