Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?
Too often we shy away from words like chastening, discipline, correction, and submission, because our lives have experienced the world’s efforts at chastening, discipline, correction, and submission, which falls far short of its godly meaning in the Bible. We need to recognize that God’s chastening is not His wrath or some angry punishment or penalty, but rather God graciously deals with us as a loving Father Who seeks to mould us into the image and likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, for our benefit and for His glory. Too often, we try to short-circuit this godly child-training in our lives and escape God’s chastening and discipline, correction and instructions, avoiding the fact that God is dealing with us as His sons and His fatherly training and correction is a reflection of His deep love for us and not some angry response or kill-joy attitude. How important, when we are tested and tried through the many difficult and disappointments in life, that we recognize it for what it is: an evidence of God’s love for us and His perfect child-training program, which is designed to perfect us. God wants to bring every child of His to full maturity as sons, and if our earthly fathers teach and train us through their own, imperfect human correction, how superior is God’s perfect, godly training program. Let us be grateful that God chastens us as sons, and let us develop a teachable spirit, patient endurance, and humble submission so that we may grow in grace and mature in the faith. And let us rejoice in the knowledge that God is dealing with us as sons: “For what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?”
Spiritual Steve 