Chastening

Transcripts for Dr. Wiersbe's sermons are forthcoming. Below is an outline of his message.

If you are human you are going to suffer.

The word “education” could be used in place of “chastening.”

God touches us with the loving hand of training through suffering.

God fulfills three purposes when He chastens us:

-       Enduring: God doesn’t want us to be quitters (Hebrews 12:1-4).

• The Christian life cannot stand still; you are either going backward or forward.
• Chastening does not always mean physical suffering.
• Sometimes God has to take things out of our lives that are hindering us from making progress in our Christian walk.
• You can’t run the Christian race looking at everyone else. Look only to Jesus.
• When God chastens us, He forces us to look to Christ and trust Him.

-       Assuring: God wants us to know who we are and who He is (Hebrews 12:5-8).

• Chastening is not a judge punishing a criminal, it is a loving Father perfecting a child.
• God correcting His children is evidence that we are really saved.

-       Maturing: God wants us to develop spiritual muscles (Hebrews 12:9-11). 

• We never get to the place in our spiritual lives that we don’t need the chastening of God.
• God chastens us with perfect knowledge or our thoughts and motives.
• The closer you get to the Father, the less the chastening hurts.
• The first evidences of spiritual maturity are loving, subjection, and obedience.

God chastens us for our own profit, that we might walk with the Lord.

God wants to build in us the behavior and attitude that glorifies Him.