June 2021 - LPNI

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June 2021

LPNI Devotion

Discipline

Endure hardship as discipline. Hebrews 12:7 (NIV)

Discipline is God’s stretching exercise for us. Just as in our physical life stretching is needed to help us stay functioning and growing in a positive direction, spiritual stretching or discipline (no less real or tangible) is needed to help us serve God most effectively.

During the pandemic we wear masks, get vaccines, do what we need to do (i.e., social distancing) for the sake of achieving a goal — making it safely to the other side; a COVID-19 free environment. We also receive “gifts” from God, who treats us as a loving Father treats his children, to stretch us in enduring through the challenges of life in order to serve him more faithfully amidst the pandemic of sin, making it to the other side — to be sin-free, home in our Father’s house. No discipline seems like (a gift) 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 (NIV).

The writer to the Hebrews reminds us that the stretching we encounter in life shows us that we are God’s children, whom he loves. If he didn’t discipline us, then it would show that we are not true sons and daughters of the King according to Hebrews 12: 8 (NIV). The fact that we do have “times of stretching” in our lives indicates, not that God is cruel nor has he abandoned us, but that he loves us and wants to keep us close to him.

Nor do we experience our discipline in a vacuum. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses as reported in Hebrews 12:1(NIV) as in a great sports arena, cheering us on, encouraging us to endure, encouraging us to use the stretching to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” We have angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, standing with the Lord Himself supporting us all along the journey of life.

These have been lonely and difficult times for many of us. Lonely, but not alone. Stretched, but not broken. The Lord will work all of this, woven together with all of life’s experiences for our good. More than a friendly “hang in there”, this is a divine “hang on!” backed by countless saints who have gone before us who exercised the Lord’s stretching, and then grew stronger from it, and ran the race victoriously. With the Lord’s help and discipline, let us do the same. Amen

Rev. Fred Zimmermann

Pastoral Advisor for Parish Nurse Council

Cross Plains, WI