Milo

S.B. Shaw

This 19th century book is a book about answered prayers, how God has answered prayer in ordinary people’s lives. The stories can comfort, inspire, and warm your heart. It a book that reminds Christians that God never forgets to care for the abandoned, the old, the sick, the young, and the persecuted. Shaw’s also show that God may answer prayers in ways we do not expect, it is very touching and remarkable.

Excerpt from Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer: As Related by John B. Gough, Bishop Bowman, LL. D., Mrs. Mary Grant Cramer, James H. Potts, D.D., Mathew Hale Smith, John Wesley, T. De Witt Talmage, D.D., George Muller, and Many Others

True prayer is the language of an earnest soul breathing after God, and a. Knowledge of his will. The praying spirit is a search for the presence of God, and a continued craving for a conscious blessing from Him. Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not thyself from my supplication. O Lord God Of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee let my prayer come before thee incline thine ear unto my cry for my soul is full of troubles. Hear me when I call, 0 God of my righteousness thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer. These are the cries of a dependent, trusting, and enriched heart. They Show the natural disposition of troubled man to fly to God for succor and relief.

Man has always prayed. He cannot help it. He is made so. His prayers may not always be prompted by the right motive, nor couched in acceptable phraseology, nor offered in the proper spirit. Ye ask and receive not be cause ye ask amiss. But man will pray. He must pray. The very nature of his earthly life demands prayer. He may rebel against his environments, scoff at the necessity for sup plication, for years neglect his duty, yet sooner or later, secretly or Openly, he will call upon a higher power for that aid which earthly help can not render.

A BLACKSMITH PREVAILED WITH GOD FOR A REVIVAL

A story related by Mr. Finney, will illustrate the power of the mighty prayer of faith, even when every human aid seems withheld, and nothing remains but the burning, throbbing heart, breathing out its longings, and pouring out its groans and tears before the Lord.

In a certain town there had been no revival for many years; the church was nearly run out, the youth were all unconverted, and desolation reigned unbroken. There lived in a retired part of the town, an aged man, a blacksmith by trade, and of so stammering a tongue that it was painful to hear him speak. On one Friday, as he was at work in his shop alone in his mind became greatly exercised about the state of the church, and of the impenitent. His agony became so great that he was induced to lay aside his work, lock the shop door, and spend the afternoon in prayer.

He prevailed and on the Lord’s day, called on the minister and desired him to appoint a conference meeting. After some hesitation — the minister consented — observing, however, that he feared but few would attend. He appointed it the same evening, at a large, private house.

The people gathered from far and near, doubtless to surprise of the unbelieving and faint-hearted. A solemn sense of the presence of God seemed to oppress the as feelings too deep for speech were welling up in many hearts. All was silent for a time, until one sinner broke out in and said, if any one could pray, he begged him to pray for him. Another followed, and still another, until it was found that persons from every quarter of the town were under deep conviction. And what was remarkable was, that they all dated their conviction at the hour when the old man was praying in his shop. A powerful revival followed. Thus this old stammering man prevailed, and as a prince had power with God. — Records of Prevailing Prayer

December 31st

Yesterday

The God of Israel will be your rereward. Isaiah 52:12.

Security from Yesterday. “God requireth that which is past.” At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise from remembering the yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.
Security for To-morrow. “For the Lord will go before you.” This is a gracious revelation, that God will garrison where we have failed to. He will watch lest things trip us up again into like failure, as they assuredly would do if He were not our rereward. God’s hand reaches back to the past and makes a clearing-house for conscience.
Security for To-day. “For ye shall not go out with haste.” As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, unremembering delight, nor with the flight of impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ.
Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.

December 31

“Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” (1 Samuel 7:12.)

THE word “hitherto” seems like a hand pointing in the direction of the past. Twenty years or seventy, and yet “hitherto hath the Lord helped us?” Through poverty, through wealth, through sickness, through health; at home, abroad, on the land, on the sea; in honor, in dishonor, in perplexity, in joy, in trial, in triumph, in prayer, in temptation—“hitherto hath the Lord helped!”
We delight to look down a long avenue of trees. It is delightful to gaze from one end of the long vista, a sort of verdant temple, with its branching pillars and its arches of leaves. Even so look down the long aisles of your years, at the green boughs of mercy overhead, and the strong pillars of lovingkindness and faithfulness which bear up your joys.
Are there no birds in yonder branches singing? Surely, there must be many, and they all sing of mercy received “hitherto.”
But the word also points forward. For when a man gets up to a certain mark, and writes “hitherto,” he is not yet at the end; there are still distances to be traversed. More trials, more joys; more temptations, more triumphs; more prayers, more answers; more toils, more strength; more fights, more victories; and then come sickness, old age, disease, death.
Is it over now? No! there is more yet—awakening in Jesus’ likeness, thrones, harps, songs, psalms, white raiment, the face of Jesus, the society of saints, the glory of God, the fullness of eternity, the infinity of bliss. Oh, be of good courage, believer, and with grateful confidence raise thy “Ebenezer,” for,

  “He who hath helped thee hitherto
  Will help thee all thy journey through.”

