September 18, 2025 Devo

Aren’t you grateful for the love of God? He loves us fully, completely, and unconditionally. His grace and willingness to forgive us are absolutely AMAZING. But are you as grateful for the discipline of God? Discipline is love’s twin sister. I know it doesn’t seem so, but it is. Discipline and correction remind us that there is accountability as well as acceptance with God. It is the awareness that our behavior, choices, and actions all have consequences. It is discipline that reminds us that, though God is love, His love is not blind. It is exactly because He is love that He will not let us live without consequences. He is committed to us becoming the best version of ourselves. Even if He has to let us suffer sometimes to get there.
Proverbs 3:12 says, “The Lord disciplines those He loves, as a father the son he delights in.” What’s that mean? It means that God lets us experience the consequences of unwise decisions that we make so that He might teach us about how to make BETTER decisions. It means that, though God may warn us, He doesn’t stop us from entering into relationships with people who break our hearts. Not because He wants our hearts to be broken, but because He wants us to learn how to seek Him FIRST and how to be slower and more thoughtful about giving our hearts away. It is out of His loving justice that He doesn’t just bail us out of every hole we dig or magically fix everything we screw up. If He did, we would never learn from our mistakes. We would never change. And we would never grow up. He loves us too much for that.
I would imagine every one of you knows someone who spares their children or grandchildren these kinds of lessons. Kids who are always bailed out, spared consequences, and never have to suffer for their mistakes. I’ll bet you have shaken your head because you know where that kind of parenting leads. Kids who grow up and make horrible choices as adults because they never learned that their choices had consequences. It’s not that their parents didn’t love them. It’s that they didn’t love them enough to let them be punished or suffer.
You see, when our kids suffer, we suffer, too. Some parents can’t bear that. But God can. It breaks His heart when we don’t listen to Him. It breaks His heart when we make choices that cause us pain and suffering or make decisions that have horrible consequences. In those times, He hurts with us. He walks with us through the lessons and down the painful road to redemption. It’s a harder love. It’s a tougher love. But it’s a BETTER love. Because it makes us better people. So thank God today for His love and grace. But thank Him, too, for his discipline. That’s God’s Word for you today.