No one enjoys discipline, but every loving parent disciplines their children. Our heavenly Father is no different. He trains us in righteousness. He allows difficulties that that make us stronger. There’s no need to fight the Father’s discipline; we should embrace it. This prayer helps us embrace our Father’s discipline.  Pray the prayer. Add your own words, then read the passage on which the the prayer is based.

Prayer

Lord, because You’re justice, You must judge.  So when You judge, may Your judgement be redemptive.  I ask that it’ll bring repentance rather than destruction.  Upheave our false religion and our watered down piety. Convict us thoroughly so we’ll mourn and grieve for our sin.  Cause Your discipline to make us hungry and thirsty for Your presence and word. Let it drive us to hear from heaven. Help every individual and family realize that if they don’t have You, then they’ll fall, never to rise up again.  May Your discipline help us to understand that You’re our only hope. Discipline us effectively, mercifully and with grace in the name of Jesus, the one whom You also disciplined (Hebrews 5:8).

Amos 8:7-14

The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done. “Will not the land tremble for this, and all who live in it mourn? The whole land will rise like the Nile; it will be stirred up and then sink like the river of Egypt. “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your religious festivals into mourning and all your singing into weeping. I will make all of you wear sackcloth and shave your heads. I will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day. “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it. “In that day “the lovely young women and strong young men will faint because of thirst. Those who swear by the sin of Samaria—who say, ‘As surely as your god lives, Dan,’ or, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives’—they will fall, never to rise again.”

Crazy Kingdom

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