This reading the Bible in a year is a great idea, but I must admit the conviction comes daily. Proverbs is such a wealth of wisdom and when you read along with a great commentary it really helps you understand.
The scripture that really touched my heart this week was:
Proverbs 13:24 He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly.
Oh discipline is such a touchy subject and I am not wanting to start a war about applying the rod of discipline even though the bible does state that if you don’t you hate your son.
My conviction came with the word PROMPTLY.
Now my phrase for this year was NO EXCUSES (huge sigh) and I must say that I haven’t conquered this yet, I am still working on it, and when it comes to applying discipline, I don’t always do it promptly.
I have plenty of excuses as to why I let it slide, or not deal with it as promptly as I should.
In my perfect world I would be on top of all of it, the attitudes and actions of my children, but sometimes it is all overwhelming and I do zone out a bit, and sometimes I just don’t know which way to go with correcting the attitudes and especially the blame games that happen between our two youngest children.
In my perfect world, I would take them gently by the arm and lead them to the bedroom and have a meaningful discussion about what they did wrong, apply the rod if necessary and then bring us back together with prayer and repentance.
Now don’t get me wrong this does happen, but more often than not, I get frustrated and upset first. Sometimes their needing disciplining gets in the road of what I am trying to achieve at that moment, sometimes it’s just plain annoying.
See why this scripture was so convicting, this is something that I definitely need to work on.
Dealing with attitudes and disciplining promptly is so important and would probably help allieviate the frustration that comes from NOT doing it when I should.
Maybe my one word for 2015 should have been PROMPTLY and this would have gone really well with my phrase NO EXCUSES.