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Andrew Murray
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 A Ministry dedicated to preserving the truth and accuracy of the infallible Word of God. |
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| Devotionals: Counsel And Help, Daily Readings Selected from the Writings of J R Miller | |
Back to Devotionals >> "Counsel And Help" Daily Readings Selected from the Writings of J R Miller January February March April May June July August September October November December Counsel And Help was first published in 1907 by The Pilgrim Press, London. SEPTEMBER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Pain And Praise Paul and Silas were in prison. Their sufferings were so great that they could not sleep, and they sought to forget their pain in praying and praising. Most people are in the song mood only when their circumstances are pleasant. But here were men singing in the midst of great pain and trouble. What was the secret? It was their faith in God. The peace of God was in their hearts. They knew that all things were working together for their good. Christ was with them in their dungeon, and instead of being cast down they rejoiced. We should learn to rejoice in our troubles. If we are true Christians, there can come to us no experience, however sore, that ought to stop our rejoicing. There is, even in the sorest trouble, some cause for joy. We may not be able to see it, but here is where faith should come in. We know that our Father’s hand is in every pain or trial, and we know that whatever He sends or allows must be a blessing.
Through Our Lord Jesus Christ Always and everywhere Christ is the door. The way to peace with God is through our Lord Jesus; and access into the grace of salvation is also through Him. To reject Christ is to reject everything of blessings and good. To receive Christ is to be admitted to all the privileges and benefits of redemption. This "access" is into all "grace." Grace is favour undeserved. What we earn by our own deeds is not grace; it is wages. What comes to us as mercy, through the love of God, is grace. "Access" – to what? To all the blessings that belong to God’s children. "All things are yours," says St. Paul, "and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s." There is the privilege of prayer – we have access to that. There is the Bible – that is ours. There is the Church – that is for us. There is grace for life, comfort for sorrow, all divine fullness – we have access into that. There is heaven at the last – the door is open for us to enter in and to go out no more forever.
The Danger Of Wealth Few people think of the danger of getting rich. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit priest, said that among all the thousands of men who had come to him with confession of sin, not one had ever confessed the sin of covetousness. Men think they become great just in proportion as they gather wealth. Yet there never was a more fatal error. A man is really measured by what he is, not by what he has. We may find a shriveled soul in the midst of a great fortune and a noble soul in the barest poverty. A man’s real "life" is what would be left of him if everything he has were stripped off. It is his character as it appears in God’s sight. So we will make a great mistake if we set out in life merely to gather this world’s things about us.
Ere The Night Cometh A day is a short time. Whatever we do we must do before the sun sets, before night comes. That is, we must do our work while we live. Opportunities do not bide our leisure, and when past can never be recalled. We must do the kindness while our friend is in need, for tomorrow will be too late.
Love That Hinders One of the dangers of friendship is that we try to keep our loved ones back from hard duties or great sacrifices to which God is calling them. We act Satan’s part when we permit ourselves to do this. Think what the world would have missed if Jesus had been kept back by tender human love from His Cross. We should never meddle with God’s plans.
Faithful In Little Too many people are not faithful in little things. They are not to be absolutely depended upon. They do not always keep their promises. They break engagements. They fail to pay their debts promptly. They come behind time to appointments. They are neglectful and careless in little things. In general they are good people, but their life is honeycombed with small failures. One who can be positively depended upon, who is faithful in the least tings as well as in the greatest, whose life and character are true through and through, gives out a light in this world which honours Christ and blesses others. Says George MacDonald: "To know one person who is absolutely to be trusted will do more for a man’s moral nature, yes, and even his spiritual nature, than all the sermons he ever heard or can hear."
The Beauty Of Holiness Good in the heart works its sway up into the face and prints its own beauty there. Love in the life softens the features and gives them warmth like the gentle beauty of spring flowers. Peace in the heart soon gives a quiet calm to the countenance. Many a perturbed, restless face grows placid and reposeful under the influence of inner peace. Purity in the soul shows itself in the upward look and the thoughtful reverence which tells of communion with God. Benevolence writes its autograph on brow and cheek. Thus, in a sense, even the physical features share in the transfiguration of the life of faith and holiness.
Joy As Medicine True and rational amusements are a great force in educating and building character. All pure joy is helpful. All pure art leaves its touch of beauty. Pure music sings itself into our hearts, and becomes thenceforward and for ever a new element of power in our life. Laughter makes life sunnier. It sweeps the clouds from the sky, shakes off many a care, smoothes out many a wrinkle, and dries many a tear. Pure pleasure sweetens many a bitter heart fountain, drives away many a gloomy thought and many a hobgoblin shape of imagined terror, and saves many a darkened spirit from despair.
