Discipline

God disciplines His children because they are His children. He is training them--exercising their faith--because He knows that the race is long and difficult, and that they will have need of endurance. And you don't build endurance by having it easy. Can you imagine a marathon runner preparing for his race, building his endurance, by sitting in a chair reading a book? Even reading a book on running and how to build up one's endurance would do him no good whatsoever when race time rolled along. The same is true for our spiritual race. We can read all about running the race well and the need for endurance in the Manual, but unless we are made to put those things into practice in real life tests of our faith, we will be poor runners indeed. We must realize that God puts us through times of discipline not because He wants us to quit but because He wants us to build up the needed endurance so that we can't be stopped. He cause us to "limp" in the middle of the race so that we have all the endurance we need to finish strong. The testing of our faith transfers what we believe in our heads to be true into our hearts experientially so that we know it is true--have a true knowledge of Him.