Counsel And Help, Daily Readings Selected from the Writings of J R Miller

Counsel And Help
by J R Miller

It is not the deed we do,
Though the deed be never so fair,
But the love that the dear Lord looketh for,
Hidden with lowly care
In the heart of the deed so fair.

Behold us, the rich and the poor,
Dear Lord, in thy service draw near;
One consecratheth a precious coin,
One droppeth only a tear;
Look, Master, the love is here!

December 1

As Thy Days, Thy Strength

Many young people are afraid to set out on a Christian life because, foreseeing its dangers, they dread them, and fear that they will not be able to stand faithful and true to the end. They need only to be faithful day by day, trusting God. They will obtain help for every duty, for every hour of danger, for every struggle. The help will come silently, secretly, and just as it is needed, always grace sufficient, so that they shall be able to stand unto the end. The way to obtain help of God is to go faithfully and promptly forward in the way of duty, asking for the help, and sure of getting it. It will come only as we do His will.

December 2

One Step Enough

We never know what lies before us. Sorrow may be waiting, or sore temptation or death. We see not a step before our feet. But no matter, if God is leading, for He knows all that lies before us. As we go on He makes each step plain; and is not that enough?

A young man had almost decided to become a Christian. But one doubt held him back: he did not see how he could continue faithful all through his life. He spent an evening with his minister, and they talked long on the subject. Still his fears and his indecision remained. As he left, the pastor observed how dark it was, and, getting a lantern, handed it to the young man saying: "this little light will not show at once the whole way to your home, but only one step at a time; yet take that step, and you will reach home in safety." As the young man walked homeward he pondered, "Why can I not trust my heavenly Father, even if I can’t see my way clear to the end, if He gives me light for one step?"

December 3

Nearer Than Hands Or Feet

Human souls in this world are like blind men, groping in the darkness, trying to find some hand to lead them, some path to take them home. We are without God in this world, like

"An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry."

Without the gospel we cannot find God. At the same time, He is not far from any one of us. There is a story of a returning prodigal seeking his father’s house and unable to find it, wandering wearily along the highway and at last in his faintness falling down on the threshold of a cottage which was his own father’s house. Inside sat the father and mother for whose love he was so hungering; yet he knew it not. So near to every one of us in our need and craving is our heavenly Father.

December 4

Selfish Souls

There is a time for holy services, for heavenly communings, but the purpose of such joy is to prepare us for better work out in the world. We are not to spend all our time at prayer and in communings; but, having had our secret warmed with love, we must go to carry the news of God’s grace and love to others. No selfishness is quite so bad as that shown in keeping to ourselves the divine goodness. Whittier says–

"Heaven’s gate is closed to him who comes alone;
Save thou a soul and it shall save thine own."

December 5

Working In Love

There is no other way in which one’s life will so surely and so quickly become transfigured as in the faithful, happy, cheerful doing of everyday tasks. We need to remember that this world is not so much a place for doing things as for making character. The doing of common tasks patiently, promptly, faithfully, cheerfully, makes the character beautiful and bright. But we must take heed always that we do our tasks, whatever they are, with love. Doing any kind of work unwillingly, fretfully, with complaint and murmuring, hurts the life.

December 6

Unnoticed Blessings

How many of us find all the good there is in our lot? Do we extract the honey from every flower that blooms in our path? Do we find all the gold that lies in the hard rocks over which our feet stumble? Do we behold all the beauty that glows along the ways of our sore toil? Do not many good things pass through our hands and slip away from us for ever before we even recognize their loveliness or their worth? Do not angels come to us unaware in homely disguise, walk with us, talk with us, minister to us, and then only become known to us when their place is empty and they have spread their radiant wings in flight which we have no power ever to recall?

