“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?" (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Welsh minister, preacher, 1899-1981, from Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure, 1965.)The devil or Satan is known as the accuser of Christians (Rev 12:10). His accusation always causes us to doubt the love of God and the love of others (Gen 3:1). Even though we may know in our heads how much Jesus loves us (John 3:16), yet in our emotions and feelings we act as though God and/or others hate us, or are out to hurt us.
Once my wife casually implied something negative about me. Then I only began listening to myself: "You're no good. You're not a good husband. Your wife is not happy with you. Etc." Even though I never doubt my wife's love, yet I felt traumatized by listening to myself that I needed quite a bit of time to recover the love of God in my own heart.
What can we do? ML-Jones says, "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."
Ultimately, we need to preach the gospel to ourselves, that I, though a worm, am so loved by the King of kings, that I can rejoice through out eternity, only because of the grace of Jesus freely extended to me.
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