Sounding Trumpets We are commanded not to seek the praise of men – not to do good deeds to be seen of men or to receive reward of them. We are not to sound trumpets or announce our righteous acts from the housetop. Translated into the phrase of daily life, these injunctions would seem to mean that we are not to seek to have all our benevolent acts published in the newspapers. They would seem to mean that we should not desire publicity and human praise for every generous thing we do, every sacrifice we make, and every kindness we show. They seem, indeed, to imply that we should even take pains not to have our good deeds made known at all – that we should seek to perform them so silently and secretly that the world may never hear any report of them. When the motive is to receive praise of men or to exhibit our goodness, the act loses its beauty in God’s sight.
Earth's Failures It may be that those who have failed here, as men phrase it, are the very ones who shall win the highest success in the after-life, if they have kept their garments clean amid the struggles and toils. It has been said that heaven is probably a place for those who have failed on earth. Certainly, for the Christian, the realization of the truth of immortality takes away the bitterness of earthly defeat. There will be time enough for victory and for the most glorious success in the unending eternity.
Influence Life's Aroma Naturally we care for ourselves and for our own benefit and comfort. We do not incline to put ourselves out, to sacrifice our own convenience, to serve others. We might do it for one we love deeply, but the gospel requires us to love and serve, with all our capacity for serving, those who are not among our congenial friends. An enemy who needs us we must serve. Even the most debased human life that we find in our path we must touch with our healing love and help with the hands that have been given to Christ. We are required to hold our life and all that we have at the call of love and of human need. We are to bear one another’s burdens. We are to have sympathy with all sorrow and need, to be touched even with a sense of the worlds’ condition. This law of Christian love puts us down among men just as Christ Himself was among men. He kept nothing back. He never thought a thought nor breathed a breath for Himself. He poured out the blessings of His sweet life without stint on everyone who came near Him, at last giving His very blood for the saving of man.
Influence Life's Aroma There is something very mysterious about perfume. No one can describe it. You cannot take a photograph of it. You cannot weigh it. Yet it is a very essential quality of the flower. The same is true of that strange thing we call influence. Influence is the aroma of a life. The most important thing about our life is this subtle, imponderable, indefinable, mysterious quality of your personality which is known as influence. This is really all of you that counts in its final impression upon other lives. No matter how a man may pose, how much he may profess, how he may assert himself – what kind of man he may claim to be – that which he really is, is what breathes out from his life wherever he is know, that which his name suggest to people whenever it is spoken.
The Forming Time In the bright sunny days the young should gather into their life stores of moral and spiritual strength from which to draw when they go forth to encounter the world’s fierce temptations. Memory should be filled with the words of God. The great essential principles of Christianity should be so fixed in their minds that no assaults of skepticism can make them doubt. The fundamental laws of morality should be settled in their very soul as the laws of their own life. Their spiritual habits should be so firmly fixed that they will carry their religion with them out into the world as they carry their face or their throbbing heart. Into the ship of their life, their character, they should pile massive strength which nothing can possibly overcome.
The Real Heaven Perhaps our thought of the heavenly blessedness is often a selfish one, that it will be all enjoyment, all receiving. But even heaven will not be an eternity of self gratification, of the bliss of receiving. Even there, especially there, where all imperfections will be left behind, love must find its supreme blessedness in giving, in serving others, in pouring out into other lives. It will for ever there be more blessed to give than to receive, to minister rather than to be ministered unto.
Readiness For Christ What Christ wants us to do is so to live at all times that His coming at any moment of the day or night will not find us unready. We should keep our work faithfully done, day by day, leaving nothing unfinished any evening; for before morning He may come. We should live at peace with all men, never allowing the sun to go down on our wrath or on any enmity or bitterness; for before another day dawns He may come and we would not want Him to come and find us in strife and bitterness. We should be careful what we do any hour; for He may come suddenly and find us in sin. We should watch where we go, lest His coming may surprise us in some place where we would not want Him to find us.
Keeping Character Sweet We need to watch our lives in the smallest matters if we would keep our names sweet wherever we are known. Influence is most important. It is our mightiest force for good or for evil. Let us keep it pure and good for Christ, and in order to do this let us keep Christ always in it.
God's Ways With Us The way of God which He would make us know is always the way of His will. The one business of life is to learn to do that will. We say it lightly in our prayers, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." If our prayer is answered our whole life will be drawn into the divine way. What effect, for example, will God’s way have on our grudges, our unbrotherly feelings, our jealousies, our resentments, or our selfishness? They must all come into tune with the law of love, so in all life. The way on which God guides us is a way of holiness. It is an ever-ascending way, for its terminal is heaven. It is a prayer, therefore, that we must make continually. We must always keep climbing upward. No matter how good you are today, you should be somewhat better tomorrow.
Help In Time Of Need Every Christian who has lived many years, and passed through trials and struggles, knows how texts with which he has been familiar from childhood, but in which he has never before found any special help, all at once, in some new experience of need or trail, flash out, like newly lighted lamps, and pour bright beams upon his path. The light was not new; it had shone there all the while; but he could not see it until now, because other lights were shining about him, obscuring this one.
