Listening To Ourselves
To exalt and rely on our feelings is what Lloyd-Jones called listening to ourselves instead of talking to ourselves. “Have you realized,” he observed, “that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”
I agree. Let me explain what Mr. Lloyd-Jones means by “listening to yourself.” If you’re anything like me, there’s a good chance you do it every day. You know the routine. Every morning the alarm clock erupts, demanding attention.
Make it stop … make it stop!You hit the snooze button.
A precious eight minutes of floating, timeless oblivion pass. Then the grating alarm starts again. You open your eyes and the “listening” begins.
Today is…Thursday. Oh, no, sales meeting this morning! Yet another chance to see more incompetence in the company.
You roll over. But there’s no more rest as you remember the weird noise the car started making yesterday… and the checkbook that needs balancing…and all the sarcasm expressed around the dinner table last night.
Life is just one big broken, whirring mess…
You slip out of bed. You know you should exercise, but your back is sore. Forget it.
As your bare feet hit the cold bathroom floor, the voice picks up its pace.
Can’t anyone in this family learn to put the toothpaste back?
There’s so much to do today, and you know you should pray.
But I haven’t got time.
You didn’t pray yesterday either.
No time.
You stare in the mirror.
Oh, I feel so drained …
The fleeting thought recurs that it might help to spend a few moments in prayer and reading the Scriptures.
But God feels so distant…
On a daily basis we’re faced with two simple choices. We can either listen to ourselves and our constantly changing feelings about our circumstances, or we can talk to ourselves about the unchanging truth of who God is and what He’s accomplished for us at the cross through His Son Jesus.
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