do something you hate, to achieve something you love…

GOD uses pain to sharpen our character, to help HIS children become more like CHRIST. romans 5.3 (niv), we also rejoice in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. it’s like the old saying, “no pain, no gain.”

listen the truth in improvement in our character and in our wisdom and in our virtue often comes through a process that involves hardship. it involves sacrifice. it involves trials. it involves difficulty. that’s how we learn, many times.

for instance, there could be no such thing as courage in a world where there’s no risk. hebrews 5.8 (tev) talks about JESUS CHRIST. even though HE was GOD’s SON HE learned to be obedient because of HIS sufferings. so here you have JESUS learning to be obedient. how? through HIS sufferings. so the question becomes, if that was true of the SON of GOD, why would that not be equally true of us?

the bible also says that GOD uses pain to lovingly discipline HIS children for their own good so they might learn the right path to take.

hebrew 12.19-11 (niv) says, our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best. but GOD disciplines us for our own good that we may share in HIS holiness. no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

we don’t usually relate discipline with the idea of something good. but that’s because we confuse discipline with punishment. punishment is retribution for misbehavior in our past. discipline is the loving way in which we correct someone’s behavior so their future will be better for this.

if you’re a parent, do you like to discipline your kids? no. but you do something you hate – which is discipline – in order to achieve something you love which is to protect your children from the harm that would befall them if they kept going down the wrong path that they were on.
just a thought from the front porch…