Preaching to yourself is a cunning strategy to a life of enjoying Christ. Martyn Lloyd-Jones famously wrote in his book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures, ‘Have you realised that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? … 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.’1
Preaching gospel truth to myself has been revolutionary to my spiritual life. After all, we are constantly listening to ourselves and are very easily persuaded by the voice in our heads. At the end of the day this means the best preacher in town is you. Instead of listening to your depressing, self-pitying, and self-indulgent self, preach gospel glories to yourself. Though this can take some training, it means stopping yourself in your tracks in the face of temptation, or halting in the midst of a mundane day and leading yourself to worship and praise.
Oi, Soul!
Psalms 42 and 43 are biblical examples of taking oneself in hand. The Psalmist questions his own soul: ‘Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God’ (Ps. 42:5, 11; 43:5). Oi, soul! You don’t want that! Look to God, He is your hope and your joy. He has saved you and set you free. Enjoy God, O my soul!
Preaching to ourselves is so basic and so obvious, but we miss it completely. For example, throughout the week we need to copy the biology of flies: after consuming our Sunday meal at church, bring it back up later. Regurgitating and chewing upon the sermons we hear is one secret of consistently enjoying Christ throughout the week.
Memorise
We can be fooled into thinking that Bible memorisation belongs to vintage Sunday-school with its prize boards, frumpy Sunday school teachers and rows of snotty kids with dodgy hair-cuts and shiny knees. Yet this mental hoarding of Scripture is setting up a God-breathed arsenal to fire upon self, sin and Satan. It is what the Psalmist does: ‘I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you’ (Ps. 119:11). It is what Paul does in taking ‘every thought captive to obey Christ’ (2 Cor. 10:5).
We need to know God’s Word in order to preach and apply it on demand, so take time to memorise Scripture and understand the biblical truths it is teaching. This is particularly important for those with a busy home life, for example those in the often spiritually barren years of parenting small children. The physical, emotional and mental toil leaves us exhausted before the evening has begun. And the morning leaves little opportunity for devotions because the day starts abruptly with a scream, an ominous commotion or a little person climbing into bed with you. I can’t recommend Bible memorisation to you enough. As I muster myself for a day of servitude and diplomatic solutions in a few seconds, I have found praying out memorised verses an essential start to the day.
Also, for those of us spending our day amongst non-Christians — in the temptation and negative conversation, at times of unsavoury humour or disparagement, and when we are misunderstood for being a Christian — reciting a verse from God’s Word will fortify our biblical principles and bring glory to God at that moment.
Whatever we do, we all exist to glorify God and enjoy Him. Preaching Scripture to ourselves is an important way to live this in the small things and the big things.
Looking Back
When we are lukewarm we question whether God is really with us — whether He has ever really been with us. In the Old Testament we see the Israelites constantly remembering the Exodus, the time when God led them out of Egypt and they passed through the waters of the Red Sea (Exod. 13-15). Even centuries later they continue to preach to themselves God’s covenant goodness and salvation. In the same way, preaching to ourselves God’s past faithfulness in our lives invigorates our faith. ‘Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you’ (Ps. 116:7).
In Psalm 77 we see a believer struggling in his faith. He shares his distress; feeling spurned and forgotten by God (vv. 7-8), lifting his hands to God in the night, but with little comfort (v. 2). But he is not duped by his mood or difficulty. He knows how to handle himself and looks back to God’s historical salvation.
Then I said, ‘I will appeal to this,
to the years of the right hand of the Most High.’
I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
I will ponder all your work,
and meditate on your mighty deeds. (Ps. 77:10-12)
And his mind lingers on God’s rescue all those years ago at the Red Sea. ‘When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid … Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters … You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron’ (vv. 16, 19-20).
When doubts and anxiety strike, preach to yourself the years of the Most High. Recall the Lord’s power and faithfulness to you throughout your life, and preach the wonderful and mighty cross of Christ to your soul.
QUESTION:
The Lord’s Supper is an important way we remember and appeal to the cross of Christ as a church family. When we are lukewarm we need to feed spiritually on Christ and remember in this way. How can this change the way you take communion?
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1 Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965). pp.20-21.
13. Godly Crampons
Straying from the Lord is scary stuff. Suddenly everything we knew and treasured seems alien and confusing; prayer feels like the first sign of madness and our beloved Bibles seem like gobbledegook. Sermons don’t thrill us anymore and we just walk out of church feeling battered. Because we don’t want to be judged and misunderstood, we don’t share our struggles.
‘I can’t tell anyone …’
‘I’m a church deacon …’
‘I’m on the C.U. Exec …’
‘I’m the pastor!’
