June 26, 2022 - INSCRIPTIONS FROM THE HEART

By Paul Douglas Bennyson

Making room in life for God's correction

Correction is something most of us do not want to experience in life. Probably it's because we are people who are deeply rooted with pride, and we don't want anybody teaching us otherwise. We try to argue our way out of it. Most of the experiences I had with correction often turned out into me despising the person who has corrected me. This might probably be so because I feel one has trampled my ego or pride. We hate it when we are wrong, and people prove us wrong.

I will give you an example in my life. This happened at my previous workplace. I ended up making an obvious mistake with my numbers. When one of my co-workers corrected me, I wasn’t able to handle it. In fact, I got very defensive in my response. It got to a point where instead of correcting it I tried to argue that my calculations were actually right when they were clearly wrong.

Correction when not received or dealt with in humility, can lead to a serious damage within one's soul. We see this pattern of the poison of pride throughout the Bible. The nation of Israel not only sinned against God through their ungodly practices, but when God tried to correct them by sending his prophets, they rebelled against Him. They not only rebelled by not accepting His word but also went ahead and sinned more. By doing so they have brought damnation upon themselves.

Proverbs 3: 11-12, “My son, do not reject the discipline of the LORD or loathe His reproof. For whom the LORD loves He reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.” Often times we misunderstand the heart of the Lord and tend to question His ways when He is trying to correct us. He uses His word to correct us and sometimes He uses His people to correct us. A healthy response to correction, especially when coming from men, is to listen to it and take it in prayer and ask the help of the Holy Spirit to respond to it the right way. Clearly if the Lord is correcting us, it is not out of malice, but it is purely because He loves us. We are His children, and He clearly doesn’t want us to do the wrong things to hurt ourselves. More than hurting ourselves He doesn’t want us to lose His relationship with us.

Think about it, He doesn’t give up on us like the rest of mankind. Instead, He is more patient with us because He loves us. So, I pray to you and for you, if there is anything that the Lord is trying to correct you in, please do not harden your heart but listen to His reproof. He does it because You are His child, and He loves you!