Have You Had a Good Rebuke Lately?

I was surprised at my reaction to a devotional I read this week. In Daily With the King, Glyn Evans talks about the wounds of God. He says, “When Jesus asked Peter, ‘Lovest thou me?’ He hurt him.” Evans speaks of Jacob limping away from his encounter with God Almighty. But this is the line that arrested my heart:

“If I have never experienced His grieving, correcting, rebuking, or chastening, I know very little of Him.”

My instant response was a wave of compassion for anyone who has never experienced the deep wounding by the Lord so that the love can flow more deeply and the relationship can be more honest and real. I felt their loss keenly.

Paul says:

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
    and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
    and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”

7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Hebrews 12:5a-8

He disciplines us because He loves us. He wounds us because we are His children and He cares enough to prepare us and grow us. He does not want us to stay stuck where we are with our faith stunted by our love of comfort and the things of the world.

The last rebuke I received was in prayer. I was praying for the Lord to send my wonderful son a Godly wife if that were His perfect will for him. Not that my son is asking. I was asking. Mid-prayer, the Lord stopped me almost as if He had thrown a bucket of cold water on me. He seemed to be saying, “Enough!” Immediately, a rush of gratitude filled my heart for all the wonderful things God has done for and in and through my son. It was as if God were saying, “Your prayers should be so full of gratitude for the thousands of things I have done in his life that you could barely ask for one thing more!”

Nothing was wrong with my prayer; I was just out of balance between acknowledging God’s blessings and asking for yet another thing. He wants us to make our requests known to Him, but in my case, the request had become my focus and not the generous heart of my Father. Perhaps the season for that prayer was over; perhaps someone else is taking on that prayer; or perhaps this halt is temporary, but one thing was for sure, I was rebuked. Since I acknowledged that rebuke and have been praying just prayers of thankfulness, every time I look at my son I am flooded with joy and gratitude.

And I have no excuse for my deficit of gratitude. I have wonderful role models. At an event not long ago, I looked around and saw women sharing joyfully about the little things God had done for them recently. In a short time, one woman had lost her husband and her mother and had experienced cancer as well as injuries from a bad fall. The next woman had lost her adult son just weeks prior. Another is challenged every minute to engage because of hearing impairment, and she serves the Lord robustly with only partial strength in her heart. I could go on. As I heard the women exclaim one after the other excitedly about where they had seen God at work on their behalf, I was amazed at the true joy I saw on their faces and how diminished their heartaches had become.

What about you? Can you remember a recent rebuke? Do you need to ask God to reveal any secret sin or change of direction He would love to see in you, His beloved child? I am praying that everyone who reads this will know the treasure of a good rebuke or the strong convicting power of the Holy Spirit very soon.