Knowing the Will of God by Faith

It is difficult to appreciate too highly the value, which we should attach to the will of God; a will which is always consonant with the highest rectitude, and always tends to the highest happiness. And it is equally difficult to state too strongly the obligation, which rests upon every individual, to bring every thought and feeling and action of his life into harmony with the divine will. Many persons appear to admit the existence of this obligation in its full extent, while they assert their inability to fulfill it, on the ground, that in particular cases and instances of duty they frequently do not know what the will of God is. They are willing to do what God wills; but their willingness is rendered unavailable by their ignorance. It is true, that a judgment enlightened by God’s Holy Spirit, will do much; and yet much remains to be done. They may know something: and yet much more remains to be known. This exceedingly perplexes them.

The doctrine of faith, considered in certain applications and results, precisely and adequately meets this difficulty.

In the first place, that God may be regarded as having clearly made known, in his Word, his Providences, and in man’s mental constitution, the great outlines of his will. It is his will, that we should fulfill the great ends of our being by doing justly, by showing mercy, and by rendering to our Maker under all circumstances the sincere and unlimited homage and love of our hearts. So that the difficulty does not seem to be in knowing the will of God, in the more general sense of the terms; that is to say, in knowing it in its general features and outlines; but in ascertaining what it is, in connection with the duties, trials, and emergencies of particular occasions. Is it the will of God, that, in my setting out in life, I should adopt this calling or profession, or another that presents itself to my consideration? In the multiplied and apparently conflicting duties which each day presents to our notice, shall I yield to these claims, or those? Shall I go to this place or that? When the urgent calls of necessary business seem to conflict with the claims of the poor and the suffering, shall I go to my farm and my merchandize, or shall I visit the chamber of the sick, and break bread to the hungry? Such are the questions, multiplied to a wonderful extent, which present themselves almost every day in the course of man’s busy pilgrimage.

In many cases of this kind, where the motives which are presented are various, and the paths of action are divergent, it is not easy for us to know, with absolute certainty, what course of action will most fully accord with the divine will. Constituted as we are at present, we may well pronounce it impossible to have such knowledge, except by means of a specific revelation given in each case. And we may even go further, and say, it is not the design of our heavenly Father, that, in matters of this kind we should always have a knowledge which is positive, and should always walk in a vision which is open. This is not God’s plan of action. Far from it. 

Under the administration of an omniscient Being, whose knowledge, because it is omniscient, can never be explored, by created minds, it is a necessary law of all subordinate holy beings, whether they be men or angels or archangels, that they must live and act, in a considerable degree at least, by faith. It is true, that even in this life there is something of what may conveniently be called “open vision;” it is true, that the faith of the present life will in many things be exchanged for a still higher degree of open vision in the life to come; but beyond the open vision, both of the present and the future, beyond the open vision even of the highest angel, there still exists a land unknown, a universe which has not been explored, an ocean of things, and of the relations of things, of being and of action; an ocean wide as the omniscience of God, where created minds have never travelled. And in all this vast expanse, Faith, operating in a different sphere, but not differing in its nature, is the true light of heaven, as it is now, and always must be, the true light of earth. Angels and beings that dwell in the very bosom of God, walk by it.

— from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 11.