We are all enrolled on God’s training course. ‘You have forgotten’, says the writer, and the Greek is just a little stronger: ‘You have entirely forgotten the exhortation.
We have a tendency to completely lose sight of the notion of a training course, that we are in training. We have not graduated yet. We are not fully trained, and we are still being instructed by various means by the Lord to advance in the spiritual life. We remember the doctrines; we remember some of our duties as Christian people and commitments, but how soon we forget: I am under training life-long. So it is an inspired, but gentle, charge laid against us that we can entirely forget this process. So often hour by hour, day by day, calamities come and they may be disciplines or formative influences from God which affect us, and we forget that this is all part of our training. Do we really believe that God sovereignly determines every detail of our lives? Apparently not. Instead we say, he or she has done this to me, my firm has treated me like this, Transport for London have caused problems for me; and we forget that we are people under training. This is the most careful training, the most expensive training you might say, the most positive training for our good. Training courses in this world usually equip us to follow some specific profession, but this training course makes us more profound and far more holy people than we were.
How do we know if we are being chastened? We will always know; it isn’t a mystery. Things are not going right for me; I am suffering some depravation. All my aims in life are being frustrated. My prayers go unanswered, and my spiritual joy is running low. Am I being chastised or not? Is this the sort of trial I have got to go through boldly with faith, or is it a punishment? It is easy to tell. If it is a punishment, you will know. A bad parent punishes the child, possibly out of pique or temper, and the child says, ‘What’s that for? What have I done?’ God is not like that. If it is a punishment, he will not do it without there being some conviction first. You know you have been holding out. You have been persisting in something. You know you have been speaking or acting in a way towards others which is wrong. If you don’t know, then pray to find out. Check for aimless living. Check for specific sin. Think of pride, or untruthfulness, or perhaps, tragically, uncleanness in some respect, or unkindness, or duties neglected. Get that matter dealt with, and God will continue to bless you.