Your Last Trip to the Woodshed

Don’t let your last trip to the woodshed be your last trip to the woodshed!

“The woodshed” has become a euphemism for a place of punishment, or of correction (which are notably two very different actions.) Many things that happen in our lives are destructive or annoying or painful. We are quick to attribute them to “the devil.”

Many of them do come at the hands of unclean spirits. I don’t think I’m big enough game to be on satan’s radar, but there are plenty of other unclean ones who seem very happy to torment or punish or distract me. Confusion grows from the mistake of not asking them to show their badge. Who sent them, and why?

They may have been sent by my Father to bring instruction or correction. When I listen to Him, I need no other teacher. If He is trying to correct me, and I won’t listen, He will then send someone who loves me to speak to me. Failing that opportunity, I will typically be exposed to someone who doesn’t love me. Finally, if I am just impossible, I get the message through a demon…

And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons:

“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord,
Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
For whom the Lord loves He chastens,
And scourges every son whom He receives.”

If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
(Hebrews 12:5-11 NKJV)

Another proverbial picture of this process is in the idea that if we don’t listen to our parents’ correction, we will be corrected by the police later.