​​Discipline in Binoculars

One of my favorite parts of my journey with God has been learning to know Him more fully.

A.W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

Recently, I’ve been having my thinking upgraded regarding who the Father is, especially as it relates to discipline.

Often when we hear the word discipline, we imagine a Father whose primary concern is correcting behavior. We picture discipline as reactive. We do something wrong and God responds.

But what if the primary heart of the Father regarding discipline is not first about correcting your behavior but cultivating your future?

What if God’s primary methodology of discipline is less reactive to your failures and more proactive in revealing your destiny?

What if discipline is not primarily a rod, but binoculars?

What if the Father’s discipline is His invitation to partially see into a future He has prepared for you and then lovingly train you to become the kind of person who can walk in it?

Maybe discipline is not merely about stopping what destroys us but strengthening what calls us forward.

What if discipline is God equipping and empowering us to cultivate rhythms that help us obtain what He says is possible?

A good father doesn’t merely tell his child what not to do. He paints a picture of who they can become. He speaks identity before instruction. He gives vision before correction.

I believe many of us focus too heavily on behavior and not enough on becoming.

The more we become captivated by the possibility of our God ordained future, the quicker the behaviors that hinder us begin to lose their grip. Not forcefully. Not religiously. But naturally and passionately.

Rules can restrain behavior, but vision awakens desire.

A son who sees where his Father is leading him does not need endless correction. Vision begins to produce transformation.

Scripture reminds us that where there is no vision people cast off restraint, but when heaven gives sight, obedience begins to take on meaning and desire begins to awaken.

God trains us in the way we should go not merely regarding lawful behavior, but much more regarding our Kingdom destiny.

When we think the Father’s primary desire is to train us according to rules and discipline our behavior, we can miss His greater intention.

His discipline is not merely training us to obey a set of laws.

His discipline is training us to live wholeheartedly into our Kingdom purpose.

This does not mean the Father ignores sin or never corrects. He lovingly confronts whatever would diminish our ability to become who He created us to be. His correction is not rejection. It is protection.

The Father disciplines sons and daughters not because He is frustrated with who they are, but because He sees too clearly who they could become.

Discipline is not punishment for who you are.

It is training for who you are becoming.

Like Hebrews reminds us, discipline is not pleasant in the moment, but later it produces fruit. The Father’s discipline is never absent of love and never disconnected from our future.

Many of the behaviors God corrects would lose their appeal if we truly saw the glorious future He has prepared for us.

His discipline is often His kindness that gives us vision.

And His vision becomes the fuel that forms our rhythms.

And those rhythms become the pathway into everything He says is possible.

So what if the Father’s discipline toward you in this season is not disappointment but invitation?

What if He isn’t primarily showing you what needs to die…

but revealing what is ready to live?