“Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole.” (Job 5:17,18)
Oh how I wish I had loved this verse when I was a younger man! I have mentioned before that I was quite the rebel. I rebelled against the school system, I rebelled against my parents, I rebelled against religion and God, I rebelled against my leaders in the military. I came from a home life of rebellion – I saw it first-hand growing up. I learned it from the best. And it took me until I got into my late 50’s to finally begin dropping the attitude. How many years I wasted!
This verse tells us that the man (or woman) who is corrected by God – and receives it properly – is blessed. I have, as you might imagine, always had a difficult time receiving correction. Trust me, I endured many a correction – whether that was a spanking (remember when they could spank you in school?), a whoopin’, a beating, extra pushups, extra laps in gym class, even prison! I couldn’t even get the message when they put me away! The problem was that I equated correction with angry rejection. That was the example I had at home, so I transferred that to God and everybody else. But here it says that the man whom God corrects is blessed.
Over the years I have come to a revelation on this word: correction. The thermostat in your home corrects the temperature of your home. It doesn’t condemn the present temperature, it simply sets about correcting it. An airplane pilot has to correct his flight path constantly during flight. He doesn’t just turn around and go back to the station he left, he simply corrects the flight path and continues on to the destination. The same holds true with a ship or a space shuttle. The atmosphere, the winds, and the waves may knock our life off-course, but we simply make a course-correction and continue to move toward our destination. We understand that in these situations, but don’t make the correlation to our own lives. Correction is merely the re-visioning of our hearts toward God. When we put Him in our sights and long to become like the One we see, then – and only then – are we blessed and happy. Aha!
I once heard a visiting evangelist at our church say that you can’t turn a parked car. Oh, you may turn the wheels in a new direction, but you are and will be no closer to your goal because you aren’t moving. You can stare at God, study God, read about God, and know all the information about God, but if you aren’t moving with Him, toward Him, your life will never change. You may acquire the appearance of God but not the power of God. You can say all the right words, raise your hands at the right time, and do all the other religiosities, but if you aren’t doing anything with it – you have become an empty cloud, a clanging cymbal, or a noisy gong. We have to be moving with the Spirit of God, flowing in His will, following in His footsteps. If not, we will never know the true love of God and His goodness to us.
Today I encourage you, if you feel like you are being whooped by God or given a course-correction, to embrace Him in this moment. Don’t embrace the spanking – that is just perverse and twisted. Embrace the One Who is correcting you. He only wants what is best and is working to change or renew your vision of what He called you to be and do. Maybe you got distracted and got a little off-track (OK, maybe a LOT off-track). God is NOT mad at you. He loves you. That’s why He is working to keep you on The Way. Othewise He wouldn’t bother. Take heart, my brothers and sisters. God is still working on each one of us. Cling to that message of hope and thank Him for His great love whereby we are called sons and daughters of God.
Be blessed.
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