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.

The Obstacle of SELF: by TA Sparks

 

Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? 2 Corinthians 13:5

The sum of everything in the new creation is in Christ, or, to put that in another way, it is outside of man himself. It is apart from man, and it always will be. Although Christ, the sum of the new creation, may be in us, that new creation will remain in Christ, and we are only in it by reason of our union with Him. He becomes the fullness of everything in us, but the practical outworking of that fullness will ever, and always, be purely and solely on a basis of faith. If the thing could be said at any time to have its origin in us, then faith would be dismissed. If we had it in ourselves, if it were our constitution, faith would be dispensed with. That would result in a repetition of us....

The difficulty which we shall be meeting all along the way will be ourselves. We shall find that the main obstacle, the main enemy to our fullness in Christ, to all that the new creation means, will be ourselves in some way. It will either be our self-occupation – which is but a form of trying to be something fine, something in ourselves which will bring satisfaction to God – or it will be our self-effort in service. It will be this natural life of ours cropping up in some direction or another, and as it crops up it will cut clean in between us and the "all things" which are of God, and we shall find that it is ourself which brings us up short, which creates the arrest.... If we look within ourselves to find more good, we are going to look in vain. We shall never find anything in ourselves but corruption. Is that really settled with us? On both sides, the people who have some opinion of themselves had better settle it once and for all that there is nothing in them but corruption, and also those who have settled it, and yet are so occupied with their old man as though it were something really worth being occupied with. Put it where the Lord Jesus has put it, in the grave, and do not walk round it, turning it over, if peradventure you might find something worthwhile. Fix and fasten your faith in God's Son, and leave yourself alone for ever. Only so will you find your emancipation.

Abundant Life: by Henry Blackaby

 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.      John 10:10

Jesus warns us to be on guard for thieves who will try to rob us of what God has for us. Jesus wants us to enjoy abundant life (John 10:10). Since the time of Adam and Eve, people have had to choose whom to believe. Satan convinced Adam and Eve that forfeiting their obedience to God would gain them everything. Instead, their disobedience robbed them of all they had. For the rest of their lives they experienced only a fraction of the blessings God had intended. Scripture is replete with accounts of those who forfeited their inheritance as children of God in order to gain that which was transitory and empty.

The world seeks to convince you that you will find fulfillment if you adopt its standard of morality for your marriage, raising your children, advancing your career, or pursuing pleasure. If you believe this, you will never experience the blessings God intended for you. Sin brings death (Rom. 6:23). It is tragic to listen to the voices of the world instead of to the One who created life and who wants you to experience life to its fullest.

Jesus wants you to live your life with security, knowing that you are a beloved child of God. If you are not experiencing love, joy, and peace, you have settled for less than what God intends for you. If you have been making excuses for why you are not experiencing an abundant and joyful life, determine today to settle for nothing less than God’s best for your life. Stop following the world’s way of finding satisfaction. Instead, listen to the Savior’s voice, and you will find true fulfillment.

How To Acquire Wisdom: by Andrew Murray

 

1 Corinthians 2:4-7
 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power,
 so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
 No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
1 Corinthians 2:10
 but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
1 Corinthians 2:12-15
 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.
 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.
 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
 The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:

In this passage Paul contrasted the spirit of the world and the Spirit of God. It was in seeking knowledge that man fell. It was in the pride of knowledge that heathenism had its origin: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).

Man’s wisdom is incapable of understanding God or His wisdom. Because his heart is alienated from God his mind is darkened. Even when in Christ the light of God in its divine love shone upon men, they knew it not and saw no beauty in it.

Divine revelation, as Paul discussed it in this chapter, means three things. God must make known in His Word what He thinks and does. Every preacher who is to communicate the message must continually be taught by the Spirit how to speak it. And every hearer needs the inward illumination. As we have the mind and attitudes of Christ, we can discern the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.

Reject the spirit of the world still in you with its wisdom and self-confidence. Come, in poverty of spirit, to be led by the Spirit. “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2). The Spirit will teach a transformed, renewed life that wants only to know God’s perfect will. Deny your own fleshly wisdom. Wait for the wisdom in the inward parts that God has promised (Psalm 51:6). You will increasingly be able to testify of the things that have not entered into the hearts of men and will understand that “God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.”

