Hebrews 12:5-11

International Children’s Bible

⁵ You have forgotten his encouraging words for his sons:

⁷ So accept your sufferings as if they were a father’s punishment. God does these things to you as a father punishing his sons. All sons are punished by their fathers. ⁸ If you are never punished (and every son must be punished), you are not true children and not really sons. ⁹ We have all had fathers here on earth who punished us. And we respected our fathers. So it is even more important that we accept punishment from the Father of our spirits. If we do this, we will have life. ¹⁰ Our fathers on earth punished us for a short time. They punished us the way they thought was best. But God punishes us to help us, so that we can become holy as he is. ¹¹ We do not enjoy punishment. Being punished is painful at the time. But later, after we have learned from being punished, we have peace, because we start living in the right way.