Dial Daily Bread: "Oh, Lord, Not THAT Gift!"

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

God is ready to give us a precious gift that we will later be very happy to have received, but which we shy away from because the gift comes wrapped up unattractively, like in plain paper or even in gunny sacks. We even cry out, "Oh, Lord, not THAT gift!" And it's our privilege to refuse the "gift," but if we do we suffer eternal loss, even if we are saved at last in God's kingdom.

That gift is the Lord's "chastening" brought to view in Hebrews 12:5-11: "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." Doesn't sound like fun, does it? "If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons." That would be really Bad News, wouldn't it? God agrees that His chastisement is not Disneyland pleasure, for "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous."

The time when tears are all wiped away will be in the New Earth after the "great controversy" is finished; but now as long as Jesus knows tears, the closer you get to Him the more you will sympathize with Him. And there is a holy joy in such sunshine through rain. Fellowship with Christ in His sufferings is the most weighty trust and highest honor that Heaven can bestow on you. The Lord's "chastening" always brings a later blessing: "Afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." No, you don't earn heaven by enduring "chastening." There is no virtue in being a glutton for punishment. But the "joy" spoken of here that comes "afterward" is especially comforting because the "afterward" is not merely by-and-by pie-in-the-sky in eternity, but right now in this life.

The Lord's "chastening" which He gives you this very morning in love, for instance, prepares you to comfort someone else later in the same day "by the comfort wherewith [you yourself] are comforted of God" (2 Cor. 1:4). So, none of the Lord's chastening is ever in vain; the "afterward" may be only a few hours! What joy! To realize at day's end that you have been a pipe through which the water of life has flowed to some disheartened soul! The "price" you paid for that privilege? A little "fellowship with Christ in His sufferings." So, "despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him."

Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Wieland.
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