The Art and Necessity of Sanctifying Self-Talk

The Art and Necessity of Sanctifying Self-Talk

If you look at a list of the “spiritual disciplines” (the holy habits that help us grow deeper in our faith), you’ll find a pretty standard array:

·         Bible study

·         Evangelism

·         Fasting (never my favorite)

·         Journaling

·         Meditation

·         Service

·         Silence and solitude (a novel idea in our hyper-connected world)

·         Worship (both personal and corporate)

But I’ve been thinking recently about another holy habit I’d like to add to the list: sanctifying self-talk.

We all need to talk to ourselves sometimes.

Sometimes we need to “talk ourselves down off the ledge,” that is, talk ourselves out of doing something we know would be a bad idea. We often must do this when we’re facing temptation.

Sometimes we need to talk ourselves into doing something we don’t want to do. When I was a teacher, there was always that one period in the day – usually right after lunch – when the students were less attentive and more disruptive. I always had to psych myself up to go into that classroom and take charge without losing my cool (always a tricky balance for a classroom teacher).

Back in the beginning days of the pandemic, we stepped away from our sermon series and did a short series on the Psalms. As soon as I learned that we would be preaching our favorite psalms, I knew which one I wanted to preach first, Psalm 42. One of my favorite examples of sanctifying self-talk is in that psalm:

 Why are you cast down, O my soul,

    and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

    my salvation and my God. (v. 5-6a)

Here is God’s man having a conversation with himself, reminding himself of what he knows to be true in his mind but is uncertain of in his emotions: even though things look bleak, he remembers that he has put his hope in God.

When you see the psalmist talking to himself this way, do you get the sense that he is vacillating between hope and despair? I don’t think so. What we see here a realistic assessment of his own emotional state. He acknowledges that he is tempted to despair. And in full awareness of the state of his mind and emotions, he reminds himself to put his hope in God.

 When I was doing research for that sermon, I found that the words translated “Why are you cast down…?” literally mean “Why do you bow down?” The psalmist correctly sees his dilemma as a temptation to idolatry, a temptation to turn away from worshiping the one true God and bow down to something else.

As the psalmist shows us, we can even make an idol of our despair: we can give up and decide that it is futile to hope. There are times when we can descend into bitterness so deeply that we identify with our despair and find ourselves defending our despair against hope.

The psalmist reminds us instead to make the conscious, deliberate choice to turn and put our hope in the God of Israel, the covenant-making God who keeps His promises.

Like all disciplines, sanctifying self-talk might seem awkward and forced at first.

When I was teaching my son to drive, I told him that at the beginning it is overwhelming because you have to think about so many things at one time: where other cars are, how fast they are going, where you are in your lane, your own speed, signs, traffic signals, which pedal is “go” and which one is “stop,” etc. After a while, though, those aspects of driving become sub-conscious (which is why you can get in the car to drive home from work, then find yourself in your driveway without any conscious memory of the drive home!)

The same thing is true as you are building the holy habit of sanctifying self-talk: it is likely to feel awkward and mechanical at first, but over time it will become more and more natural. So if you’ve never given yourself a sanctifying self-talk, don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t feel right at first. It will get easier over time.

This is another reason it is so valuable to commit Scripture to memory. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to quote Psalm 42:5 to myself when things looked bleak: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul, why are thou discomforted within me?” as the King James Version so eloquently puts it.

And this is another way we can disciple one another. The NT has more than fifty “one another” exhortations, where we are encouraged to be God’s sanctifying tool in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ. We’ve already seen it in our study of the Thessalonian epistles: “Comfort one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:13).

So the next time you realize your point of view is getting skewed, make it your purpose to talk back to yourself. Remind yourself of the steadfast love of God and His promise to finish His sanctifying work in your life.

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship