What are the three stages of God’s discipline?

God administers corrective discipline in three increasingly intense stages. First is warning discipline, often first sensed as a loss of inner joy and happiness, then by things seeming to go wrong all around us; self-examination and confession will produce the result the discipline was intended for. Second is intensive discipline, the scourging stage—a painful lashing that may include loss of health, property, or loved ones, and may go on for years if we will not confess and correct ourselves. Third is dying discipline: if we absolutely refuse to recover, God at some point calls us home in the sin unto death, the most miserable and shameful way a believer can end his race.