We stop talking to God because it is hard to avoid the subject with Him. And we stop talking to our brothers and sisters in Christ because we feel hypocritical. This means many of us become isolated and depressed. We may start to favour the company of non-Christians and if we are not careful ‘lukewarm’ moves quickly into something more serious.
Spikey Friends
You may be a Christian who is deeply committed to Christ but who gets distracted easily. Or you may be pretty constant and steadfast in your walk with God. Either way, we all need godly crampons. Crampons are footwear attachments with metal spikes that claw into ice or snow to give climbers and walkers a strong foothold; without them their feet would be slipping and dancing all over the place. Godly crampons are the strong, sharp friends who see our weaknesses and give honest, loving and firm support. They are the people who pray for us, who will challenge us about skipping church, our lack of prayerfulness, or thoughtless decisions.
When we love someone, we want to honestly challenge them when we see them heading for danger. We too should humbly accept the same from a godly crampon. ‘Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy’ (Prov. 27:5-6). Godly crampons can stop us from backsliding because we can call for help as soon as we start losing control, and they can lead us back to Christ with the power of prayer and God’s Word. So, if a spikey friend challenges you, don’t get defensive and back away from their friendship — they might just be your best friend at this time of lukewarmness.
If we are hungry for the world, then like Lot, we will gravitate towards those who loiter and linger in it. I am not saying that believers shouldn’t have non-Christian friends; sadly, too many of us don’t need to turn our phones off on Sunday mornings because all our friends are in church. But we all need to be wise and humble to see when certain company is doing us no good because it is ‘godless’ and ‘barren’ (Job 15:34; cf. Ps. 1:1).
Confession
I encourage you to speak to a friend or your pastor. When I was stuck in spiritual apathy I spoke openly to a pastor friend of ours and this was one of my first steps to recovery. Because our friend is a godly crampon I wasn’t judged but prayed for and loved, and facing up to my hard heart was liberating. This is not surprising considering God’s encouragement to confess. ‘Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed’ (James 5:16). ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9).
Malnourished in Marriage
What about Christians who are married to an unbeliever? Or those who are married to a Christian but their spouse does not share their spiritual hunger? Many Christians become spiritually malnourished because of the disinterest of their partner; they feel pulled in two. Frequently the more spiritually mature believer will unconsciously neglect their walk with the Lord because being close to God only makes this spiritual imbalance bigger and more painful. This is compounded when the husband is not the spiritual leader in the home, which is pretty common in today’s church. Here spikey, godly friends can really spur us, challenging and encouraging us to grow in grace when we are divided at home.
There is not much more to say about godly crampons. But when looking for them, find the godliest ones you can find … and you can never have enough!
SHARE:
Make contact with a spikey, godly friend.
14. Fear and Trembling
I am a Christian of vague, callous and cowardly repentance. Too many times I have fought against my guilt with ‘I-know-I-am-saved-so-sorry-and-let’s-not-talk-about-it-anymore’. I don’t look at my sin enough to hate it. I am apathetic about God’s holiness and His vision for mine.
Many of us don’t take repentance seriously because we don’t take sin seriously. The horror of our sin matches the horror of the cross. The Lord Jesus was humiliated, lashed, tortured, cut, stabbed for our sin. On the cross, He became a bloody mess since ‘… without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins’ (Heb. 9:22).
As contemporary Christians influenced by our society, we approach sin as victims, talking about ‘sin in our lives’ instead of ‘our sin’; avoiding the hard truth that we are to blame, that we have stumbled. We push away our guilt instead of realising that it is a good, healthy and godly response to sin. I know that if I commit myself to a gutsy guilt1 and thorough repentance, instead of a cowardly dismissal, I will hate sin more and know more victory against it. Sure, this takes prayer, tears and time but genuine repentance is the driving force of our quest for godliness. We can’t strive for Christlikeness without it.
Saved for Holy
Part of this problem is due to the fact that we see our salvation in Christ separately from God’s call to holiness. But we were saved so we could be holy. Paul writes, Christ ‘chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him’ (Eph. 1:4). Peter agrees in his letter to the churches in Asia (cf. 1 Pet. 1:1-2). Our growing in godliness is not just a by-product of the gospel — it is the reason for the gospel.
Thorough Repentance
Like many of our news headlines, King David’s sin against Bathsheba and Uriah was sordid and nauseating. One perversion led to another until he was guilty of some of the worst human crimes. But David was not cowardly in his repentance. In Psalm 51 we see him look his sin squarely in the face. He doesn’t say much about his adultery, deception and murder in the Psalm because he looks at the roots of these sins, which are at the core of his being and have been there since the day he was conceived (v. 5). So, he focuses on his heart, pleading to his loving and faithful God to remove the filth.
