{"id":1245,"date":"2016-09-23T17:37:32","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T09:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/?p=1245"},"modified":"2016-09-23T17:37:32","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T09:37:32","slug":"on-child-discipline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/on-child-discipline\/","title":{"rendered":"On child discipline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning as I meditated on this passage, I notice something very interesting. Here the pattern that I observe:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>An admonition to show restraint \/ withholding self when dining with a ruler (for it is deception; status or delicacies)<\/li>\n<li>To withhold ambition from accumulating wealth (for it will waste time &amp; energy)<\/li>\n<li>To withhold hearty talk before a stingy person (or you will waste your words)<\/li>\n<li>To withhold pouring wisdom before a folly (or he will despise you)<\/li>\n<li>To withhold oppressing the weak (for God is on the side of the weak)<\/li>\n<li>Do not withhold discipline from a child<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>It seems there are 5 things to withhold self from, yet the only place not to withhold is disciplining a child. And that&#8217;s the place where we show restraint most the time.<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t withhold \/ give a second thought when we&#8217;re invited by a ruler.\u00a0We certainly would not waste a chance to eat the food served for the king.<\/p>\n<p>We won&#8217;t waste a chance to get richer. It&#8217;s something tempting and attractive to get more money &amp; expand our kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>We also won&#8217;t withhold our compliments, regardless of the person who&#8217;s in front of us. Even to the stingy person, we would still compliment out of courtesy.<\/p>\n<p>We certainly like to share our wisdom, the more so if we thought the other person does not have understanding equal to us.<\/p>\n<p>We like the power and feeling of winning over others. Given a chance, we don&#8217;t like to lose and rather we choose to win instead of losing.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, we find it so difficult to bring the discipline to our children. We rationalized and give it so much thought whether we should discipline them at all. And that&#8217;s the part that God&#8217;s Word speaks so clearly and strongly.<\/p>\n<p>Not only we&#8217;re not to withhold the discipline, it&#8217;s very much recommended (If you strike him with the rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol &#8211; v14) The double repetition stresses how strongly God thinks about it. It assures parents that by doing so, not only the child will not die, but \u00a0contrarily\u00a0the child will live! How much more do we need God tells us?<\/p>\n<p>If we want to be truly humble and learn, we would learn a great wisdom, contrary to the wisdom of the world. For this verse came before the disciplining of children:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<span class=\"selected\">Apply your heart to instruction,\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"\">and your ear to words of knowledge.&#8221; (v 12)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Those who chose to hear God, would certainly walk a different way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning as I meditated on this passage, I notice something very interesting. Here the pattern that I observe:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,100,108,50,72],"tags":[152,250,270,323,328],"class_list":["post-1245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-convicted","category-fatherhood","category-love","category-proverbs","category-wisdom","tag-discipline","tag-parenting","tag-proverb","tag-walk-with-god","tag-wisdom"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":873,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/disturbing-news\/","url_meta":{"origin":1245,"position":0},"title":"Disturbing News","author":"clay","date":"October 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I shall not mention of any names :) Recently i found out that someone has been publishing news to media (nothing wrong with that), only from a single perspective, which i find it disturbing. I happened to know the whole story, and hence i find it disturbing when the news\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Holiness&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Holiness","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/virtues\/holiness\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2039,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/no-strength-no-power-no-king-but-wise\/","url_meta":{"origin":1245,"position":1},"title":"No strength, no power, no king, but wise","author":"clay","date":"November 30, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"God often surprises me with something I never thought of. Many Christians have read their Bibles many times over. And surprisingly God has always something new everytime we open up our Bibles. And tonight is just one of those moments. I was reading from Proverbs 30, about the 4 animals\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Amazed&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Amazed","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/emotion\/amazed\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1266,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/parenting-on-bended-knee\/","url_meta":{"origin":1245,"position":2},"title":"Parenting on Bended Knee","author":"clay","date":"November 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Today, spent a full day attending seminar on parenting. I'm glad that I learnt and reminded of a lot of important things. Certainly, there're a lot of smart and experience people out there. It's good thing that these people share their life experience in a clear, structured, and systematic way.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;1 Corinthians&quot;","block_context":{"text":"1 Corinthians","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/bible\/1-corinthians\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1937,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/god-chose-the-weak\/","url_meta":{"origin":1245,"position":3},"title":"God chose the weak","author":"clay","date":"April 21, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week was a special week for me. We had school break & Easter week holiday, and we spent 3 days attending Belgrave Height Easter convention. What I am amazed at was the magnitude of power in women that I encounter. I saw in the life of Gladys Aylward whose\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;1 Corinthians&quot;","block_context":{"text":"1 Corinthians","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/bible\/1-corinthians\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1770,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/parenting-on-bended-knee-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1245,"position":4},"title":"Parenting on Bended Knee (2)","author":"clay","date":"August 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Last night I described to my wife what I observed about our girls, their characteristics, their strengths, and their weaknesses. And how I don't know how to help them. It was one of a fruitful couple nights to talk about our children. At least I learnt or felt validated that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Fatherhood&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Fatherhood","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/lifes-stages\/fatherhood\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":967,"url":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/take-a-little-child-seriously\/","url_meta":{"origin":1245,"position":5},"title":"Take a little child seriously","author":"clay","date":"March 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Last Sunday, we're waiting for taxi, and our girl likes to take the blue cab. So we asked her to pray. We could see she prayed earnestly. For long, we didn't get the cab. I told myself, how come God fail to hear such earnest prayer of a little child?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Family&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Family","link":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/category\/daily-life\/family\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potterdreams.com\/clay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}