l| a time to be silent and a time to speak |l

Fighting for Joy

5 Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him
For the help of His countenance.
~ Psalm 42 (NKJV)



Quoting from John Piper's 'When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy'

Among the many things [Martyn] Lloyd-Jones sees in this verse in that the psalmist is preaching to himself. He applies this to us:

"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 are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man's treatment (in Psalm 42) was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. 'Why art thou cast down, 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.'

And he continues,

So Lloyd-Jones gets specific and gets tough:

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 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 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 shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.'