October 11 Daily Devotional

In God’s gymnasium

I cannot understand how any one who has read the Scriptures can accept... any idea of passivity with respect to the way of holiness. Here is a man who tells us to yearn after holiness with all our might until we have it, to follow after it, pursue it, to hunt after it.... Those are the exercises through which God puts us in the gymnasium; that is God’s way of making us to be really His children.... This process is very painful at the time, but listen to the promise; ‘afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness’ [Hebrews 12:11]. Do not worry about the pain, keep on moving those stiff muscles and you will find that they will soon become supple.... The more we are put through this training in the gymnasium the better, because God. is preparing us, not for time only, but for eternity.... It is not this world that matters, it is the next; it is not the here and now that are important, it is the eternal. God in this life is preparing us for everlasting bliss and glory.

Remember also in that connexion the One to whom we are going—’without holiness no man shall see the Lord’. If we want to see God we had better do the exercises in the gymnasium very thoroughly.... God is putting us through these exercises in order to make us holy. If you and I, therefore, do not pay attention to this treatment that God is giving us, it just means that we do not realize who we are, or it means that we are not children of God at all. If we really want to go on to God and heaven we must submit and do exactly what He tells us, because He is putting us through all this treatment in order to promote our holiness. It is all for our profit and that we may become sharers and partakers of His holiness.

Spiritual Depression, pp. 257–8