Blessed Discipline

This is Derek Prince with a word for you from the Word.

“Blessed is the man you discipline, O LORD, the man you teach from your law; you grant him relief from days of trouble, till a pit is dug for the wicked.” (Psalm 94:12–13 NIV)

God is the greatest of all teaching psychologists. For a number of years, I myself was principal of a teacher training college and I learned then, as I studied the Scriptures, how profound the discipline and the psychology of God are in the field of teaching.

The words of the psalmist there bring out one great basic principle: without discipline there can be no real teaching. That’s one of the great problems of many aspects of our modern educational system. Discipline has been abandoned and with it teaching has gone. I know from my own experience, if a teacher cannot exercise discipline, he cannot really teach. God is wiser than that; He never tries to teach those who refuse His discipline. “Blessed is the man you discipline” and whom “you teach.”

And then there’s a great and wonderful promise to the man who comes under God’s discipline and accepts His teaching: “You grant him relief from days of trouble, till a pit is dug for the wicked.” God is preparing a season of judgment and retribution on the wicked. He’s digging a pit for the wicked, and His promise is to the man who receives His discipline and His teaching that in that time of trouble and retribution of the wicked, that man will be preserved and kept from the retribution and judgment of God on the ungodly.

It surely pays to accept God’s discipline and come under His teaching.