Here is a quotation from a book written by MLJ I read many years ago. The book and the quotation have been very useful to me in my struggle to live by faith. I think all elders and pastors should read the book. It is as helpful today as when first published. A vital pastoral resource.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, pp. 20-21:
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 are 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 this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] 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 moment, I will speak to you.”
This is what faith is. It is talking to ourselves in biblical ways. Faith tells self what God is like and what he has accomplished in the gospel. Of course we need an arsenal of faith-thoughts from which to draw. We build this up by nourishing ourselves in God’s thoughts and ways. We do this through meeting together as church and feeding on the various means of grace. We do so privately by reading his words in Scripture, reading good books about the faith, singing to ourselves good hymns that express the faith, listening to good sermons and praise records, discussing our faith with each other and meditating on what we know, bringing it before God in worship and thankfulness. Then, when unbelieving destructive thoughts begin to crowd our mind, thoughts of low self-worth, thoughts of high self-worth, persistent accusing thoughts, fearful thoughts about whatever, we resist them by faith-thoughts that we have stored in our minds and hearts. Refusing invading, unbelieving thoughts credence by speaking to ourselves believing thoughts is the essence of the fight of faith.
And as a bonus, what better excuse when caught talking to yourself?
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