Loving Reproof
AM Psalm 106:1-18 • PM Psalm 106:19-48
Prov. 3:11-20 • 1 John 3:18-4:6 • John 11:17-29
How do you deal with criticism? When someone points out a flaw in your work or a bad habit at home, what is your first reaction? Do you feel an impulse to defend yourself? Are you embarrassed? Do you want the other person to just stop talking?
After the conversation is over and the high emotions of the moment have passed, what do you ruminate about? Do you fume at the other and count his flaws? Do you dismiss that person because you need to protect your ego? Or are you able to look at yourself critically and see that person’s point?
In Proverbs, the author says, “the Lord reproves the one he loves, as a father [reproves] the son in whom he delights.” This means that when you hear the concerned voice of God through your conscience, your dreams, other people, or however the Spirit reaches you, God does not love you less. When God tells you that you are going down the wrong path, it isn’t an attempt to shame or manipulate you into good behavior. On the contrary, if God didn’t care about you, God would not bother communicating in such a way.
Education for Ministry Year 4 was recently reading Mark McIntosh’s Mysteries of Faith, and in it he compares the sinner confronted by God to one whose family confronts him about alcoholism.
“God does not need to hate sin, for God simply loves it out of its sinfulness and back into real life. But we must also say that whenever we are set against Love we are bound to experience Love as working against us, even as condemning us. This may be what many alcoholics feel when they are confronted by family members: they experience the loving concern of their family as gross interference, an attack on their freedom and identity.”
When I think of sin this way, I see that protecting my ego at all costs is also protecting me from becoming the full flourishing human that God sees in me. If I am able to peel back the layers of defensiveness, embarrassment, hidden motives, and self-deception, I can see that I need God’s reprove. So now, I pray for God to help me to hear that gentle criticism, and for God to help me to find the resolve to live into my true identity as God’s child.
Written by Haley Hixson
I can hear the gentle reproof get a bit louder as we head towards the season of Lent and am looking forward to God’s guidance on what the season holds this year!