December 7

Beacons

We should never lose an opportunity to say an inspiring word. We do not know how much it is needed or how great and far-reaching its consequences may be. One night long ago, during a terrible storm on the coast of England, a clergyman left his own cozy home, hurried away to the headland and lighted the beacon. Months afterwards, he learned that that light had saved a great ship with its freight of human life. We know not to what imperiled interests and hopes our one word or act of encouragement may carry rescue and safety. Nor do we know what destinies may be wrecked and lost by our failure to speak cheer.

December 8

Prayer In The Home

Much is said and written of religion in the home, and yet it may be that there is not always a clear conception of the meaning of the term. It is sometimes supposed that the requirement is fully met when family devotions are regularly maintained. This is of vital importance. Household religion certainly implies the daily family worship. I cannot think that any home realizes the true ideal, or can have Heaven’s richest benedictions upon it, in which this is omitted or neglected. God blesses and shelters the household in which He is honoured. Prayer weaves a roof of love over the home, and builds walls of protection about it.

December 9

Life's Prose

All of us must go out from the sweet services of the Sabbath into a week of very real and very prosaic life. We must mingle with people that are not angels. We must pass through experiences that will naturally worry and vex us. Those about us, both willingly or unwillingly, annoy and try us. Many a young Christian must mingle with those who do not love Christ. Everyone meets many anxieties and worries in ordinary week day life. There are continual irritations and annoyances. The problem is, to live a beautiful Christian life in the face of all these hindrances.

December 10

Golden Years

A complete life, altogether beautiful in God’s sight, is one that from earliest childhood to ripest old age does the work of the Lord. To waste the early golden years of youth is to leave a blank that never can be filled. For we have no second chances in life. Says Dr. Geikie: "Some things God gives often; some He gives only once. The seasons return again and again, and the flowers change with the months; but youth comes twice to none." The same is true of any period of life, any day, any hour; it comes not twice, and its work neglected at the time can never be done.

December 11

Love's Sweet Spices

When we are wronged or hurt or treated injuriously, if we would honour our blessed Lord we must endure with sweet forgiveness and patience. Love is always sweet, even when it meets only answering love; but it is never so sweet to Christ as when it meets unkindness, wrong, injustice, cruelty, and still remains gentle and tender, bathing in fragrance the hand that smites. To endure thus is to bring sweet spices for Jesus. The women brought spices to strew on the body of a dead Christ. We may bring love, devotion, service, submission, and endurance to honour a Christ who was dead for us but is now for us also alive for evermore.

December 12

Hope Always

Christ ever calls to hope. He bids us rise again from the worst defeat. In the kingdom of grace there is always margin enough to start again, and to build up a noble life. Even down to the life’s latest hour this remains true. The door of opportunity opened to the penitent even on the cross in his dying hours; there was no time to make anything good or beautiful of his life on the earth, save in His dying confession and testimony; but the eternity into which he passed is very long, with time enough for a glorious career. So it is always. In this world, blessed by divine love and grace, there is never any need for despair. The call after any defeat or failure still is: "Rise up, let us go."

December 13

The Best Things

The first thing is to gather into our life all the truly great and noble things of character. Here are two tests to ponder, because they settle this question: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, – think on these things" – "Add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity."

December 14

The Revelation Of God

The reason for the Incarnation was the salvation of man. The Good Shepherd came to seek and to save His sheep which were lost. He came in human form that He might get nearer to the sinner. A Moravian missionary went to preach the gospel to the slaves in the West Indies. Failing as a free man to reach them, he became a slave himself, and went with them to their toils in the field, and into all their hardships and sufferings, thus getting close to them. Then they listened to him.

This illustrates Christ’s condescension to save the world. We could not understand God in His invisible glory; and Immanuel came, and in human form lived out the divine life, showing us God’s thoughts and character and feelings, especially God’s grace and His love for sinners. This was one object of the Incarnation, – it revealed in a way which men could understand the invisible things of God.

December 15

Practical Love

A very little love for our neighbour wrought out in a bit of every day kindness is worth a great deal of talk about love which finds no expression in act. To be kind and charitable, to give bread to the hungry, to deny one’s self a pleasure in order to help another over a hard place, to go far out of one’s way to be of use to another who is in need, are better evidence of the indwelling of the Spirit than any amount of effervescent talk about consecration in a prayer meeting.

