Once you become a Christian, you should be prepared to accept discipline from God's hand. If you are not His child, God will let you go. He will allow you to live an undisciplined life and walk your own way. But once you have accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior, once you are born of God and have become His child, you have to prepare yourself for His discipline. No father has the time to discipline another man's child. Whether his neighbor's son is good or bad is not of his concern. A good father, however, will always discipline his own son in a definite way. He will deal with his son strictly according to guidelines that he has set in his mind. He will not discipline his son in a mindless and haphazard way. He will train his son according to a few objectives, namely, honesty, diligence, long-suffering, and noble aspirations. The father puts together a certain curriculum to discipline his son. He molds his son into a certain character. In the same way, since the day we were saved, God has been arranging a curriculum for us. He wants us to learn certain lessons so that we will be conformed to His nature. He wants us to be like Him in many things. This is why He arranges, disciplines, and scourges. His goal is to make us a certain kind of person.
At the very beginning of his Christian life, a child of God must realize that God has prepared many lessons for him. He has made many provisions in the environment and has ordered many things, experiences, and sufferings for the purpose of producing a certain kind of character and disposition. This is what God is doing today. He wants to build up a certain kind of character in us, and He does it by ordering all kinds of circumstances to come our way.
The minute we become Christians, we have to realize that God's hand is guiding us in all things. The ordained circumstances will come, and the scourgings will come. As soon as we get off the right way, His scourges will be upon us and will goad us back to the way. Every child of God should be prepared to accept God's disciplinary hand. God disciplines us because we are sons. God does not waste His time on others. He has no time to discipline those who are not His beloved sons. God has no time to reprove those who are not yet accepted as sons. Scourging and discipline are expressions of God's love and acceptance. Only Christians can have a share in God's scourging and discipline.
What we are receiving is discipline; it is not punishment. Punishment is for the retribution of one's mistakes, while discipline is for the purpose of education. Punishment comes because we have done something wrong; it responds to the past. Discipline is also related to our mistakes, but it is something for the future. Discipline bears an element of the future; it has a purpose. We have been called into the name of the Lord today; we belong to Him. Now we must be prepared to allow God to make us vessels of glory to Him. I can say with much confidence that God wants every one of His children to glorify Him in certain areas. Every child of God should glorify Him. However, each one does it in a different way. Some will glorify Him in one way, some in another way. We glorify God through different circumstances. As a consequence, God is glorified in a full way. Everyone has his own part and his own specialty. God wants to create a certain kind of character in us for the purpose of glorifying Him. No one is exempt from God's disciplinary hand. Such a hand works to accomplish the things of God. We have never seen a child of God who was exempt from His disciplinary hand.
It is indeed a great loss if God's children do not understand His discipline. Many people live a foolish life in the eyes of God for many years. They have no way to go on. They do not know what the Lord wants to do in them. They walk according to their own will and wander in a wild, unrestrained, and aimless way through the wilderness. God does not operate this way. He is a God of purpose. He does things for the purpose of molding a specific character in us so that we may glorify His name. All discipline is for the purpose of bringing us on in this way.