Today’s Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:9

“My grace is sufficient for you.”

Learning to live by grace instead of by performance helps us accept the discipline of adversity. We realize that God is not disciplining us because of our bad performance but because of his love for us. We also learn to accept that whatever our situation, it’s far better than we deserve. So we learn not to ask, “Why did this happen to me?” (Meaning, What did I do to deserve such bad treatment from God?). We also learn, as Paul did with his thorn in the flesh, that God’s grace is sufficient for us, however difficult and frustrating our circumstances might be. God’s enabling grace will give us the inner spiritual strength we need to bear the pain and endure the hardship until the time when we see the harvest of righteousness and peace produced by it.

Far from being opposed to each other, grace and discipline—both God’s discipline of us and our discipline of ourselves—are inextricably united together in God’s program of sanctification. There’s no question that God bases his discipline on grace. We are the ones who have problems with the relationship of grace and discipline, and who need to work at cultivating a proper relationship.

That work includes learning to preach the Gospel to ourselves every day. We base the “duty” of discipleship on the Gospel, resulting in the practice of a Christ-based acceptance with God and a spirit-energized approach to the pursuit of holiness. In the joy and strength of knowing our sins are forgiven and sin’s dominion is broken, we press on to become holy as he is holy. The so-called duty of discipleship then becomes a joy and a delight even though it requires vigorous effort.

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