God Disciplines

Once upon a time, I had a boss who let me do my thing every day at work. I operated independently, performed my basic function and tasks, and thought things were going pretty well. I enjoyed my job. I felt competent. I thought they trusted me. Nothing was ever said to make me question anything at all. 

Until my annual job performance review a full 13 months after I was initially hired...and then it all came pouring out. As it turned out, I hadn't been doing anything correctly at all, it seemed. 

I remember being extremely upset with this whole thing. I mean, if you were unhappy with what I was doing or the way that I was doing it, why would you not have a five minute conversation with me when you first noticed it? Why would you let me just keep doing it for thirteen months without ever bringing it up? Now, when you bring it up, it's a long-standing pattern of behavior that has just been aggravating you for way longer than it needed to...and it's a habit I've formed that will now have to be broken. 

I just don't understand bosses and supervisors who won't take a few minutes to have a simple conversation that could change the whole dynamic for the better. I don't know why you would just keep a massive track record of perceived wrongs and then dump it on someone all at once when they thought things were not actually going so terribly. 

And yet...this is exactly what we think God does. 

So many of us think that we're going to get to the end of our lives and God is going to pull out this laundry list of stuff we've done that we shouldn't have been doing, stuff that's driven Him absolutely crazy, stuff that He doesn't like about our performance. We're going to suddenly stand before Him and get bad marks that we weren't expecting when we were just out here trying to do our best. 

But God isn't some terrible supervisor; He's a loving Father. 

He's not keeping a laundry list, waiting for that day when He can lay it all out and dump it on us and destroy whatever satisfaction we thought we had in our life and our work and our love. 

No, God is the kind of superior that we all really want - someone who brings it up right when it's happening. Someone who steps in right away. Someone who is willing to have a quick five minute conversation to keep us from driving Him even crazier and from building bad habits that we will then have to break. 

Revelation 3:19 says, "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline." God is speaking directly to us and telling us that He's not going to let it go that way. 

He's not building a file for the end of times. He's not got a list to go over with us when we finally get a minute in His office. He's stepping in right now, coming to the place where we live and work and love, and He's willing to say, firmly but with grace, "This isn't the best way."

This isn't the way I want you to do it. This isn't the way it works best for you. This isn't the best process or outcome or whatever. Here, let me tell you a better way...and then He guides, rebukes, and disciplines so that we can do it better. So that we can get it right-er. So that when it comes to that day, that glorious day, it gets to be truly glorious because He won't blindside us with a bunch of stuff He never told us about. 

Rather, He will celebrate that we have done what He called us to do through a series of quick conversations and five minute lessons - we will have been earnest and repented. And instead of just doing what we thought was good work, we will find that we have listened and done what turned out to be better work. 

Thank God for good supervision.