09.23.04

Today’s devotional is from an article written by my son, Clark Wrather, for his church newsletter. Clark is the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Broken Bow, Oklahoma. The title and Scripture were added for the devotional. Clark’s email is: storm@pine-net.com.

And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: "My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives." - Hebrews 12:5-6.

If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. - Hebrews 12:7-11.

If you know me at all, you know that I am a talker. I just love to talk to people. My wife gets on to me sometimes for chatting away with complete strangers when we are out of town.

I love to talk and evidently this can be passed down as a genetic heritage to your children. My oldest son, Madison, loves to talk. Make the mistake of asking him a question about something and he is going to tell you everything he knows and everything he can possibly guess at concerning the subject. He can go into excruciating detail about the video games he likes or about a cartoon. He’s pretty excited about a new one coming out called, “Super Force Hyper Team Monkey Go”. Just from watching the commercials he has picked out a favorite. Imagine my experience in a fifteen minute conversation about which monkey is probably the best in the new show based on the commercials. As I said, he can talk at length about anything.

He has managed to make it through the first few weeks of school this year without a personal visit from the, “board of education (a paddling)”. During his first couple of years, he had a visit from the “board” within the first week of the school year. The only trouble he has gotten into so far this year is for talking.

He has told me several times that everyone in his class has been in trouble for talking on certain days. I know he may be exaggerating, but his class does seem to have a lot of chatterboxes in it. After a while, he was moved to a new area. I asked him who was sitting around him in the new place and he named all sorts of girls. It sounded like a good plan by his teacher to tone the talking down until he named the last girl. She is a talker and a good friend of Madison’s from his class last year and T-ball last summer.

He got in trouble numerous times for talking after that and I don’t even want to imagine how much of class he wasted away chatting with his good friend. Last week, there was a new development. He came home and told us that he had been moved to a new place. I thought this was a wise move on his Teacher’s part and I asked him who was seated around him. He got quiet for a moment, gave a might sigh and lamented, “Just a machine! I just sit next to a machine”. I am not altogether sure what the machine is, but I doubt it’s the conversationalist his friend was at the old location.

In life, don’t be too surprised if God moves you to a different place. Don’t be surprised when he moves you out of your comfort zone. Don’t be surprised when he moves to change your behavior. Like a wise teacher, God will make changes in your life to help you do better. He might make changes in your health, finances, job, relationships or something else. Usually, we like these changes as much as Madison likes sitting next to a machine, but those changes are for our own good.