Things Gone Wrong Can Be Discipline
Sickness

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 11:27-31

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 11:30
That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.

Today’s Key Verse describes some extreme discipline from the Lord. This story leaves no doubt in any of our minds about God caring about bad behavior from His children.

The context of our Key Verse is that the Corinthians were abusing the Lord’s supper (that is, communion). They were eating meals and calling it “communion.” Also, they would eat these meals without a thought for the poorer Christ-followers who had no food! These abuses of the symbols of Jesus’s death and resurrection grieved God.

The Apostle Paul instructs them on the proper method for communion. Then He gives them a general principle to approach the Lord’s Supper: Each person must examine himself before partaking of communion so that they do not have an “unworthy” heart. An unworthy heart is simply a selfish heart that does not remember what Jesus did for us on the cross, nor loves people for whom Christ died!

Here is the point of the story that relates to our subject for today. Some of the Corinthian believers were sick and had died because of their careless lifestyle! Paul warns us to “judge ourselves” so this does not happen to us (1 Corinthians 11:31). In other words, some of our sickness and even death could be due to God’s discipline of our bad behavior!

Using the principles from yesterday’s devotional, we must be very careful to listen when God is correcting us!

Father, I know you do all things for my good, even the things that ‘hurt.’ Help me to listen and obey, I pray in Jesus’s Name, amen.