In a band meeting recently someone told me to stop listening to myself and start talking to myself! I started to laugh because I remembered the phrase ‘talking to yourself is the first sign of madness’!
But then I stopped. I realised that what my friend was saying was actually the key to an act of daily spiritual warfare in my life. I went to find the source of the quote that they were referring to and found it to be a powerful truth that I have been praying into since.
“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 psalmist’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. Why are thou cast down? What business have you to be disquieted’
And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, who he 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.’”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure, Eerdmans; Reprinted edition (July 21, 1965)
You can download a free summary of the book HERE
