We Love God!

God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)

Ask yourself this question. Who benefits if you do not spank you child? Surely not the child. The (biblical) passages make it clear that such failure places the child at risk. Who benefits? You do. You are delivered from the discomfort of spanking the child. You are delivered from the agony of inflicting pain on one who is precious to you. You are delivered from the inconvenience and loss of time which biblical discipline requires. I believe this is why the Bible says in Proverbs 13:24 – “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.” According to this passage, hatred is what will keep me from spanking my child. Love will force me to it.
Tedd Tripp

[Paul’s] thrice-repeated prayer for the removal of the ailment was answered, not by his deliverance from it, but by his receiving the necessary grace to bear it – not simply to live with it but to be thankful for it. If his ministry was so effective despite this physical weakness, then the transcendent power was manifestly God’s, not his own. Infirmities like this were welcomed, together with the other hardships…if they were the condition on which the power of the risen Christ operated through him. They constantly reminded him not so much of his own inadequacy as of the total adequacy of Christ, in whom, when he was personally most weak, he knew himself to be most strong.
F.F. Bruce