Talking To yourself - Part 1
Telling Yourself The Truth
The bible is not just a book of truth; it is "The Truth". I believe that as people learn how to live by the principles of the bible, they will become happier and more content. The Word has already been tried; it has been time-tested. It has endured the heat of the most violent furnace, and it alone can help you live with the one person you have to live with your whole life – yourself.
Truth is under attack today. And even though God’s truth is the only way to destroy the strongholds of evil in the minds of men and women, the world is asking the same question that Pilate asked before he condemned Jesus (see John 18:38).
Most of us want to be individuals that can handle life well. In spite of the ups and downs, the mistakes, the triumphs and tragedies, we want to feel good about ourselves. Unfortunately, most individuals try everything else except "The Truth".
We try success, money, power, pleasure and prosperity. And when we reach what we consider our goal, it is not at all what we thought it would be. We are supposed to be happy, but we are not. We strive, work hard and give it our best shot, but we still miss out on what life is all about.
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night Psalms 1:1.
Whatever our definition of happiness is, if it leaves God out, either we won’t stay happy or we will be empty in the deepest corners of our being. We will end up a helpless victim trapped within the circumstances and events we all create when we leave out God’s truth.
I truly believe that God wants us to be happy, but we must
start with ourselves. I’m not talking about who our neighbor says we are; or who
our church member or co-worker says we are. But who we really are.
Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free John 8:32. Those words are as true today as it was when Jesus spoke them. But we must take the truth and tell it to ourselves. We must put truth in our value system; we must meditate on it until it consumes us.
Jesus is the living Truth. The bible is the written Truth. If we are to ever get a handle on what it means to truly live free, we will need to take a spiritual broom and sweep out the religious lies and spiritual misbelief that cripples and enslaves us. Only then can we hope to discover what truth can do for us. Only then will we learn where truth will lead us. Only then will life reveal to us what it means to live free.
When we are unhappy, we often blame others. We place the burden for our disappointments on our wives, husbands or kids. We suggest that our job no longer satisfies, our friends use us, our church is boring or our pastor is a hypocrite. We blame everything and everybody instead of listening to what we are telling ourselves.
As long as we are on this side of heaven, there will always be something in our lives that we would like to change. Nobody has perfect circumstances. But we tell ourselves, "My circumstances should be perfect." More and more I hear about couples that have been married for twenty and twenty-five years facing divorce. They are throwing away everything they worked so hard and so long to obtain. Life suddenly becomes extremely painful, sad and unhappy. Listen friend. No matter what is going on, giving up is not an answer, and hating yourself is not a solution.
Instead of thinking about who hurt you, think about God. We know that He is working something good. Instead of saying, "I’m such a failure; I’m no good, so lonely and miserable", tell yourself, "It’s true that my marriage failed, but God still loves me"; "I handled that situation in a terrible way, but God still has a plan for me"; "I’m hurting right now but I can still function".
Christians talk a lot about unbelief. Any problem that happens in life, we explain away by saying, "We need more faith, just believe harder." But the real problem is not unbelief, it is "misbelief". Misbelief is what we tell ourselves about our problems. If we were to stop and think about why we feel so bad, it is what we tell ourselves about whatever happened to us and not what actually happened.
If we are feeling depressed over a divorce, we need to look at what we are telling ourselves about the divorce. Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not making light of divorce. I am talking about correcting misbelief so that we can be healed emotionally. Most often we consider ourselves a useless, miserable reject that messes up everything. That is why we are depressed, because of the lies we tell ourselves. If I felt that way about myself, I would feel depressed too. We don’t need to change the circumstances; we need to change what we are telling ourselves.
We may have failed, but that doesn’t make us a failure. It’s not the end and it’s not over. God loves us deeply, and He is committed to us unconditionally. Our lives have many more opportunities, and God can use any one of them gives us victory.
Remove the negative. Instead of saying "I am miserable", say, "I feel terrible about what happened, but I will handle it better next time". We should never say that we are useless and unloved. It’s nonsense to believe those lies when the God of the universe created us. In Him we have everything that we need to succeed.
Human emotion is not determined by our circumstances, but by what we believe about our circumstances. So as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. We have so much mental and emotional energy, that our thinking can sink us.
"I’m having problems because of what happened to me in my childhood". Have you ever heard that? It’s not the events in your childhood that makes you miserable, but what we tell ourselves about those events. We can tell ourselves truth or lies. It’s true that the abuse you suffered in childhood was unjust, but it is a new day with new opportunities. We suffer so much because of the lies we tell ourselves about events in our life. Negative thinking causes us a lot of emotional turmoil.
According to the bible, if possible the devil will deceive then very elect ones Matthew 24:24. If we believe a lie, we are deceived. If we believe that we can’t do anything right, then when we make a mistake (which everybody does), we will feel horrible. To feel good, we will have to never make a mistake. We can’t live under that type of pressure. We have to allow ourselves room to make a mistake.
If we tell ourselves that our neighbors dislikes us and is a no good bum, then we will treat him that way. If our neighbor dislikes us, that’s his problem. I want people to like me; to admire me. But it’s not how they feel about me that causes destruction on my life, it’s how I feel.
We don’t have to please everybody. If everybody doesn’t approve of us, that doesn’t mean we are awful. I want to have God’s approval, because ultimately, that’s all that matters.
I want to challenge you to start listening to what you are telling yourself. See if you can identify the misbelief, then correct it. You will find that things aren’t as bad as they seem.
Edmund Brown