Proverbs 19:20-21
Listen to advice and accept discipline, so that you will be wise in the future. There are many plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that will prevail.
Dear Heavenly Father,
You discipline your faithful people with the law and teach us your wisdom in the gospel through your word. The commandments you gave to us out of love for us to love you and love others. When we fail in this, you send others our way to show us how we have erred. Or our sin’s guilt fills our consciences, that we have no other place to turn but to you. Hearing or feeling the weight of our sins is not always easy, nor, at times, what we want to hear. However, you point our sin out, out of love. Why? Because loving unrepentant sins more than you is unbelief, and unbelief would send us to hell. Your plan was not to see us suffer in the pit of hell that was meant for Satan and all the evil angels.
Lord, prepare and strengthen our hearts to accept your discipline, that we may turn back to Jesus and lay all our sins at the foot of his cross because he has suffered and died for all our sins. Strengthen our faith to turn from our sin and discipline our flesh. So that we will be wise in the future, we have many plans; some will take us down the wrong path; forgive us when we do. May your will prevail with each of us, give us your advice, and discipline us. So that in our last day, through faith in you, we will be delivered to heaven, and salvation will be ours. Grant us opportunities to share this peace of salvation with others that do not know you, that they would know the truth of salvation you have prepared for them. Amen.
Roger Emmons
Pastor
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church
God’s discipline may be hard to hear at times, but remember, it is necessary. Through his gospel, we will have wisdom and the forgiveness of sins which brings us eternal life.