December 16

Be Kind Now

Surely we should learn the lesson of gentle thoughtful kindness to those we love, and to all we meet in life’s busy ways. And we should show the kindness, too, while their tired feet walk in life’s toilsome paths, and not wait to bring flowers for their coffins, or to speak words of cheer when their ears are closed, and their hearts are stilled, and it is too late to give them comfort and joy.

December 17

Heart And Life

What we are in heart, in spirit, in the inner life, we are really before God; and that, too, and we shall ultimately become in actual character, in outward feature. The disposition makes the face; jealousy, envy, and bitterness, selfishness all write their own image and signature on the features, if you give them time enough. A pure, beautiful soul builds a holy and divine dwelling for itself. The lamp of Christ’s love, set in a human heart, transforms the life from sinfulness and earthliness into the likeness of Christ’s own Spirit.

December 18

A Talisman

We should remember that no one can really hurt our life but ourselves. Men may rob us of our money. They may injure us in many ways. They may cut our bodies to pieces. But they cannot touch our real life. All the wrongs they can inflict upon us will do us no actual injury. But if we give way to anger, if we let bitterness creep into our hearts, if we , we have hurt ourselves. If, on the other hand, we keep love in our hearts under all the human wrong we suffer, we have won the victory over every wrong.

December 19

Plato's Wish

Plato expressed a desire that the moral law might become a living personage, that men seeing it thus incarnate might be charmed by its beauty. Plato’s wish was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The holiness and the beauty of the divine law were revealed in Him. The Beatitudes are only a rescript of the life of Christ Himself. What He taught about love was but His own love stated in a course of living lessons for His friends to learn. When He said we should be patient, gentle, thoughtful, forgiving, and kind, He was only saying "Follow Me."

December 20

God's Book

So long as there are tears and sorrows, and broken hearts and crushed hopes and human failures, and lives burdened and bowed down, and spirits sad and despairing, so long will the Bible be a book believed in as of God – an inspired book, and full of inspiration, light, help, and strength for earth’s weary ones.

December 21

Paying The Price

To love always involves suffering, sooner or later, for one or other of the friends, for there must some time be separation. One must be taken and the other left. To have known of the sorrow and loneliness, and to have shut one’s heart against the friendship in dread of its loss, would have been to rob one’s life of its best blessing. Even grief is not too great a price to pay for love. Love’s blessing stays in the life when the beloved one is gone. Its influence is permanent. The work it does is on the soul’s very substance, and abides forever. Its impression is ineffaceable.

December 22

A Bold Prayer

"As it is in heaven" may seem far above us today. The song is too sweet for our unmusical voice to sing. The life is too beautiful for us, with our imperfect, inharmonious nature, to live. But if only we are true to our Christian faith, if only we strive ever to do our Father’s will, if only we keep our heart ever open to the love of Christ and to the help and sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit, we shall rise day by day toward heaven’s perfectness, until at last we shall enter the pearl gates and be with Christ and be like Him. For the present our striving and our prayer should ever be: "Thy will be done on earth, in us, as it is done in heaven."

December 23

Thoughtlessness

No doubt much evil is wrought by want of thought. Many people with kindly heart continually cause pain to others by mere heedlessness. They seem to have no perception of the sensibilities of those about them. They have never trained themselves to think at all of others in connection with their own words or acts. They have accustomed themselves to think only of their own pleasure, and to say and do only what their own impulses prompt, without asking whether others will be pleased or displeased. They think only of their own comfort and convenience, and never of how the thing they wish to do may break into the comfort or convenience of others.

