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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: October 28th

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THE AIM OF ALL GOD’S CORRECTION

Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. - Hebrews 12:6

The earthly parent trains his son, or her daughter, for earthly occupations. These last a little while. God trains us for an eternal end. Holiness, likeness to God, is the only end which it is worthy of a man, being what he is, to propose to himself as the issue of his earthly experience. If I fail in that, whatever else I have accomplished, I fail in everything. I may have made myself rich, cultured, learned, famous, refined, prosperous; but if I have not at least begun to be like God in purity, in will, in heart, then my whole career has missed the purpose for which I was made, and for which all the discipline of life has been lavished upon me. Fail there, and wherever you succeed you are a failure. Succeed there, and wherever you fail you are a success.

That great and only worthy end may be reached by the ministration of circumstances and the discipline through which God passes us. These are not the only ways by which He makes us partakers of His holiness, as we well know. There is the work of that Divine Spirit who is granted to every believer to breathe into him the holy breath of an immortal and incorruptible life. To work along with these there is the influence that is brought to bear upon us by the circumstances in which we are placed and the duties which we have to perform. These may all help us to be nearer and liker to God.

That is the intention of our sorrows. They will wean us; they wall refine us; they will blow us to His breast, as a strong wind might sweep a man into some refuge from itself. I am sure there are some who can thankfully attest that they were brought nearer to God by some short, sharp sorrow than by many long days of prosperity.

But the sorrow that is meant to bring us nearer to Him may be in vain. The same circumstances may produce opposite effects. I daresay there are people who will read these words who have been made hard and sullen and bitter and paralyzed for good work because they have some heavy burden to carry, or some wound or ache that life can never heal. Ah! brother, we are often like shipwrecked crews, of whom some are driven by the danger to their knees, and some are driven to the spirit casks. Take care that you do not waste your sorrows; that you do not let the precious gifts of disappointment, pain, loss, loneliness, ill-health, or similar afflictions that come in your daily life, mar you instead of mending you. See that they send you nearer to God, and not that they drive you further from Him. See that they make you more anxious to have the durable riches and righteousness which no man can take from you, than to grasp at what may yet remain of fleeting earthly joys. So let us try to school ourselves into the habitual and operative conviction that life is discipline. Let us beware of getting no good from what is charged to the brim with good. May it never have to be said of any of us that we wasted the mercies which were judgments, too, and found no good in the things that our tortured hearts felt to be also evils, lest God should have to wail over any of us, " In vain have I smitten your children; they have received no correction."

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