All His Benefits (Part 7 Delight-Directed and Not so Delight-Directed Learning)

August 13, 2011 at 6:57 pm (About Sin, All His Benefits, Assurance, chastisement, correction, Devotional Series I Have Written, Devotional Thoughts., Forgiveness, Grace, Guidance, Home Education, Homeschooling, Judging, Love, Mercy, Obedience, Our Unchanging God, Parenting, Patience, Relaxed Homeschooling, Repentance, Sins, Sovereignty of God, Trusting, When you are afraid, When You Feel Like Crying.)

Scripture Reference;

Psalm 103

 ¹Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

 ²Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

 ³Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;

 ⁴Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;

 ⁵Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

 ⁶The LORD executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.

 ⁷He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel.

 ⁸The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.

 ⁹He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.

 ¹⁰He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

 ¹¹For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.

 ¹²As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.

 ¹³Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.

 ¹⁴For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.

 ¹⁵As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

 ¹⁶For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

 ¹⁷But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children;

 ¹⁸To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.

 ¹⁹The LORD hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all.

 ²⁰Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.

 ²¹Bless ye the LORD, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure.

 ²²Bless the LORD, all his works in all places of his dominion: bless the LORD, O my soul.

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Now let’s look at verse 9:

⁹He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.  (KJV)

 ⁹He will not always chide or be contending, neither will He keep His anger forever or hold a grudge. (Amplified Bible)

“Chide” is a word we don’t often hear in conversation. I had an idea but wasn’t sure what it actually meant. The Amplified Bible gave me a clue. This came from an online dictionary:

Chide definition, to express disapproval of; scold; reproach

That is interesting, but the Amplified Bible says this:   “or be contending”

I think I will look up the Hebrew meaning of the word “chide” in a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.

Strong:  H7378

Orig:  or ruwb \i roob\i0\plain\f3\fs21\cf23 ; a primitive root; properly, to toss, i.e. grapple; mostly figuratively, to wrangle, i.e. hold a controversy; (by implication) to defend:–adversary, chide, complain, contend, debate, X ever, X lay wait, plead, rebuke, strive, X thoroughly.

That word says a lot. But when I think of this Psalm as a whole there are certain things that come into consideration. When I take into account that it is regarding how the Lord deals with Believers, and when I consider the way David has described himself in other psalms and even in other books of the Bible (such as in 1Samuel and 2 Samuel), and the way he described the Lord, and the nature of his relationship with Him…the meaning becomes more clear.

The words “rebuke”, “strive” and “contend” really speak to me. The Lord does“chide” His children, but He “will not ‘always’ chide” them.  We have angered and will anger the Lord at times, but unlike mankind, He is slow to anger and doesn’t hold grudges…and you know what else?  He never sins; not even when He is angry. Yes, He will both chide and chastise (chiding is one of the ways that He chastises) His children, but never in a cruel attempt to get revenge, and His discipline is always loving, for our own good, and is NEVER misguided. I am so thankful for that. Let’s look at some scriptures that give us a glimpse of this.

Wait. Something just came to me. I need to digress a little, and come back to what I was going to share a little later.

Have you ever heard of “Delight-Directed Learning”?  It is a technique sometimes used to help students learn. In a delight-directed study, a child’s interests are ignited and sustained in ways that increase his or her interest in studies. We learn from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. For example, all of us chocolate lovers probably know what will happen when we unwrap a Hershey’s Kiss and pop it in our mouth. Once we had the first one we never forgot what was inside that foil and needed to figure it out again…even if we had gone years without eating one. Then there is that not so pleasant memory some women have of accidentally putting there finger in their mouth after they have just removed their nail polish.  We won’t forget what that is like either.

Here is another example:  Your toddler will probably not fight you if you ask them to eat some candy, but how about some of that nasty pink liquid medicine you make them gag down when they have an ear infection or some other infection? We know they will fuss and fight us and we hate doing it, but we force them to take it. Sometimes they even vomit and we have to do it all over again. But we do it…because we love them and want them to get well. Aren’t we so glad when we see improvement the next day? Then there are times when they are more easily pursuaded. We will tell them they will get a reward like their favorite ice cream if they will just swallow one little spoonful of their medicine, and on some occasions this does the trick. No matter what method we use the motive is the same in both cases. We don’t make them take the medicine, because we find it amusing to see them gag. We make them take the medicine, because we love them and want them to get well.

