Ignatius emphasized a "knowledge of the heart" by which a person might learn to "feel" the will of God for him or herself. The mystical insight informing Ignatius's own relationship with God and which he distilled in The Exercises is that the divine love of God is providentially present in all the details of our existence. God's loving design for each individual is revealed to those who seek to know it. They will then come to see that God acts, moment by moment, to realize his secret project of mercy for each of us until the very hour of death. Use of The Exercises fosters this realization.

Thus the affective, experiential sense of God lends an ever clearer insight into what is for and what is against God in the human world of action. The Exercises educate a person to "prayer through action", a way of living with a very modern appeal. It creates the desire to be joined to God in all things, and to do everything according to the Jesuit motto, Ad majorem Dei gloriam, "for the greater glory of God".