Because We Are His
Friday, April 29, 2011 at 9:56PM 
From Living by God’s Promises by Joel R. Beeke and James A. La Belle:
The Lord … promises to use our afflictions for our eternal good. This is because we undergo trials not as enemies of God, but as children of God through our saving relationship with Christ. To those without Christ, trials are but foretastes of the coming judgment, but to we who are in Christ, trials are mediated by God’s eternal grace and love. The Lord has promised our correction and spiritual benefit through our afflictions. Keeping this in mind will help us face our troubles with the view of how we can profit from them rather than how long we have to suffer.
Because we, like sheep, tend to stray from the path of following God, one of the primary purposes of affliction is to restore us to the path or hedge in the path so that we do not leave it. Hebrews 12:6 says, “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” That by itself is a comfort because, as the passage goes on to say, “But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.” (v. 8) … So we have comfort in affliction that our Father is reproving us because He loves us and is correcting us because we are His. Even more, His correction is done in great wisdom and with much tenderness.
