It will help us greatly in our Christian life

(J. R. Miller, "Garden of the Heart" 1906)  LISTEN to audio!  Download audio

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"The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to Him all that they had done and taught." Mark 6:30

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 my 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 kindnesses, 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 evenings prayers—all our criticisms of others, all our uncharitable words, and 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 always will be failures.
Our moods will not always be gentle.
Sometimes we will speak rashly and harshly.
We will not always be patient and thoughtful.
Unchristian 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.