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin! (Ps. 51:1-2).
David has guts enough to look at the evil in his heart because he knows God loves him, and he is confident that God will wash him and restore him.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice. …
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit. (Ps. 51:7-8, 12)
Healing after backsliding
God calls us to repentance because He loves us. After the Lord Jesus challenges the Laodiceans for being lukewarm in John’s vision, He tells them He is rebuking them because He loves them. ‘Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent’ (Rev. 3:19). This is good news. As those in Christ we repent in utter safety. It is not some risky exposure of ourselves to a capricious sovereign. When we are confessing our sins we may kneel in humility, but we do so standing in complete confidence of God’s love, forgiveness and washing — just like David.
If you have wandered away from God into toxic sin that causes you pain and humiliating shame just to think about, revelling in God’s steadfast love will heal you of this painful past. Guilt cannot fester in a spiritual life that literally jumps for joy because of God’s redeeming love. Remember, when we turn to Christ, the sins we have committed are no longer found in the place where we committed them. We’ve already said, they are nailed onto a wooden cross stained with the blood of the God-man that gives forgiveness, eternal life and freedom.
How Do We Repent?
True biblical repentance is not complicated and secretive. It is simple. You are looking at your sin and asking God to forgive it and make you holy because of His Son Jesus Christ.
Scripture offers us invaluable blueprints for repentance. Check out Daniel 9:4-19, Micah 7:7-9, and Hosea 6:1-3, as well as the famous Psalm 51. When we use Scripture as our prayers of repentance, the Holy Spirit works powerfully through His Word, giving us sorrow for our sin.
To avoid being vague and cowardly, when we confess our sins it is helpful to name the areas in which you have stumbled, as well as asking the Spirit of Christ to reveal any unrecognised sin. And if repentance is looking at our hearts and meditating on the root of our errors, our holiness will benefit from some questioning. Why do I get stressed and cross? What were my motives in talking negatively about that person? Why did I respond in that way? I find pride to be the root of most of my sin. This means most of the time I am repenting for my pride and asking God to give me humility.
Some hugely holy, practical ideas are getting on our knees and, when we have wronged someone, actually going to them and asking for forgiveness — this seems completely out of the question for many of us. But repentance is radical stuff! If you find stamina in prayer is a problem, then try writing your prayer down. And give yourself time! Coming to God in this way means carving out time.
Active Faith
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes: ‘Therefore, my beloved … work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2:12). What does Paul mean by ‘working out our salvation’? Aren’t we saved by Jesus Christ? Isn’t the gospel free grace? Yes, and yes! But this free grace gives the believer in Christ responsibility. Not a passive, vague and lazy faith but an active faith that works out and confirms this salvation; building ourselves up in our ‘most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep[ing ourselves] in the love of God’ (Jude 20-21).
And this fear and trembling is that of the Philippian jailer, who woke up on shift to the prison doors hanging off their hinges. ‘Trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”’ (Acts 16:29-30). It is the response we should have to the gospel: awe of a holy God as we confront our sin.
Be encouraged! We can successfully press on in our salvation only because God is working too. Paul goes on: ‘for it is God who wo
rks in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure’ (Phil. 2:13). Jude confirms the same: ‘Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy’ (Jude 24). God’s ‘good pleasure’ and ‘great joy’ is our confidence to live out our repentance in fear and trembling.
THINK:
As you think upon your own sin, meditate on these glorious words included in Psalm 51; BLOT, WASH, CLEANSE, PURGE, CLEAN, WHITER, RENEW, RESTORE, and JOY. Let them lead you to Calvary.
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1 A term used by John Piper (see www.desiringgod.org for sermons and articles).
15. Am I Actually a Christian?
Perhaps you picked up this book because you have been lukewarm or backslidden for months or years. Let’s look at a verse we started out with.
For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out … I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak (Ezek. 34:11, 16)
The Lord God is hunting you out; in His grace He is on your heels. If you respond to Him then He will sling you around His shoulders and carry you to a place of rejoicing. His love and forgiveness will cover your pain and guilt. For all your sins have been covered by Jesus Christ; this includes your apathy and backsliding. Even if you are prone to wandering away from God, Jesus died for your straying — past, present and future — in the same way that he died for everything else! Turn your guilt and remorse to repentance. Take hold of Jesus and move into a place of obedience, safety and unshakeable joy.
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