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Have you ever witnessed, or experienced firsthand, “church discipline” administered by your church community? If the point of church discipline is to correct, not just to punish, what elements must be present in the act of discipline to ensure that it’s not just punitive?

Here’s how Lifetime Guarantee Ministries approaches this question:

Although they may both feel the same, there’s a huge difference between punishment and discipline. A punisher is angry at the punishee and takes out his hostility on him. The result is either fear-motivated conformity to the punisher’s will or rebellion. A discipliner, on the other hand, is not angry. He metes out the discipline despite the fact that it hurts him to do so. The one who is disciplined is motivated to change because of his love for the one who disciplines. Although both the punishee and the disciplinee may receive “three licks with the paddle,” the result will be vastly different.

Nowhere after the cross does the Greek text support the idea of God’s punishing new creations in Christ. The word is chasten, or discipline.

Read more at the Lifetime Guarantee website.

This is something I’ve thought and talked about quite a bit lately in the context of parenting. Our two-year-old daughter is entering a (temporary…. right?!?) phase in which her behavior is sometimes less than angelic. Some form of discipline becomes necessary at points, but how does one administer discipline in such a way that it encourages correction of behavior, rather than simple punishment for behavior? It gets especially tricky when the act of discipline—say, mandatory “quiet time”—looks the same whether it’s administered in love or anger.

All parents have wrestled with this question at some point. But this is also an important issue in the church, where believers are called to correct brothers and sisters who have strayed. Sometimes this correction takes the form of discipline (removal from a leadership position or even temporary removal from community worship) that might be seen as a punishment.

What acts of church discipline have you witnessed or experienced? What was present in the discipline that communicated love rather than anger?

What do you think?

Sometimes, it’s easy to convince ourselves that quitting is the best option. Would it really be that bad if we were to break our diet? Would it be terrible to give up on a rocky relationship? Would it really hurt anybody if we just stopped reading the Bible?

In our best moments, I think we all know quitting difficult things just because they are difficult is never the best option. Yet, there’s often a very loud voice in our head screaming a panoply of reasons why we should reconsider those commitments.

Michael Hyatt—the CEO of Thomas Nelson, Inc.—articulates how he counteracts these thoughts in his post, What Keeps You Going When You Want to Quit. It really has me thinking about why I don’t give up on certain things, and why I have—possibly foolishly—quit others.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

What these same voices fail to tell you is that there is a distinction between the dream and the work required to obtain it. Everything important requires work. Hard work. And sometimes there is a long arc between the dream and it’s realization. That is where the work and the transformation occur.

In my experience, the thing that keeps me going is answering this question, “Why am I doing this?” I then try to remember the dream. “Why I am doing this hard thing that I am doing.” I try to get connected to the original vision, because that keeps me going when the going gets tough.

There are a few verses in the second chapter of Job that have stuck with me ever since I first read them. Job has just lost everything he owns and is covered in sores. Sitting destitute in the street, his wife comes to him and tells him to curse God and die. He amazingly responds, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

Job’s wife has given up on the situation, and if we were honest, many of us would as well. We’d start to reconsider our commitment to a God that would allow such heartache. Yet, Job examines the situation and concludes that it’s not for him to judge his commitment to God based on his present circumstances. As Mr. Hyatt would say, he stayed “connected to the original vision.”

What about you? What keeps you going when times get hard?