4 Overlooked Keys to Financial Freedom: It's Not the Devil, It's Discipline

 Bear with me for just a moment. I don't always begin concepts about financial principles by quoting a Biblical passage. This one, however, is so directly rooted in a line of Scripture that you just gotta see it from that perspective right away.

You've probably heard the line quoted before: " . . . let us also lay aside every weight . . . and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us . . ." (Hebrews 12:1).

Ask most Christians what Hebrews 12 is about, and you'll hear some version of the same answer: run the race, endure the hardship, don't give up. A lot of people read it like the encouragement before a big game: warm and a little vague, mostly about gritting your teeth until you reach the finish line.

You might be surprised that the writer’s idea of endurance - which will also become known as "discipline" - is not at all the same idea that we usually have in our minds. And when you discover the context of endurance, and where it actually came from, for the people who first received this letter, you find a detail almost nobody mentions when they teach this text.

That detail has everything to do with money. Yes, money. It's hiding inside a passage nobody thinks is about finances at all, and there's a principle that can really affect how you handle money in the future.

The Reframe

The author of Hebrews connects endurance and "discipline" directly — but we usually disconnect the two ideas because of the way discipline enters the text. Without getting too technical, let me explain.

First, read the familiar text in its entirety.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1–2, ESV).

It puts us in mind of the grandeur of the goal. We are to set our focus on Jesus just like He set His focus on the ultimate goal. And then we are to endure the race until we reach the goal.

Then a line of thought seems to come out of left field. Let me present that train of thought in my own paraphrase as we encounter it in the text.

Verse 3: Think about how Jesus endured so you don't grow weary.

Verse 4: You haven't had to endure the shedding of blood at this point.

Verse 5: Have you forgotten that God addresses you as His sons?

Verses 6-11: God disciplines His children because He loves them, and that is why you have to keep enduring. Our earthly fathers disciplined us, and we respect them. And even though it is unpleasant, discipline produces the good fruit of righteousness.

Now, wait a minute. Did you feel the ground shifting beneath you like I did when I tracked that thought line? At first, I was thinking endurance in a race is just the obstacles in the course. But the writer starts referring to the obstacles of a race as discipline, as in "correction," that comes from God.

If you're still not shocked, let me explore exactly what sort of discipline the original readers of this letter were enduring. And let me show you what it has to do with your finances.

If you've been following this article series, you know the picture I keep coming back to: financial freedom works like a key cut in four separate places, and each one has to be cut exactly right. This is the third cut, and it's easy to get wrong, because we tend to picture discipline as something manufactured through sheer willpower. But what a change of thought when we think of it like a Father actively forming a son through correction — correction he did not ask for, I might add.

So what sort of discipline are we talking about here?

The Chain

For starters, the writer compares what they are enduring with what Christ endured. "Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood" (Hebrews 12:3-4).

He gives us two words that get us moving in the right direction: hostility and struggle.

But the writer also gives us specific descriptions of the hostility and struggle this congregation was living through.

Earlier in this same letter, the author wrote:

"But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one" (Hebrews 10:32-34, ESV).

There was public shaming and reproach. There was affliction. Apparently friends and neighbors sat in prison for the same faith.

And then we read this line: "you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property." For at least some of the people this letter was written to, they endured the loss of what they owned, homes and belongings and whatever wealth they had, taken from them.

That is the detail almost nobody connects to Hebrews 12. For the first readers, the "discipline" shaping a race-runner’s endurance had a specific face: hardship, struggle, social shaming, prison, and financial ruin, in at least some cases.

Have you ever considered financial difficulties as discipline from the Lord? That's the word this passage keeps using — discipline, not just something to survive.

This financial loss was a direct result of persecution. The congregation members could hardly take the blame for the loss. It was in no way connected to how they handled their money.

But just the idea that financial hardship is in the list of fatherly disciplines gave me pause. Sometimes financial problems are due to lack of budgeting, poor decisions, and impulsive spending habits. Sometimes they are due to forces and circumstances beyond your personal control. Yet God uses extreme financial difficulties as a form of discipline that trains you.

I have to admit, the Western businessman inside of me wants to point out the facts — if bad decisions create money problems, God had nothing to do with them. I’ve heard people call it a "struggle" and talk about how much the devil is fighting their finances when in reality poor decisions are the cause, not the devil.

Yet when a person experiences the hardships that result from poor decisions, God uses those hardships as lessons of correction. How do I know this? Because of the text. 

"For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives" (Hebrews 12:6). 

A father's discipline goes further than training for a race — however, correction comes because a son does something wrong. Sons are not corrected for forces beyond their control. They must endure those as well. But correction comes because of error. Dumb decisions. Buying something you don't need. Spending money you can't afford.

If you are dealing with financial difficulties, whether caused by your own poor decisions or by forces beyond your control, I have great news for you. God can and will use those situations to produce something good in you.

So what does all of this hardship produce? I'm glad you asked.

The Fruit, Not the Wealth

Verse eleven tells you exactly what all of this produces: "the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:11).

The fruit named here is righteousness — a formed character, not a bank balance. A lot of articles about financial principles present the payoff as having more money. This one is about more character.

Discipline, both the persecution-shaped kind and the self-caused kind so many of us live with, is aimed at producing something specific in you: patience, trust, and even the kind of restraint that shapes spending habits. To put it more broadly, it is the character of Christ that gets trained into a person over time. Whether it ever turns into more money in the bank was never the point.

That matters both ways. A full bank account doesn't prove your heart is right with God, and financial hardship doesn't prove it's wrong. Job's friends made exactly that mistake, insisting his suffering must trace back to some hidden sin — and God rebuked them for it. Righteousness, in this passage, has a much narrower job than sorting out who's blessed and who isn't.

If you've followed this series, you already know the pattern by now. Key one showed you that worry runs on bad math, and trusting God's provision frees you from doing it. Key two showed you that one good decision doesn't prove a heart is settled — a lifetime of small, repeated choices does. And this key, the third cut, adds one more piece: whatever financial hardship you're enduring right now, whether you brought it on yourself or it arrived at your door uninvited, God can use it to form the kind of trust that makes good decisions possible later.

This key cut is not about money. It's about building the sort of character that receives correction from God and responds with right decisions. And like every cut before it, you'll be asked to make this one again, in a dozen small trials, long before it's finished.