Quietness is Sustained by God's Promises

The grace of quietness of spirit is sustained by faith in God’s promises. The man of true faith is very far from considering the afflictions of God’s people the same thing with their being cast off and rejected. On the contrary, relying on God’s promises, he has not a doubt, that their trial will in due season be changed into redemption, and their mourning into victory. Abraham had his long day of trial; but his hopes deferred were ultimately satisfied and made rich in the gift of Isaac, “the son of promise.” The patriarch Joseph endured the severe trial of his faith in exile and imprisonments and in false accusations; but at length, in the language of the author of the Mute Christian, “he changed his iron fetters into chains of gold, his rags into royal robes, his stocks into a chariot, his prison into a palace.” David also was afflicted in his youth; but was victorious in age. He, who dwelt in caverns and made his pillow upon a rock, was at last seated upon the throne of Israel. Once the humble keeper of his father’s sheep, and known only in the solitudes of his native vallies, he became, in God’s time, the shepherd and ruler of a mighty people; great in his renown, great in his achievements, and greater still in being able to bear testimony to the favor and faithfulness of God. The man of faith understands this. He knows it all. It is written in letters uneffaceable on the centre of his heart. And is it strange, therefore, marking as he does the bow of promise in the dark cloud that overhangs him, that he should be resigned and quiet in spirit? “The steps of a good man,” says the Psalmist, “are ordered by the Lord; and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.”

— from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 13.

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.