Earlier this week I was ready to throw in the towel on this whole coronavirus quarantine. Like everyone else, I’ve modified routines and adopted new habits, but I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I was done, and everyone around me (which was only my wife and kids) knew it. I was weary of social-distancing and working from home and not being able to connect with the church the way I think pastors should. I was certainly grumbling and complaining, but it was more than that. I had begun to detect some subtle messages bubbling up from within my own heart and mind:
- this will never end; it’ll never get better
- God doesn’t care about your hardships and challenges
- You don’t have the strength to face this for your family, much less for your church
Then the Lord used a wise elderly saint who had prepared a devotional for the men of the church to awaken me from my slumber of self-pity (and yes, it was on a Zoom call). He read from a number of psalms during the devotional, but the one that struck me in particular was from Psalm 103. In the two opening verses of that psalm, David writes:
1Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
This psalm is noteworthy for all of the divine traits that are ascribed to the Lord (forgiving, abounding in steadfast love, righteous, just, merciful, gracious, compassionate, etc.), but these first two verses begin with the psalmist speaking to himself. It’s as if David must arrest his mind’s attention from other messages, in order to be attentive to a truly important message (namely, the one that ensues in the following verses of the psalm). He issues a command to his soul (not once but twice), to “bless the Lord”. He’s preaching to himself, dropping a Hebrew imperative on himself as if to say, “hey soul, you really should bless the Lord; and forget not all his benefits”.
Sometimes we should follow David’s example in this psalm and stop listening to ourselves so much, and start preaching to ourselves. Those messages that I was encountering earlier this week were coming from that residual flesh inside me that clings to sin and deception like a stubborn mule. We all hear ourselves saying these sorts of things all the time, and we are often wooed into believing them. We should be careful to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5), but in eschewing these untruths, we ought to replace them with God’s truth in His Word.
That’s what David is doing in Psalm 103, and it’s what the psalmist does many times throughout the Psalms. He preaches truth to his soul: “Bless the Lord, O my soul”.
So, I sat down and prepared a mini-sermon for my soul and delivered it as if I were preaching to our church. When my soul said, “this will never end; it’ll never get better”, I said, “O my soul, don’t you know that the trials of this life are only temporary (1 Peter 1:3-9), and that these “light and momentary troubles” are far outweighed by the glory that will be revealed to us (2 Cor. 4:17)?” When my soul lies to me that God doesn’t care about my hardships and challenges, I said, “O my soul, remember that “the Lord is near to the brokenhearted” (Ps. 34:18) and that He demonstrated His unquestionable, uncompromising, and unconditional love for you at Calvary.” And when my soul said, “You don’t have the strength to face this for your family, much less for your church”, I replied, “O my soul, you are correct, I don’t have the strength within myself to face this, but Christ who is in me does (Phil 4:13). And furthermore my soul, in my weakness, the power of Christ is perfected and His grace is shown to be sufficient for me (2 Cor 12:10).” And I didn’t, but I should have called for a response: “Bless the Lord, O my soul!”
What are the messages that are being hurled at you? Listening to these messages without the filter of God’s Word will (subtly over time) result in you believing them. Maybe it’s time to prepare your own little sermon and preach to your soul.
(Recommended resources to begin preaching the Gospel to yourself: “The Disciplines of Grace”, by Jerry Bridges, “Note To Self”, by Joe Thorn, “Gospel Primer”, by Milton Vincent)
Written by Ken Rucker