Preach to Yourself

Have you ever had a morning where you just wake up feeling down?  I'm having one today- and when I woke up this morning I was reminded of a book I read awhile ago that taught me to "preach to myself."  

When I woke up feeling "blaaaah" today I immediately began taking my negative thoughts captive (lonely, overwhelmed, sad, or whatever else you may be feeling at that moment) and replaced those negative thoughts with positive truth from Scripture.   My outlook was completely changed by a conversation that took less than two seconds and was finished before I had even climbed out from under the covers:

"Self, you say you're lonely?  God is always with you!"

"Self, You say you're discouraged?  Take hope in the Lord!"

"Self, You say you're overwhelmed?  Cast all your cares on Him, He cares for you!"  

In his book, Jones calls us to recognize that most of our unhappiness in life is because we are listening to ourselves rather than talking to ourselves.  We are in control of our own thoughts!  If you catch yourself thinking something that is negative and not in line with God's word, stop yourself!  

Instead of allowing your self to talk to you, start talking to your self!  

"Preach to Yourself"

“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? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s 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.’…

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 art 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’– instead 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: Its Causes and Its Cure (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965/2002), 20-1.