Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating
you as sons (Hebrews 12:7 NIV).
The Lord may get you off activities and shut you
up to inactivity, and you go through an awful time and say the Lord has
forsaken you, all has gone wrong. What really is it? Why, it is growing pains!
Has it not proved to be growing pains? In the long run it was not all wrong, it
was all right. You came to know the Lord whereas before your whole life was
taken up with things. You have been shut up and you came to
know the Lord inwardly and you have come to a state of spiritual efficiency
which is so much greater that you can now meet the external situation. He has
been misunderstood, but He was working unto your efficiency, exercising us unto
efficiency. These, the growing pains, are terrible. You cannot help anyone who
is suffering from growing pains, and you must stand aside and see them going
through.
So through numerous and various directions this
growth takes place by the painful exercise produced by the way the Lord is
dealing with you. Chastening – a poor English word. It is child-training or
discipline. Take the word disciple; one who comes into association with someone
in order to learn, and the Disciples were chosen that they might be with Him in
order to learn. That is discipline, learning. We do learn through suffering.
Even the Lord Jesus was made "full grown" in this sense, complete,
through suffering. We take the same way unto full growth. It is child training,
discipline, learning by way of experience. That is chastening. Making us sons
out of children, full grown men out of infants. I feel that we want to have
more faith in the dealings of God with us along this line.
By T. Austin-Sparks from: Maturity - The Lord’s Desire
For His People
This photograph is by Mardy Purdy.
No comments:
Post a Comment