Second, the discipline you endure now instills peace in you about your future, just as surgery to remove a tumor frees the patient from anxiety. When we endure the discipline that achieves righteousness, the peace that comes from a closer relationship with God follows in its wake.

In Hebrews 12:14 we are challenged to “pursue peace.” Just remember that you cannot achieve peace by pursuing it for its own sake. Peace comes when you acquire the character traits that produce it: righteousness and holiness. Pursuing these godlike attributes brings God into that God-shaped vacuum in our hearts, giving us the peace of knowing we are one with Him.

The work of righteousness will be peace,

And the effect of righteousness,

quietness and assurance forever.

—ISAIAH 32:17

Will You Let God Do Whatever It Takes?

Psychologist Jonathon Haidt suggests a hypothetical exercise that vividly illustrates the hard choices God must make when administering discipline. Imagine that you are a soon-to-be parent, and you receive an advance script for the life of your child. You are also given an eraser and told that you can freely edit the script.

So you read with eager eyes, and your heart begins to sink. Your child will have a learning disability in grade school, making it difficult for him to read. In high school he will lose a close friend to cancer. Good things also happen in this script: Your child gets into the college of his choice, but he loses a leg in an automobile accident and experiences depression. He will get jobs and lose them. He will get married and separated.

You look up from the script with tears in your eyes. You had dreamed of nothing but sunshine ahead—a future president, the next Billy Graham, a Nobel Prize winner.

So what do you erase?

Your immediate reaction is to edit out the pain and obstacles. But there’s that rule of unintended consequences: If you erase the bad stuff, what else might you be inadvertently erasing with it? What lessons might God be teaching with the bad stuff that are critical to your child’s eternal salvation? What eternal values may be undermined by the use of your well-intentioned eraser?

John Ortberg, quoting the scenario above, asks, “Is it possible that in some way people actually need adversity, setbacks, maybe even something like trauma to reach the fullest level of development and growth?”16

Ask Abraham, who waited decades for the son God promised him. Ask Job, who had to lose almost every earthly possession to gain heavenly wisdom. Ask Christ, who had to drink from the cup God gave Him and march courageously to the cross. Ask Paul, who had to embrace his “thorn in the flesh” as a gift of grace.