Now there are times when a situation looks
as if God is behind it. It may have all the
symptoms pointing to that. But Satan is a
deceiver; he wants you to think God did it.
If he can get you to go against God, he’ll
run rampant over you. The religious idea
that God chastises His own with sickness
and disease and poverty is the very thing
that has caused the Church to go 1,500 years
without the knowledge of the Holy Spirit or
the gifts of the Spirit.

We just became so passive, and double-minded
that the whole Church was schizophrenic,
except for a few men here and there who
refused to believe it—and most of them were
kicked out of their churches.

Now let’s look at this a little closer. “For
whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”
The word scourge means “to beat on.” God
is the Father of spirits. He doesn’t scourge the flesh, He
scourges the inner man. How does He do this? With His Word.

Every Scripture is God-breathed
(given by His inspiration) and profitable
for instruction, for reproof and conviction
of sin, for correction of error and discipline
in obedience, and for training in
righteousness, So that the man of God
may be complete and proficient, well-fitted
and thoroughly equipped for every
good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17, AMP)

The Lord chastises His own with the
Scriptures. Put yourself in subjection to the
Word. The Sword of the Spirit is two-edged—
one side is for Satan and the other side is for
you. It trims away the flesh and the lusts, and it
sanctifies us.

I’ll show you some examples of this. The
Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 7:8-9:

For though I made you sorry with a
letter, I do not repent, though I did
repent: for I perceive that the same epistle
hath made you sorry, though it were
but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that
ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed
to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a
godly manner.

This is the way in which God convicts, brings
repentance, chastens, and scourges us—with
His Word! He sent His Word to the church at
Corinth, and it hurt so badly that they would
have preferred being beaten with a stick!
They knew how to handle sickness and
disease, but when God reprimanded them with
His Word, it cut deep into their spirits and they
were sorry. Proverbs 17:10, The Amplified Bible,
says, “A reproof enters deeper into a man of understanding
than a hundred lashes into a [selfconfident]
fool.”

Kenneth Copeland Ministries