By Pastor Brittany

Sitting here in a hospital room, having just gone through the awful experience of watching nurses put an IV in my two month old son, I kept thinking the thought that every parent who has witnessed their child in pain has thought, “if only I could take it away from them.”

For the first stick I was able to hold it together, knowing that this was for his own good, that it was going to help his body heal. The second stick was more of a challenge not to get my momma voice going and demand someone better. The third stick I nearly lost it. The emotions kicked in and I had to step away.

When I calmed down and was able to remove the nurses off my hit list, I kept thinking about those momma instincts. We want to protect, we want to teach, we want to make memories, we want to create fun… It’s important stuff!

What happens though when we do all those things right and leave out discipline? Discipline is one of those ‘for their own good’ kinds of things that we have to take care of even though it means seeing our child unhappy. Verses 15 and 17 tell us that without discipline our children disgrace us but with discipline they give us peace and delights.

Some days we would give anything to take away things like RSV and hospital stays, other days we would give them the world, but should we choose not to give them discipline, we’ve made a wrong choice. We’ve left out something that God intended to use to mold us into the men and women that He wants us to be. Discipline hurts parents sometimes more than children. It’s heartbreaking to see our children upset. But the Bible clearly tells us that we set our children up for failure if we don’t do it. We rob them of lessons learned. Parents, don’t shortchange your children. It hurts but it’s necessary, kind of like an IV.