Question: What is meant by the sentence in a tract, “God will not be a mere director?”
Answer: As a general truth we may surely look for guidance, and to be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. What I said as to this was, not that God should not direct us, but that, as the general principle, it was not independent of spiritual understanding; that if I were directed right even in every act, as a Roman Catholic, by their confessor called their director, I should lose by it; it Would save me being in a spiritual state myself: though surely a more spiritual person because he was so might help me; that God did not mean our perception of His will to be independent of our spiritual state, though He can of course lead any at any given time. Psalm 32 speaks of this also. “If our eye be single, our whole body shall be full of light.” But this is always true; He makes everything work together for good to them that love Him. He overrules as well as rules.
I will suppose for a moment you were not led of Him in going to England, which I do not the least say, as I know nothing of it or your motives, but suppose the case. He makes you know what the world’s giving you up is; He overrules it. Supposing you had had a tide of blessing, you would not have felt this in the same way, you would have tided it over the shoals at flood. I remember saying to dear Captain W., that our giving up the world, and the world giving us up, were two very different things. It is the latter tries all the elements of self-importance, which lie much deeper rooted than we are aware. There may be some little sacrifice in giving it up; but we have a sufficient motive; but what motive for being despised? It is really our glory, for Christ was; but then He must be all, and this is saying a good deal. We are poor feeble creatures without a stable center: what would be so has to be broken, and Christ takes its place. I do not speak of failure, but of what we go through. He was the despised and rejected of men. Nor does He seek insensibility to it, but superiority over it, by His being all, and this is blessed, this only lasts. It is the production in us of what is eternal joy and capacity for it.