Knowing God's Will through Faith, Consecration, and Prayer

Faith is the one great law of the life of holy beings. Like the law of attraction, which is universal and reaches every particle of matter, however minute and however remote, it reaches and keeps in its position every moral being that is united to God as its centre. But it is hardly necessary to add, that the very nature of faith implies, that it is antagonistical to open knowledge. God, therefore, in a multitude of cases does not design, (and such is the difference between the finite and the infinite, that he cannot design,) that we should live by such knowledge.

What, then, shall be done? If God does not reveal his will as a matter of positive knowledge, how can we be expected to walk in it? The doctrine of the life of faith precisely meets these inquiries. 

But in ascribing the answer to inquiries of this kind to Faith, inquiries which constantly arise in connection with the duties and the trials of life, we should remember, among other things, that a life of true faith is a life of entire consecration. And in this state of consecration, which always and necessarily implies a freedom from prejudice and all personal influence, we come and present the case of difficulty, whatever it may be, before God. With simplicity or singleness of heart, in other words, with the single motive of doing his will, we supplicate his direction. And while we are thus seeking the divine guidance, we also exercise those powers of reflection and judgment, which our heavenly Father has given us for the express purpose of being faithfully and conscientiously employed on their appropriate occasions. Under these circumstances, let us decide as we will, let us turn to the right or the left, let us advance or retreat, it is our privilege and our duty to believe, that we take the right course: in a single word, that we are right, because the Lord guides us.

In adopting this view, and in making these remarks, it will be naturally understood that we mean the right course in the moral sense of the terms. The prayer for divine direction, offered up in the spirit of consecration, which implies a heart wholly given to God, and offered up also in entire faith, which receives the promises of God without wavering, necessarily involves the result, that the course taken, whether it be conformed to natural wisdom or not, and is attended with the best natural results or not, is morally the right course, and is entirely acceptable to God. A man in that state of mind may commit a physical or prudential error; he may perhaps take a course which will be followed by the loss of his property or an injury to his person, but he cannot commit a moral error. That is to say, he cannot commit an error, which, under the adjustments and pledges of the Gospel, will bring him into a state of moral condemnation, and will have the effect to separate him from God and God’s favor. The mistakes of judgment, if any such exist, are compensated by the rectitude of the heart. The humble and sincere uprightness, which exists there, taken in connection with the arrangements and promises of God, cannot fail to rectify and to make every thing well in the end.

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

Enduring Trials While Subjected in Will to God

Another mark or characteristic of the man, whose will has passed from his own unsafe keeping to the high custody of a divine direction, is this. He has no disposition to complain, when God, in the course of his providences, sees fit to send disappointments and afflictions upon him. This remark will apply not only to afflictions, which originate in the loss of health, of property, and of friends, but to all others of whatever nature, and coming from whatever source. We have sometimes thought, that the entire subjection of the will is seen particularly in the quietness and silence of spirit, with which misrepresentations and persecutions are endured. That the people of the world should be greatly agitated, and should find in themselves the movings of a rebellious and belligerent spirit, when their motives are aspersed and their characters injured, is entirely natural. And, unhappily, when persecution arises, we see too much of this unquiet and rebellious spirit, even in those whom charity requires us to recognize as Christians. Not so with those Christians of a higher grade, whose wills act in perfect harmony with the divine will. That they are afflicted, when they are subject to unjust persecutions, is true; but they are not rebellious; they are not disquieted; and although they are afflicted, it cannot be said with truth that they are destitute of happiness. Connecting with the instrument which troubles them, the hand of God, which permits the agency of that instrument, they regard the persecutions they endure as the lot which God has appointed them; and as such they rejoice in it. But this could not be, if their wills, renouncing all private and selfish modes of action, did not move harmoniously with the divine will.

Being Only God's Instrument

It would be interesting to delay here and to illustrate some of the more specific results and evidences of a will subdued. One result is, that the man, who has lost his will, in the sense which has been explained, namely, by an union of his will with God’s will, HAS NO PLANS OF HIS OWN; his own plans, if in any sense we may call them such, being merged and lost in the general conception of the plan, whatever it may be, of God’s overruling providence. He regards himself as merely an instrument; God’s instrument; and he does not, and cannot feel, that his plans are so much his, as God’s. We do not mean, in saying this, that he has no thought, no foresight; nothing “considerative” and prudential; but that in laying his plans, he asks the divine direction; and that, in the prosecution of them, he still asks the divine direction; and that, in the entire submission of his will, holding as he does the thread of his purpose as a divine gift moment by moment, his plans can be regarded as nothing more nor less than God’s plans, begun, prosecuted, and either continued or abandoned as God chooses.

— from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 9.

Prayer and Union With God

In order to determine whether our wills are in harmony with the divine will, it is not necessary nor best, as a general thing, to look at the will itself and to examine its action as it comes under our notice independently of the influences which surround it.

When certain conditions are fulfilled, certain results may be expected to follow.

And, accordingly, we may anticipate that our wills will be in harmony with the divine will when we are in the habit of asking God for a divine direction of our wills. There can be no union with God without prayer. We do not mean to say that the prayer, which, if it be a true prayer, always implies a state of sincere and entire consecration, must always be formal;  but there must always be an inward disposition, which constantly recognizes the soul's dependence upon God, and which as constantly looks for his aid. To such a soul, if it has faith corresponding to its desires, God will not fail to grant his assistance. When we feel that we have strength from God, by feeling that we have an accepted communion with him. then we may have hope that we shall and do will only what God wills.

— from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 5, Chapter 4.