March 10, 2020 Voice of Rebellion

Remember our first fast this year when we went over Psalm 119?  It was constantly reminding us of the goodness and benefit of following God’s ways, statues, commandments, precepts, laws, ordinances, testimonies… Now we are to walk out this obedience with discipline. 
 
Proverbs 19:20  Listen to counsel and accept discipline, that you may be wise the rest of your days.
 
We have said this fast is about DISCIPLINE.  So what exactly is discipline?

Webster’s dictionary defines DISCIPLINE as instruction to improve, mold, or correct our minds, morals or manners, out of subjection to authority.  Subjection to laws, rules, order, precepts, that govern our conduct and activities.  Discipline is also correction when we stray outside of God’s ways.  Basically discipline is when we learn and apply the ways of God in our lives.

Subjection to discipline is putting ourselves under the dominion of someone else. This is not a popular word in society today.  Most people have the attitude of, “nobody is going to tell me what to do!”  In the church we use the phrase “we are the bondservants of God”, but do we really subject ourselves to Him, at all times?

I can answer that, NO we don’t. Yesterday evening I was exhausted from the many things that took my time that day.  All I wanted to do was sit and do nothing. God lovingly told me, “I am not going to stop you from doing what you want to do, but do you really want to be in direct disobedience to what I asked of you?”

Those words pierced through my self-centered rebellion and got me up out of a very soft chair to be about what He called me to do that evening.  I am so grateful that God loves me to speak those words to me!

​Revelation. 3:19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.
Proverbs 12:1  Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.
 
I don’t always respond to His words that quickly, but I have learned to appreciate that whatever sorrow He inflicts me with, will be out of His love for me, to get my attention to submit to His righteous ways.
 
Hebrews 12:11 All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.