Hebrews 12:3-13 - Fatherly Discipline

³ Therefore, if you would escape becoming weary and faint-hearted, compare your own sufferings with those of Him who endured such hostility directed against Him by sinners. ⁴ In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted so as to endanger your lives; ⁵ and you have quite forgotten the encouraging words which are addressed to you as sons, and which say, "My son, do not think lightly of the Lord's discipline, and do not faint when He corrects you; ⁶ for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines: and He scourges every son whom He acknowledges."

⁷ The sufferings that you are enduring are for your discipline. God is dealing with you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? ⁸ And if you are left without discipline, of which every true son has had a share, that shows that you are bastards, and not true sons. ⁹ Besides this, our earthly fathers used to discipline us and we treated them with respect, and shall we not be still more submissive to the Father of our spirits, and live? ¹⁰ It is true that they disciplined us for a few years according as they thought fit; but He does it for our certain good, in order that we may become sharers in His own holy character. ¹¹ Now, at the time, discipline seems to be a matter not for joy, but for grief; yet it afterwards yields to those who have passed through its training a result full of peace--namely, righteousness.

¹² Therefore strengthen the drooping hands and paralysed knees, ¹³ and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put entirely out of joint