It will help us greatly in our
Christian life. By J. R. Miller. The apostles
gathered around Jesus and reported to him all that they had done
and taught. Mark 6 verse 30. It will help
us greatly in our Christian life if we will train ourselves to
the habit of reporting to Christ continually all that we do and
say. We may come every evening to
His feet and tell Him all about the work and the life of our
day. Each day is a miniature life. Each morning we are sent out
by our Master, commissioned by Him to do certain tasks, to touch
certain lives, to leave certain blessings in the world, to endure
certain temptations, to suffer or rejoice, as the case may be. At the close of the day, we come
back to make report, in our evening prayer, of all that we have done,
not only the good and beautiful things, the obedience, the kindness,
the victories over temptation, the things which have been helpful
to others, but also the foolish things, the disobediences, the
defeats, the neglects of duty. If we remember as we go through
the day that everything we do or say, and everything we fail
to do or say, must be reported to our Master, it would make
us more careful as the moments pass of what we do and what we
fail to do. We would not do the things which
would shame us to look into Christ's face and tell Him what we did. We would learn to do only what
would give us pleasure to report to Him. This would do much to
make us always charitable and kind to others, for we shall
not care to tell the Master that we said unkindly words of our
neighbors. If we constrain ourselves to
report in our evening prayers all our criticisms of others,
all our uncharitable words, all our blaming and fault-finding,
we shall soon be cured of the habit of censoriousness and we
shall learn to do and say only things which we shall be glad
to tell our Lord. There is no better way to keep
our days holy and beautiful than to tell Jesus every night all
that we have said and done through the day. Yet we need never dread
to tell Christ of our failures for the day. There will always
be failures. Our moods will not always be
gentle. Sometimes we will speak rashly
and harshly. We will not always be patient
and thoughtful. Un-Christian tempers will break
out in spite of our determination always to keep sweet. We will
fail many a time to be loving. But the Master will be infinitely
gracious and gentle in dealing with our faults and failures.
He is more kindly than any mother. No words in the Bible are sweeter
to a faithful Christian than those in one of the Psalms. He
knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. If we are living faithfully and
are striving to do our best and to do better each day, we need
never dread to tell our master all that we have done, even the
worst. He wants us to be very frank
and very honest with him. Of course he knows all that we
have done, but he wants us to tell him all, keeping nothing
back. We may come with the whole story,
even if it is a confession of weakness, foolishness, or sin. He is never severe with us, as
some human friends are, for He wants us never to be afraid to
come to Him. This Puritan devotional has been
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