One of the most useful practices I’ve learned in the Christian life is preaching to yourself. I first learned about this in Spiritual Depression by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Lloyd-Jones shows that the Psalmist in Psalms 42 and 43 preaches God’s truth to himself when he becomes discouraged. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve begun that downward spiral into despair and been rescued by preaching God’s promises to myself (over and over again).

I’ve learned, though, that I need to preach to myself whenever I’m tempted to sin, not merely when I feel down. Too often we cave into temptation without a fight. Yet, I find that I make progress in resisting temptation when I repeatedly and consistently preach God’s Word to myself.

You don’t need to be an orator or Bible scholar to preach to yourself. In fact, you don’t even need to talk out loud (that would actually be a little scary for the people around you). What you do need to do is find a portion of Scripture that is relevant to the temptaion you’re facing and tell yourself what it says. After you tell yourself what God’s Word says about this particular situation, tell yourself again and again and again. Reason with yourself. Question your motives. Remind yourself of the consequences and remember that the pleasures sin offers are fleeting.

Although it’s helpful to find a passage that deals with the particular temptation you’re dealing with (anger, doubt, lust, worry, etc) I almost always end up in Romans 6. Romans 6 provides context for the Christian’s fight against sin.

When I’m being tempted to sin I’ll remind myself that I’ve died to sin (verse 2). My old self was crucified with Christ so that I would no longer be a slave to sin (verse 6). I’ll often say things like, “You hear that Ryan? God has done this amazing work for and in you so that you are no longer a slave to sin! You don’t have to do this.”

But there’s so much more to preach to myself from this passage. Because of all that God has done don’t let sin reign in your body (verse 12), don’t continue presenting yourself as a slave to sin, but rather as a slave to God (verse 13), and realize that sin is no longer your master (verse 14).

After I’ve preached to myself about why I don’t have to give in to this temptation I like to be reminded that sin is not rewarding. In fact, it is deadly (verses 21, 23).

So, after all that preaching my hope is that I begin to see that giving into temptation would be the height of folly. It would mean that I’m turning my back on all that God has done for me. It’s a denial of the work of grace God has done in me through Christ. At this point I may have to continue preaching to myself, but progress is being made and the temptaion’s allure is diminishing.

Th next time you are tempted to sin begin preaching to yourself!

[tags]preaching, temptation, sin, grace, sanctification[/tags]

This entry was posted on Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 6:00 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.