Saturday, June 17, 2006

Talking to Yourself Instead of Listening to Yourself

In his excellent book Spiritual Depression, Martin Lloyd Jones asked, “Have you realized most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”

Take a moment to review and examine your pattern of thinking. Do you spend more time speaking truth to yourself, or is most you your time spent listening to yourself?

Most of us spend more time listening to lies than we do speaking truth to ourselves.

One of the ways I have learned to speak truth to myself is by memorizing Scripture. Each week I find a different passage from the Bible to memorize. As I memorize God’s Word, I use it in my “speaking truth to myself.”

During the month of June I have been trying to memorize Psalm 34. Take a moment to read it. Psalm 34 is crammed full of promises. I challenge you to memorize God’s Word this week and start speaking it to yourself. Let me know what you learn.

Keep the faith!

1 comment:

MrsC said...

As a blogger myself, I was very excited to hear you had a voice on the web. The reason why I have not commented until now is because of the topic of this post. My mother has been heavily affected by depression. It has been a year and a half since my father's death, and her depression has led to physical as well as mental and emotional problems. Two weeks ago we admitted her to assisted living and this week she agreed to go to a short term facility that treats the body and the mind. Until I read this post I did not realize the affect this has had on my emotional and spirtual welfare. I have wept during this process and grieved for my mother. I have also done lots of feeling sorry for myself. I have (without her knowledge) questioned where her faith was that she used to raise me. She was one of my biggest spiritual teachers. Now I know that I was also questioning my own faith in God's ability to take care of her and to give me the strength I needed. I have felt so distant from my church and my spiritual gifts through all of this. My excuses are plentiful, but God needs us to "talk to ourselves rather than listen to ourselves." I will take this journey and try to replace the sad, pity party thoughts with powerful, spiritual words. Thanks for helping me stay connected with my wonderful church even when I cannot be there physically.