Today’s Scripture: Hebrews 12:11

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant.”

I once knew a person who would recount some of the adversities her family was facing and would then put on a forced smile and say, “But we are victorious.” She apparently thought believers should not admit pain. But the writer of Hebrews was honest. He said the discipline of hardship is painful.

“But later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11). This “fruit of righteousness” is essentially equivalent to sharing in his holiness. Discipline, then, is one of the chief means God uses to make us holy.

The discipline of hardship also produces peace for those who have been trained by it. This, wrote Philip Hughes, “bespeaks the rest and relaxation enjoyed by the victorious contestant once the conflict is over.” Hughes was speaking of the rest that comes to the believer when we go to be with the Lord. But there’s also a peace to be enjoyed in this life for those who have learned to endure adversity as the evidence of God’s fatherly hand upon them to make them more holy.

F.F. Bruce captured this thought well when he wrote, “The person who accepts discipline at the hand of God as something designed by his heavenly Father for his good will cease to feel resentful and rebellious; he has ‘calmed and quieted’ his soul [Psalm 131:2], which thus provides fertile soil for the cultivation of a righteous life, responsive to the will of God.”

The road to holiness is paved with adversity. If we want to be holy, we must expect the discipline of God through the heartaches and disappointments he brings or allows to come into our lives.

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