Discipline and Discipleship
Why does discipleship conjure up such a beautiful sentiment for most of us, but discipline not so much? If you’re like me, you might feel like discipline is about how you are not good enough, that something more is going to be required from you, and you already feel like you’re at your limit. By contrast, discipleship can make us think of sharing intimately with the Lord and participating in His mission.
In the book of Hebrews, we are told that the Lord disciplines us because we are His children. Discipline is because we are deeply and dearly loved. It’s how He aligns more closely with Himself and fine-tunes us to His voice. Only when we are submitted to the Lord’s discipline are we ready to be commissioned for more intimate service? Put another way, only when we follow the Lord’s footsteps closely are we prepared to lead safely.
When the archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, she did not say “yes” because he did not ask her a question. He told her what was going to happen. She submitted to the Lord’s way. The same is true of us. The Lord does not ask our permission. Loved ones are taken, we get ill, things don’t go as it seems they ought to, all without the Lord asking if that’s ok. However, we are called to submit our mission to the Lord’s mission. We sub-mit, that is, we put our plan under (sub) His and leave it to Him to order things rightly according to His infinite wisdom and goodness.
Sometimes, stretching in charity or generosity will not feel very natural at all. That does not mean we are being inauthentic. The truth is that we have a concept of ourselves based on where we are and how we are feeling today. Only the Lord knows who He made us to be and what He is fashioning us into. He is the Potter. We are the clay.
Let’s submit ourselves to discipline in our lives so that we may be aligned more closely to the Lord and get under the spout where the glory comes out!
May the Lord give you His peace!
Margaret
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