We Make Religion Easy for the Moral Rebel: by AW TOZER

 

And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. Acts 5:41

The story of the earliest Christians is a story of faith under fire. The opposition was real. To continue “steadfastly” as Luke records was to continue against serious opposition. Steadfastness is required only when we are under attack, mental or physical.

Those first believers turned to Christ with the full understanding that they were espousing an unpopular cause that could cost them everything. Shortly after Pentecost some were jailed, many lost all their earthly goods, a few were slain outright and hundreds were “scattered abroad.”

They could have escaped all this by the simple expedient of denying their faith and turning back to the world; but this they steadfastly refused to do.

Here again is seen the glaring discrepancy between biblical Christianity and that of present-day evangelicals, particularly in the United States. To make converts we are forced to play down the difficulties and play up the peace of mind and worldly success enjoyed by those who accept Christ!

We will never be completely honest with our hearers until we tell them the blunt truth that as members of a race of moral rebels they are in a serious jam, and one they will not get out of easily. If they refuse to repent and believe on Christ they will most surely perish; if they do turn to Him, the same enemies that crucified Him will try to crucify them.

Life is a Person: by TA Sparks

 

Galatians 6:14

May I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world has been crucified, and the world's interest in me has also died.

You can have Christian law just as much as you can have Mosaic law; you can be in bondage in Christianity just as much as men were in Judaism. Christianity can be made into an imposed system just as much as Mosaic law was, and there are many Christians today who live under the fear of the "Thou shalt" and the "Thou shalt not" of a legalistic conception of the Christian life. You can take the Bible as God's standard for your life and try to fulfill it and yet still be burdened with a sense of constant failure. It is God's standard, and it is a very exhaustive one which leaves no part of the practical life untouched, but those who make the effort to try to live up to it only end in disillusion. No, it is not just a matter of a Book but of a Person, the Person who did live up to that standard, absolutely fulfilling every least demand with the most perfect success, so satisfying God to the full. By His death He has delivered us from the bondage of legal demands. This same Person now lives in us by His Holy Spirit, seeking to work out that perfect will of God not on the basis of some binding instructions from without but as a living force within. We have the law written in our hearts. To be in Christ is a matter of Life and not of legalism.

Christ, and Christ crucified, is the power of God to bring deliverance from sin, from the flesh, from the law and from the world. "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14). Paul was not glorying that he could enjoy so much of the world and yet have a clear conscience, but was enthusiastic about having been delivered from the world. For believers the only possible way of staying in this world is to know that they no longer belong to it.

Are You Spiritual or Carnal? by Andrew Murray

 

1 Corinthians 3:1-3
 Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly--mere infants in Christ.
 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.
 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?

In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul contrasted the believer as spiritual with the unregenerate as the natural (or physical) man. He supplemented that teaching by telling the Corinthians that though they had the Spirit, he could not call them spiritual. The word spiritual belongs to those who have not only received the Spirit, but have also yielded themselves to Him to possess and rule their whole life. Those who have not done this, in whom the power of the flesh is still more manifest than that of the Spirit, must not be called spiritual, but fleshly or carnal.

There are thus three states in which a man may be found. The unregenerate is still the natural man, not having the Spirit of God. The regenerate, who is still a babe in Christ, is the carnal man, giving way to the power of the flesh. The believer in whom the Spirit has obtained full supremacy is the spiritual man. This whole passage from Corinthians is suggestive of rich instruction in regard to the life of the Spirit within us.

All that is carnal and sinful, the works of the flesh, must be cast out. Also, all that is carnal (however religious it appears), all confidence in the flesh, and all self-effort must be rooted out. The soul must be brought into the subjection of Jesus Christ. In daily dependence on God, the Holy Spirit must be accepted, waited for, and followed.

By walking in faith and obedience, we may count on the Holy Spirit to do a divine work within us. “If we live in the Spirit”—this is the faith that is needed. If we believe that God’s Spirit dwells in us, “let us also walk in the Spirit.” This is the obedience that God requires. By faith in the Holy Spirit within us, we have sufficient strength to walk by the Spirit and yield ourselves to His mighty power. Then He can work in us to will and to do all that is pleasing in God’s sight.

Galatians 5:25
 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.