Here is what came to my mind a little while ago. I love words. When I was a little girl (probably in the 2nd grade) I learned about “root words”; learned that many words share the same root, and if we saw a new word and we didn’t have a dictionary we could look at the root of that word and then at either the prefix or the suffix of that word and get a clue about the new word’s meaning. Here is an example:

misjudge:  You have the root word judge and the prefix mis (to get wrong make a mistake). So if you misjudge you are making a mistake in your judgement.

I also really liked looking at lists of synonyms (words with similar meanings) and antonyms (words with opposite meanings). I believe the Lord enjoys using“delight directed learning” with His children. He knows that I love words, so He uses my love of words as one of various methods to get me to learn more about His ways. As I was thinking about “chiding” and a few other forms of chastisement I remembered some accounts in the Bible where people were chided.

In this account it was actually a pagan king who did the chiding (scolding):

Abram in Egypt

 ¹⁰ There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine in the land was severe. ¹¹ When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “Look, I know what a beautiful woman you are. ¹² When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ They will kill me but let you live. ¹³ Please say you’re my sister so it will go well for me because of you, and my life will be spared on your account.” ¹⁴ When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. ¹⁵ Pharaoh’s officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, so the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s house. ¹⁶ He treated Abram well because of her, and Abram acquired flocks and herds, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels.

    ¹⁷ But the LORD struck Pharaoh and his house with severe plagues because of Abram’s wife Sarai.¹⁸ So Pharaoh sent for Abram and said, “What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? ¹⁹ Why did you say, ‘She’s my sister,’ so that I took her as my wife? Now, here’s your wife. Take her and go!” ²⁰ Then Pharaoh gave [his] men orders about him, and they sent him away, with his wife and all he had.   Genesis 12:10-20 HCSB

In these two accounts Jesus chided Peter:

His Death and Resurrection Predicted

 ²¹ From then on Jesus began to point out to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised the third day. ²²Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, “Oh no, ^[o] Lord! This will never happen to You!”

  ²³ But He turned and told Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me because you’re not thinking about God’s concerns, ^[p] but man’s.” Mathew 16:21-23 HCSB

 ²⁰But Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved, following–the one who also had leaned back on His breast at the supper and had said, Lord, who is it that is going to betray You?

    ²¹When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, what about this man?

    ²²Jesus said to him, If I want him to stay (survive, live) until I come, what is that to you? [What concern is it of yours?] You follow Me! John 21:13-22 Amplified Bible

It never feels good to be chided. The Lord knows this, but He will do what is needed to cause His children to become contrite…full of regret and sorrow for their sins:

¹⁰ For godly grief produces a repentance not to be regretted and leading to salvation, but worldly grief produces death. ¹¹ For consider how much diligence this very thing—this grieving as God wills—has produced in you: what a desire to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what deep longing, what zeal, what justice! In every way you have commended yourselves to be pure in this matter. 2 Corinthians 7:10-11 HCSB

It is true that the Lord uses different approaches when it comes to teaching us the things we need to learn. We won’t always understand all of the reasons for every thing we will experience here, but we can rest in the knowledge that He uses both the delightful and the not so delightful things for our good, because He delights in us.

 ¹¹ Do not despise the LORD’s instruction, my son, and do not loathe His discipline;¹² for the LORD disciplines the one He loves,  just as a father, the son he delights in. Proverbs 3:11-12 HCSB

Do you know Jesus as your personal Savior and Lord?  Please click here:https://pronetoponder.wordpress.com/category/about-salvation-very-important-words/ and make sure.

Do you have a Bible? If you don’t have one, you need not worry. Just click here: www.biblegateway.com They have many versions and translations of the Bible that you can read. Some of the best things in life are free!

 

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