Preach the Gospel...to Yourself

I think many of us are strung alone by our emotions, allowing our hearts to daily carry us like a powerful river in unhealthy, sinful, discouraging, and even depressing directions. The cure for this is to preach the gospel to our hearts every day. I need to grow in this – big time. I’m sure you do, too. If we faithfully practice this with the Holy Spirit’s help, our hearts will be spiritually healthy – in relation to God, our spouse, our children, the people and leaders of our local church, the work he’s daily given us to do, and our witness to the unsaved. May the following quote assist and encourage you to pursue this path.

                                                                                      

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now [the Psalmists’] treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks, His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you’. Do you know what I mean? If you do not, you have had but little experience.

“The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why are thou cast down’ – what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’ – in stead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God’.” – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (20-21)