When read in Heaven’s light, how glorious and marvelous a prospect will thy “hitherto” unfold to thy grateful eye.
—C. H. Spurgeon.

The Alpine shepherds have a beautiful custom of ending the day by singing to one another an evening farewell. The air is so crystalline that the song will carry long distances. As the dusk begins to fall, they gather their flocks and begin to lead them down the mountain paths, singing, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us. Let us praise His name!”
And at last with a sweet courtesy, they sing to one another the friendly farewell: “Goodnight! Goodnight!” The words are taken up by the echoes, and from side to side the song goes reverberating sweetly and softly until the music dies away in the distance.
So let us call out to one another through the darkness, till the gloom becomes vocal with many voices, encouraging the pilgrim host. Let the echoes gather till a very storm of Hallelujahs break in thundering waves around the sapphire throne, and then as the morning breaks we shall find ourselves at the margin of the sea of glass, crying, with the redeemed host, “Blessing and honor and glory be unto him that sitteth on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever!”

“This my song through endless ages,
  Jesus led me all the way.”

“AND AGAIN THEY SAID, HALLELUJAH!” (Rev. 19:3, R. V.)

31 DECEMBER (PREACHED NEW YEAR’S EVENING 1774)

What do you choose?

‘They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the LORD in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.’ Jeremiah 50:5
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Deuteronomy 30:11–20

Some of you I trust are thus minded. You have already, through grace, chosen Jesus as your way and are walking on to Zion. The Lord encourage and strengthen you. See what a blessed hope is set before you. The Lord will guide you and support you. Only remember your own weakness, the strength and power of your enemies, and watch and pray that you may walk answerable to your high calling, that the Lord may have the glory and you the comfort of your profession. I must take it for granted that some of you have long been hearers and have had the advantage of the advice, example and prayers of the godly. Perhaps they who watched for your soul’s good are now gone to a better world. You will see them again. How will you rejoice to meet them if you walk in their way; if not, it will be a dreadful meeting. Some of you are to this hour breaking the hearts of those who wish well to your souls. Behold the Judge standeth at the door. If you still despise this salvation, sermons, friends, ministers, will all aggravate your condemnation. Some of you have been brought up in the neglect of means and under the unhappy influence of bad examples. What have too many parents to answer for! Yet your parents’ sins will not excuse yours. You now hear for yourselves, and it is at the peril of your souls if you do not begin to ask the way to Zion. Say not you are young. How know you but the year you are now entering upon may be your last? And why delay? Why unwilling to be happy too soon? If it is high time for the young, what then for the aged? Let the grey-headed sinner hear—many years you have wasted. Great is the account you have to give for abused mercies. Yet if you will now in good earnest ask the way to Zion, you may find it. One year more the Lord has waited to be gracious. But the sentence, Cut it down [Luke 13:7], cannot be far distant. O today, while it is called today, hear his voice [Hebrews 3].
FOR MEDITATION: [Asking the way to Zion, written to be sung after this sermon]
O Lord, regard thy people’s prayer,
And young and old, by grace prepare,
Thy promise now fulfil;
To dwell on Zion’s hill.

SERMON: JEREMIAH 50:5 [7/7] [TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE]

December 30th

“And every virtue we possess”

All my fresh springs shall be in Thee. Psalm 87:7 (P.B.V.).

Our Lord never patches up our natural virtues, He remakes the whole man on the inside. “Put on the new man”—see that your natural human life puts on the garb that is in keeping with the new life. The life God plants in us develops its own virtues, not the virtues of Adam but of Jesus Christ. Watch how God will wither up your confidence in natural virtues after sanctification, and in any power you have, until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus. Thank God if you are going through a drying-up experience!
The sign that God is at work in us is that He corrupts confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what God created man to be. We will cling to the natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us into contact with the life of Jesus Christ which can never be described in terms of the natural virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people in the service of God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them, depending on what they have by the accident of heredity. God does not build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, because our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands. But as we bring every bit of our bodily life into harmony with the new life which God has put in us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that are characteristic of the Lord Jesus.

‘And every virtue we possess
Is His alone.’