THE GAIN OF EXERCISE IN DISCIPLINE
THE GAIN OF EXERCISE IN DISCIPLINE
It is right to be exercised by discipline, but you should not be depressed. We are inclined to be buoyant when everything is naturally pleasing to us, though that is the very time that we require a check, and in the trial we often say, “Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest” (Psalm 55: 6). If your physician were [p. 79] to tell you that a certain course of discipline was necessary for your health, you, as you were wise, would patiently endure it. This, to my mind, is the good of exercise. You are neither to despise the discipline nor faint under it. You are so largely favoured in your family circle, that I am not surprised that you should be constantly reminded by the illness of your family that this earth is the wilderness. The wilderness is the place, as with Israel, where there was nothing to be had, all must come from God.
The effect of exercise is that you become assured that the discipline is for your blessing. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:. 32). There are two kinds of discipline, one to correct you — the other to help you. Jacob learns the first at Shalem, Genesis 34, and at Bethel he learns the second — his mother’s nurse dies, he was not ready for this excision until he was near God; “we who live are alway delivered unto death”. It is a bad sign when you are overlooked. “Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone” (Hosea 4: 17). The simple fact that God, who is your Father, is greatly interested in your welfare, and that you are a special object of His attention, will greatly comfort you when you are near Him; and besides this, the word of the Lord will be fitly spoken to you, so that you will be gaining in a two-fold way — by discipline, and by the ministry of the word. Hence, the more you are exercised, the more will you see that the discipline which the Father sees necessary for you, prepares you, so to speak, for the ministry of the word — the Lord’s nourishing and cherishing.
May you be much cheered because of His constant interest in you. May you thus be greatly blessed.