True Giving Sympathy is better than money: so is courage, so is cheer, so is hope. It is better always to give ourselves than to give our money; certainly, we should give ourselves with whatever else we may give. "The gift without the giver is bare." Christ Himself gave no money; but every life that came near to Him in faith went away enriched and helped. He gave love, and love is the brightest and richest coin minted in this world. And all of us can give love; none are too poor for that.
Nevertheless, Not My Will The true prayer in time of great trial, care, or sorrow is, not that we shall be delivered from the experiences, but that we may pass through them unharmed. It is right for us to pray to be kept from evil, but there is only one evil. It is not sickness, it is not poverty, it is not human wrong and cruelty, it is not earthly loss – the only evil is sin. Nothing else can harm us. One rebellious thought will hurt us more than all the martyr’s fires we could suffer, or the longest and most dreadful agonies of pain we could endure.
Spiritual Culture Saint Paul has given us an infallible direction for the best spiritual culture. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Then he adds, "These things do: and the God of peace shall be with you."
Silent Forces It is in the calm, quiet life that the truest strength is found. The power that is blessing the world these days comes from the purity, sweetness, and self denial of gentle mother-love, from the voiceless influence of example in faithful fathers, from the patience and unselfishness of devoted sisters, from the tender beauty of innocent child-life in homes; above all, from the silent cross and the Divine Spirit’s breathings of gentle stillness. The agencies that are doing the most to bless the world are the noiseless ones. Moral power seems to hide itself in silent ministries, and to shun those that advertise themselves.
Clean Vessels The life must be holy that Christ will employ. The vessel must be clean that the king will use. The heart must be broken through which God’s love may flow. Someone gives a consecration prayer: "Lord, take me, break me, make me," and tells the story of a golden cup which had been made out of old gold coins. These had lost the image and superscription originally upon them, and were then thrown into a melting pot and wrought into a beautiful cup. So ofttimes a human life has lost its beauty; and then the Master takes it, breaks it, and makes it over again in form of beauty. Then the King will use it.
Service And Result If we are doing true work we need not concern ourselves about visible results. Though in self-denying life we build no palaces on earth, we are piling far nobler walls beyond the skies. The money we give in service and sacrifice of helpfulness may add nothing to our bank account, but it is laid up as treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.
Uplifting Other Lives When God sends to us a friend or a new acquaintance – someone who is brought thus into the range of our influence, he has a purpose in so doing. He wants us to be a blessing to the person. He wants us to speak wholesome words, to give wise counsel, and to exert an uplifting influence, leaving impressions upon the life which shall add to its beauty and blessing. But suppose that we fail in this, and that instead we give wrong touches to the life, drop the wrong seeds, exert an unwholesome influence, leave sinister impressions, what must our accounting be when we stand before God?
Misleading Voices There is, in the midst of earthly ease, continual danger that we give way to the spirit of self indulgence. Too many of our friends are ready to make Peter’s mistake when we stand before duties which demand self denial or sacrifice, saying to us, "This shall never be unto you!" They insist that we are not really called to such costly service, and they would dissuade us from it. But such voices are not the Good Shepherd’s – they are for the time the voices of strangers. We should know them by their earthly tone. That is not the way Christ speaks to us. He would never have us withhold ourselves from any service because of its cost.
Out Of The Depths It would be easy to fill pages with the names of individuals who have gone down in defeat, but who in their very failure have started influences which have enriched the world. In the centre of this great host is Jesus Christ. The story of His blessed life is a story of failure and defeat according to the world’s estimate. But did the Cross leave a blot on His name? Is it not the very glory of His life that He died thus in the darkness that day? Was His career a failure? Christianity is the answer. He is the Captain also and Leader of a great host who like Him have been defeated and have failed, but have made the world richer by their sacrifice. Let no one speak of such defeats as blots on fair names; rather they are adornings of glory. In all such failure there is divine beauty.
Look Towards The Light There is never any real need for growing discouraged. No matter what the condition may be, we may trust God with the outcome, while we accept our lot with cheerfulness, and do the duty that comes to our hand. There are many things we never can learn in the midst of our earthly ambitions, which must be learned, if ever, as song birds learn new songs, in darkened rooms. A Christian’s rule of life should be, never to yield to discouragement, never to faint in any trouble, but always to keep his face toward the light and his heart full of song.
The True Way To Live The only true way to live is one day at a time. This means that we should give all our strength to the work of the present day that we should finish each day’s tasks by nightfall, leaving nothing undone at setting of the sun that we ought to have done that day. Then, when a new morning dawns, we should accept its duties, the bit of God’s will it unrolls for us, and do everything well that is given us to do. We may be assured, too, that there is something for each moment, and that if we waste any portion of our day we shall not make it complete.
Christ In The Shadows We stand ofttimes in the deep shadows of grief, longing for comfort, yearning for love, while Christ is close beside us, closer than any human friend can be. If only we will dry our tears and look up into His face, believing, our soul shall be flooded with His wonderful love, and our sorrow shall be swallowed up in fullness of joy. There is never the least doubt about the presence of Christ in our times of trouble; it is only because we remain unaware of that presence that we are not comforted. |
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