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.