Self Talk? or Talk to Self? by M.L. Jones Spiritual Depression

 

Psalm 42:5-6
 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and
 my God. My soul is downcast within me;

therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan,

the heights of Hermon--from Mount Mizar.

I say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing “ourselves” to talk to us! 

Do you realize what that means? 

I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. 

Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical?  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 problems of yesterday, etc.  Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you?  Your self talk 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 are you so downcast, 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 you so downcast? – 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 will yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.”

Psalm 42:7

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;

all your waves and breakers have swept over me.