Do Not Despise the Chastening of the Lord

Sam Stringer

Jan 17, 2025

My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor detest His correction; for whom the

LORD loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights.

Proverbs 3:11-12

Perspective can, at times, be everything. You may have heard the question, “Is the glass half empty or

half full?” which is meant to reflect the impressions and attitudes of the viewer when considering how the

glass is assessed. Life, for the Christian, is not exempt from troubles, if you haven’t noticed! Oh how often

we entertain the notion that if we are His children, life should be full of immunities! It isn’t that way, is it?

How the troubles we face are processed can have a dramatic impact upon how we relate to God, seeing

Him as a loving Father or interpreting Him as cold, careless, and questionable in His wisdom towards us. I

think that pain, if coddled in a “professing faith but not possessing faith” heart can and has many times

even led to complete apostacy. That being said, if God tests your faith with difficulties, hard as it may be,

you should strongly consider praising Him when that faith, though tested, remains.

Solomon, in giving many instructions to his child or children, spoke into this very issue of facing difficulties

in life while following God. Consider a handful of words that are strewn throughout these two verses as

they relate to difficulties, including your own: chastening, correction, loves, father, delights. Those

words do not speak ill of testing in life whatsoever, do they? No, they refer to trials in the context of loving

parental nurture that has our best in mind for our greatest good and God’s glory. Can I suggest to you

today that to have genuine faith in Jesus is to concurrently invite testing and difficulty? When God makes

something with His own hands, God also proves the work He has made. What good is it to advertise an

indestructible piece of chinaware only to leave it behind glass and never test the claims? God does this

with each of His children not to hurt them, but to refine them and to console them that theirs is a

legitimate work of the Holy Spirit within them.

How do you respond to your difficulties? When we take our eyes off of Jesus and see our pain detached

from our path to glory, we will very likely do just what this passage warns us against: we will despise the

chastening of the Lord; we will detest His correction; we will question His love; we will question whether

He delights in us at all, and we will question our identity as to whether we really are His children or He is

our Father. How do you think that translates into the Christian life? I think, and I can say from my own

personal experiences, that it can churn up fears, bitterness, confusion, doubt, hopelessness, apathy, and

many other terrible ways to live, things God never intended for trials to accomplish. The lens that you

view your pains through as a child of God can do more to make you or break you sometimes than the

suffering has the power in itself to do. Hurt happens to us all, but where we go with the hurt after it’s taken

place can carve many different types of paths that are either admirable or regrettable.

Do you want to serve God with gladness? Do you even just want to be glad? Rather than avoiding

troubles or licking wounds of the past, make yourself define your pain in the context of God’s work of

chastening you for your good. If we’re having guests over to our houses, it’s usually typical that we pick

things up and clean and make our environments welcoming. Don’t think that God isn’t preparing you for

the place He’s prepared you for. God doesn’t save and ignore His children; God loves us where we are

when He finds us but He loves us too much to leave us that way. His plans are better than ours and His

goal is not merely our comfort in the moment but our glorification to glorify Him forevermore.

You may be facing things that have left you feeling rather discouraged lately, but if there’s a truth that can

encourage bravery in you, let it be that God loves you, He knows you, and He knows where He’s taking

you even though you might not see it or feel that many times over. Feelings don’t dictate truth, God does.

Go in grace and be braver than lions.

Sam Stringer

Do Not Despise the Chastening of the Lord

My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor detest His correction; for whom the

LORD loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights.

Proverbs 3:11-12

Perspective can, at times, be everything. You may have heard the question, “Is the glass half empty or

half full?” which is meant to reflect the impressions and attitudes of the viewer when considering how the

glass is assessed. Life, for the Christian, is not exempt from troubles, if you haven’t noticed! Oh how often

we entertain the notion that if we are His children, life should be full of immunities! It isn’t that way, is it?

How the troubles we face are processed can have a dramatic impact upon how we relate to God, seeing

Him as a loving Father or interpreting Him as cold, careless, and questionable in His wisdom towards us. I

think that pain, if coddled in a “professing faith but not possessing faith” heart can and has many times

even led to complete apostacy. That being said, if God tests your faith with difficulties, hard as it may be,

you should strongly consider praising Him when that faith, though tested, remains.

Solomon, in giving many instructions to his child or children, spoke into this very issue of facing difficulties

in life while following God. Consider a handful of words that are strewn throughout these two verses as

they relate to difficulties, including your own: chastening, correction, loves, father, delights. Those

words do not speak ill of testing in life whatsoever, do they? No, they refer to trials in the context of loving

parental nurture that has our best in mind for our greatest good and God’s glory. Can I suggest to you

today that to have genuine faith in Jesus is to concurrently invite testing and difficulty? When God makes

something with His own hands, God also proves the work He has made. What good is it to advertise an

indestructible piece of chinaware only to leave it behind glass and never test the claims? God does this

with each of His children not to hurt them, but to refine them and to console them that theirs is a

legitimate work of the Holy Spirit within them.

How do you respond to your difficulties? When we take our eyes off of Jesus and see our pain detached

from our path to glory, we will very likely do just what this passage warns us against: we will despise the

chastening of the Lord; we will detest His correction; we will question His love; we will question whether

He delights in us at all, and we will question our identity as to whether we really are His children or He is

our Father. How do you think that translates into the Christian life? I think, and I can say from my own

personal experiences, that it can churn up fears, bitterness, confusion, doubt, hopelessness, apathy, and

many other terrible ways to live, things God never intended for trials to accomplish. The lens that you

view your pains through as a child of God can do more to make you or break you sometimes than the

suffering has the power in itself to do. Hurt happens to us all, but where we go with the hurt after it’s taken

place can carve many different types of paths that are either admirable or regrettable.

Do you want to serve God with gladness? Do you even just want to be glad? Rather than avoiding

troubles or licking wounds of the past, make yourself define your pain in the context of God’s work of

chastening you for your good. If we’re having guests over to our houses, it’s usually typical that we pick

things up and clean and make our environments welcoming. Don’t think that God isn’t preparing you for

the place He’s prepared you for. God doesn’t save and ignore His children; God loves us where we are

when He finds us but He loves us too much to leave us that way. His plans are better than ours and His

goal is not merely our comfort in the moment but our glorification to glorify Him forevermore.

You may be facing things that have left you feeling rather discouraged lately, but if there’s a truth that can

encourage bravery in you, let it be that God loves you, He knows you, and He knows where He’s taking

you even though you might not see it or feel that many times over. Feelings don’t dictate truth, God does.

Go in grace and be braver than lions.

Sam Stringer

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by

permission. All rights reserved.