This is part of my year-long series exploring human-centered alternatives to the spiritual promises in Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest. Today’s entry, “Discipline,” promises that believers who don’t “quench the Spirit” by despising God’s discipline will experience divine sanctification as God grips them “by his power,” claiming that the Spirit reveals spiritual blindness through divine rebukes and sanctifies those who “let him have his way.”
Here’s what divine discipline actually produced:
Thomas had been interpreting everything through the lens of divine discipline for six years now. His wife’s cancer diagnosis? God’s sanctification process. His son’s autism? The Lord’s loving rebuke. The layoffs at his engineering firm? Divine grip tightening for spiritual growth.
“Never despise the Lord’s discipline,” his accountability partner reminded him every Thursday morning at Denny’s. “Don’t lose heart when He rebukes you. Let the Spirit reveal what He needs to reveal.”
This philosophy had made Thomas remarkably calm during crises. While other families panicked about medical bills or fought with insurance companies, Thomas saw divine purpose. While other parents researched autism therapies and advocated for their children’s educational needs, Thomas prayed for sanctification through suffering. While other laid-off workers networked frantically and updated their resumes, Thomas waited for God to complete His work.
“I’m not where I thought I was,” Thomas would say, quoting Chambers. “The Spirit is revealing this to me. I need to let Him have His way.”
His wife Linda had initially found his spiritual perspective comforting during her chemotherapy. But as months passed and Thomas remained passive in the face of mounting challenges, his divine discipline framework began to feel less like peace and more like paralysis.
“The insurance company denied my claim again,” she told him one evening. “We need to appeal. Can you call them tomorrow?”
“God is sanctifying us through this trial,” Thomas replied. “I don’t want to quench the Spirit by fighting His discipline.”
Linda stared at him. “The Spirit isn’t handling our insurance appeals, Thomas.”
But Thomas had become addicted to finding God’s hand in everything. Every setback was divine education. Every struggle was sanctification. Every crisis was God gripping him by His power for spiritual growth. The framework provided meaning for meaningless suffering and made him feel spiritually superior to people who responded to problems with practical action.
Meanwhile, their neighbor Jeff faced his own family crisis when his daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. Jeff’s response was radically different. He researched pediatric oncologists, fought insurance companies, connected with other families, and turned his engineer’s problem-solving skills toward navigating the medical system. He took family leave, learned medical terminology, and became his daughter’s fiercest advocate.
Jeff never once mentioned divine discipline. He just acted like a father whose child needed help.
Two years later, the contrast was stark. Thomas’s wife had died—not from cancer, but from treatable complications that he’d interpreted as God’s will rather than medical emergencies requiring aggressive intervention. His son was struggling in school without the therapies and support other autism families had fought to obtain. Thomas himself remained unemployed, still waiting for divine sanctification to complete its work rather than actively job searching.
Jeff’s daughter was in remission. She’d received cutting-edge treatment because Jeff had researched clinical trials and advocated for experimental therapies. The family had survived financially because Jeff had immediately applied for assistance programs and organized fundraising.
Standing at Linda’s graveside, Thomas finally heard a different voice than the one he’d been calling the Spirit for six years. It wasn’t divine discipline speaking to him. It was his own conscience, finally breaking through the spiritual framework that had paralyzed him during the most critical moments of his family’s life.
The voice was saying something Chambers had never prepared him to hear: “You weren’t being sanctified. You were being negligent.”
For the first time in years, Thomas didn’t interpret the rebuke as coming from God. It was coming from the part of himself that knew the difference between spiritual meaning-making and responsible action—the part he’d been calling the devil when it urged him to fight for his wife’s life.
Reflection Question: When has looking for divine purpose in suffering prevented you from taking practical action to address real problems?
This story is part of my upcoming book “The Undevoted: Daily Departures from Divine Dependence,” which offers 365 human-centered alternatives to the spiritual certainties in Chambers’ devotional. Each day explores how reason, community, and human resilience can address life’s challenges without requiring divine intervention.
God or Delusion? 