If we are honest, our response to God’s call on our lives is often similar to Jonah’s. We, too, can become angry, indifferent, and stubborn. But God’s discipline will always prevail. Why not embrace it, knowing that every trial, whether light or severe, has something in it for our benefit (see Romans 8:28)?

We Can Be Intimidated by God’s Discipline

Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him.

—HEBREWS 12:5

It is not unusual for Christians to be overwhelmed or fearful of God’s rebuke and correction—to grow “weary and discouraged in [their] souls” (Hebrews 12:3). In these times it helps to understand that chastisement is not God’s judgment; it is His correction, protection, or prevention. Though at times it may be severe, it will not kill us. No painful experience touches the Christian without the permissive and loving will of the Father in heaven.

Intimidation was the first reaction of the psalmist in Psalm 42:11, but as you can see, his hope in God banished his fear:

Why are you cast down, O my soul?

And why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God;

For I shall yet praise Him,

The help of my countenance and my God.

God disciplines to help us—to build us up, not to tear us down. In her book Hope Has Its Reasons, Rebecca Manley Pippert makes this point in a story about dealing with loved ones who have substance abuse problems. She describes the frustration of watching a close friend destroy her life. She was disgusted and furious—not because she hated her friend, but because she loved her. “Love detests what destroys the beloved,” she writes. “Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys.”10

Pippert concludes that we wouldn’t want a God who didn’t become angry over our self-destruction. Such a God wouldn’t be good or loving. “Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.”11

Jesus was not indifferent when He saw swindlers using the temple to cheat poor worshippers who had walked many miles to experience God in Jerusalem. He was angry! He toppled tables, scattered money, and shouted at the offenders, emphatically expressing His wrath against anything that stands between God and His children (John 2:13–17).

Would you want a dispassionate Jesus who is indifferent to the things that hurt us, one who merely shrugs over the terrible fallenness of this world, who occasionally tidies things up without ever getting particularly personal about it?