Leave Everything in the Hands of God

It is a great and blessed privilege to leave every thing in the hands of God; to go forth like the patriarch Abraham, not knowing whither we go, but only knowing that God leads us. 

“BE CAREFUL FOR NOTHING; but in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.” Philippians 4:6. 

This is what is sometimes denominated walking in a “general and indistinct faith;” or walking in the “obscurity of faith,” or in the “night of faith.” Faith, in its relation to the subject of it, is truly a light in the soul, but it is a light which shines only upon duties, and not upon results or events. It tells us what is now to be done, but it does not tell us what is to follow. And accordingly it guides us but a single step at a time. And when we take that step, under the guidance of faith, we advance directly into a land of surrounding shadows and darkness. Like the patriarch Abraham, we go, not knowing whither we go, but only that God is with us. In man’s darkness, we nevertheless walk and live in God’s light. A way of living, which may well be styled blessed and glorious, however mysterious it may be to human vision. Indeed, it is the only life worth possessing, the only true life. “Let the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing;” let nations rise and fall; let the disturbed and tottering earth stand or perish; let God reveal to us the secret designs of his providence or not, it is all well. “Cast all your cares upon God, for he careth for you.” “BELIEVE in the Lord, your God, so shall ye be established. BELIEVE his prophets, so shall ye prosper.” 

— edited from The Life of Faith (1852) Part 1, Chapter 17.

Leave Everything in the Hands of God

It is a great and blessed privilege to leave every thing in the hands of God; to go forth like the patriarch Abraham, not knowing whither we go, but only knowing that God leads us. "BE CAREFUL FOR NOTHING; but in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." Philippians 4:6.

This is what is sometimes denominated walking in a "general and indistinct faith;" or walking in the "obscurity of faith," or in the "night of faith." Faith, in its relation to the subject of it, is truly a light in the soul; but it is a light which shines only upon duties, and not upon results or events. It tells us what is now to be done, but it does not tell us what is to follow. And accordingly it guides us but a single step at a time. And when we take that step, under the guidance of faith, we advance directly into a land of surrounding shadows and darkness. Like the patriarch Abraham, we go, not knowing whither we go, but only that God is with us.

Blessed and glorious way of living! Indeed, it is the only life worth possessing; the only true life. "Let the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing;" let nations rise and fall; let the disturbed and tottering earth stand or perish; let God reveal to us the secret designs of his providence or not, it is all well. "Cast all your cares upon God, for he careth for you." Our heavenly Father is at the helm. The winds blow, the waves swell, the clouds gather around, but we sail in a strong vessel. There is no port at hand, and there is no sun or star to guide us. Faith, therefore, in the defect of all things else, must constitute our port and our anchor, our sun and our favoring breeze; but we have all that we can ask, in having perfect confidence in our great Commander. It is the blessed privilege of faith, even in our darkest and most disastrous moments, to assure us that we are safe, forever safe, in the mighty keeping of God's holy will.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (2nd edition, 1844) Part 3, Chapter 9.

Walking Through the Darkness

The tendency of suffering is not only to lead us to God, as the only being who can help us, but to keep us there. The general result, in the case of Christians, is, the more they suffer, the more they trust; and the more they trust, the more will the principle of trust or faith be strengthened. So that affliction, by impressing the necessity of higher aid than human, tends not only to originate faith in God, but indirectly to increase it; tends not only to unite us with God, but to strengthen that union.

Indeed, it is difficult to see how faith can be much strengthened in any other way. When we walk by faith, we walk, in a certain sense, in darkness. If it were perfectly light around us, we should not walk by faith, but by open vision. Faith is a light to the soul; but it is the very condition of its existence, that it shall have a dark place to shine in. It is faith which conducts us, but our journey is through shadows. And this illustrates the meaning of certain expressions fre­quently found in the experimental writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, and found also in other writers who hold similar views, such as the "night of faith," "the divine darkness," "the obscure night of faith,"  and the like.

It  is hardly necessary to say, that darkness or night, in its application to the mind, is a figurative expression, and means trial or suffering, attended with ignorance of the issues and objects of that suffering. And, accordingly, these writers teach, in harmony with other experimental writers, that seasons of trial, leading to the exercise of faith, are exceedingly profitable. The biblical writers, whom they profess to follow, obviously teach the same. "Persecuted," says the apostle, "but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. Always bearing about in the body  the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." And again, "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 2  Cor.  4:9, 10, 17.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 5, Chapter 7.

God Will Help Us to Know Only What We Need to Know

The union of God and man in knowledge implies the fact of an unity or oneness in the object of knowledge. That is to say, the object must be not one of our own choice, but of God's choice. And it may be added, here, that the object which God chooses and presents to the human mind for its consideration, is that object, whatever it may be, which entirely harmonizes with the existing state of things. The facts and relations of things are so ordered under the divine administration, that at each successive moment some things are more important to be known, and more appropriate to be known than anything else. God, as the true revealer of what now is and of what is to be hereafter, will help us to know only what he thinks ought to be known. He will not help us in the knowledge of those things which, considered as the objects of knowledge, may be regarded as inconsistent with the proprieties and wants of the present time and place, and of the existing situation of things. He will not help us in the knowledge of those things which, without a regard to the appropriateness of what now is, are sought merely to gratify a selfish curiosity. In all such inquiries, where we selfishly choose our own object instead of adopting and receiving the object which God presents, the human and divine mind are out of harmony.

On the contrary, when we seek to know only what God would have us know, which is always done when our minds perfectly harmonize with the intimations of Providence, then the object of knowledge becomes one and the same to him who imparts knowledge and to him who receives it; and God and man are in union.

And this view, it may be properly added, is the more interesting and the more practically important, because it so fully recognizes God as the judge of what is proper or not proper to be known. Sovereign here as in other things, he not only retains the right and the power of communicating knowledge, but of communicating what, in his own judgment, he sees to be best. It is obviously not possible for him to communicate all knowledge to a limited mind, that can receive it only in parts. Adjusting, therefore. what he imparts not only to the capacity of the recipient but to the attendant circumstances, he gives here a little and there a little: casting brightness around the skirts of the clouds which overhang us, mingling light with darkness and darkness with light, so that those who walk in some things in the day of open vision, may still be said in other things to walk in "the night of faith."

— adapted from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 3, Chapter 5.