December 24

Losing To Save

Had Jesus saved His life from the Cross He might have lived to a ripe old age, making all His years beautiful as the three or four He wrought in such wondrous way among the people. But there would have been no Cross lifted up to draw all men to it by its power of love. There would have been no fountain opened to which earth’s penitent millions could come with their polluted lives to find cleansing. There would have been no atonement for the human guilt, no tasting of death by the Son of God for every man, no bearing by the Lamb of God of the sin of the world. There would have been no broken grave with its victory over death, and eternal life for all who will believe.

December 25

The Great Quest

That was the most wonderful birth that ever occurred in this world. It was the Son of God incarnate that slept His first sleep in the manger of Bethlehem. We should certainly come with the shepherds and the Magi to pay our homage at the cradle of this same glorious Child King. The Magi came hundreds of miles to find Christ. The journey was difficult and perilous, and very costly. We ought to count no toil or sacrifice too great to find Christ. We ought to be ready to go thousands of miles, if need be, to find Him. He is the pearl of great price, and we shall be well repaid for our quest, though it cost us the loss and sacrifice of all things, and though we even have to lay down our lives to gain Him.

December 26

Victory Over Sorrow

We cannot but feel the pangs of grief – God will never blame us for our tears, but in our deepest afflictions our faith should not fail, and the songs of joy should not be choked. People are looking upon us and, consciously or unconsciously, watching to see what Christ can do for us in our sore stress. To witness truly for Him we must suffer victoriously, be more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

December 27

Cherish No Resentment

Sometimes men insist on using our life or our work as a footpath to some goal or ambition of their own. Naturally we resent such injustice. But, after all, need we vex ourselves overmuch about such treatment? If only we keep sweet, not allowing the wrong or the injustice to embitter us, cherishing ever the spirit of cheerful, patient love, we are the gainers. The man who does the mean or oppressive thing is the man who loses. He gathers a curse in his hands with the seeming gain he selfishly snatches. We need only to watch that no bitterness enter our heart, enduring the wrong as our Master endured, patiently, committing ourselves to Him that judgeth righteously.

December 28

Enduring Qualities

The winds and storms make the well rooted tree stand all the more firmly. So it is with the Christian life which is truly rooted in Christ. It has its temptations, its trials, its struggles, but they only strengthen it, making it cleave to Christ the more closely and firmly, and grow into all the more beautiful character. But if our faith is feeble, if our religion is one of feeling only instead of principle, if we are ruled by the emotions instead of by the power of an inner life, then we shall not be able to endure the storms, and shall faint and fall under their sweep and strain.

December 29

Transformed Sorrows

Along the shore one sometimes comes upon fresh water springs, which bubble up on the edge of the salt sea. The tides roll over them and bury them out of sight for the times, but when the brackish floods ebb again the springs are found sweet as ever. So, after the deepest sorrow should the heart’s fountains of joy be found, still pouring out their streams of gladness. Christ says much about the people having His joy, a joy which the world can neither give nor take away. He says, too, that their sorrow shall be turned into joy, meaning that the deepest joy in this world is transformed sorrow, and not the joy which has never known pain.

December 30

Considering Others

There are some Christians who seem never to have learned love’s secret of helpfulness. There is nothing that this sorrowing, sinning world needs more than gentleness, – gentleness like that of Him of whom it is written, that He would not break a bruised reed. We need to pray for the grace of gentleness that we may walk softly among men, never hurting another life by harsh word or ungentle act.

December 31

Perils Of Prayerlessness

There are times when every star seems to have gone out, and when clouds and darkness appear to have gathered about us, hiding every waymark, so that we cannot see any way out of the gloom and perplexity. We need then to have God’s direction, or we shall perish. In the darkest hour of Christ’s life, when He could not see even His father’s face, and cried out like one forsaken, He still kept His faith in God firm and strong. It was still, "My God, my God."

But while there are times when we need guidance in an unusual way, there is no day in all our brightest year when we do not need it, when we dare to go forward one step without it. The day we do not seek and obtain God’s leading will be a day of disaster for us. The day we go forth without prayer for divine blessing, when we do not lay our hand in Christ’s as we go out into the great world, is a day of peril for us.