How’s this for a super short Psalm:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.”
That’s it—the entirety of Psalm 103. It’s a note to self, essentially reminding us that before talking to anyone else or stepping in front of a congregation of any number, we have an audience of one. Ourselves.
That’s why I want to talk about preaching to self. Some of the best messages I’ve ever given were to my own trembling soul.
Yes, out loud.
The word spoken affects the speaker first. In fact, if it doesn’t, and you try to preach anyway, it will probably turn into a performance. Listeners will find themselves impacted with your comedic wit, impeccable timing, and cleverly worded phrases. Nothing more. These fake sermons can grow a crowd, but they won’t grow people. And of course, they won’t benefit the speaker, either.
A more direct way of referring to this phenomenon is to call it false prophecy. Jeremiah the prophet mounted a complete takedown of false prophets and what really animates them in chapter 23 of his book (For a fairly thorough audio study, go to my church message False Prophets Exposed ).
This cautionary note is not for Sunday morning preachers alone. We Christians all bear the blame for speaking of things we don’t know, as though we had them in our pockets.
It’s a good idea to regularly speak strictly into our own ears. Why? Because as soon as you take the Words of Scripture into your mouth, with a desire to taste them, something happens. They speak backward into your heart and mind. In turn, the heart and mind send them forward into the mouth, and so on. The Psalms refer to this robust spiritual process as meditation. At some point during the teeter-totter of mind-heart-mouth, mouth-heart-mind, the Holy Spirit gets involved. Faith ignites.
You could say it’s akin to the rumination of a cow that coughs up cud, re-chewing, and then re-swallowing. Yes, I know that sounds gross. But it’s not gross to the cow.
Nor, in the spiritual sense, should it be strange to a Christian. During our personal handling of the Word, we’re often brought to the leveling conviction of sin, or launched into the heights of praise. We may end up fighting for the soul of another person. Or arrive at some new boldness of knowledge.
At any rate, sincerity, not falsehood, sprouts in this “garden.”
And so does real food.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer
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