Irritation one: crows. Big, pushy, ugly black crows that seem to arrive in swarms and are trying to take over our bird feeder. I wouldn't mind them so much if they'd stop scaring off the other birds, but that's just it: they're big old bullies! I bet I've opened the door and shooed them away at least twenty-five times in the past few days. Yet they're relentless...they just keep coming back and coming back and eating and scaring and bullying. And yours truly, for the first time in my life, wishes she had BB gun to shoot at those pesky birds.
Irritation two: Bingley's barking. I don't mean barking at bark-worthy objects, but BARKING BARKING BARKING at apparently random nothings that he spots outside the window. Now, I wouldn't mind if he'd bark at those annoying crows, and sometimes he does. But he also barks at some mysterious something or other he sees or hears outside (which no one else in our house can see or hear) while he's staring out our dining room windows or kitchen door window or den windows... And I should add that his bark typically occurs when all else is quiet in the house and then suddenly, DEFCOM 1! WARNING WARNING! It's an earsplitting, dead-raising BARK that always elicits a scream from his startled family.
In the above picture, we have combined my two annoyances--Bingley staring out the window while preparing for a rousing, 120 decibel bark, and a crow alighting on the bird feeder outside, preparing to bully the cardinals and eat all the food. (Can I add that I don't appreciate anybody or anything messing with my beloved cardinals.)
But all this got me to thinking. How often is our worrying and fretting and even giving in to discouragement like those crows and that barking?
Because here's the thing: what good does worrying and fretting do us? We all know the answer to that--zip, nada, nothing...save empty today of the strength and joy God meant for us to enjoy today in our ridiculous insistence on fretting about tomorrow! And worries--like crows--come in packs, don't they? You start off with one little concern, and the next thing you know, you've morphed that tiny fear into some looming, gigantic catastrophe. Ridiculous!..not to mention annoying, unhelpful, and fruitless.
Same thing with discouragement. We lose all perspective and remembrance of God's goodness and grace and faithfulness when we allow ourselves to fall into the "pitt of despond" (to quote John Bunyan). And one little disappointment can suddenly envelop all of life, coloring everything with a grey, dark cast so that we utterly fail to be thankful for God's extravagant generosity and His relentless gifts.
What do we do? Well, I know I've shared this over and over again, but we FORGET, so here it is again (for anybody out there who is a slow learner and a quick forgetter like me): PREACH TO YOURSELF!
Yes, we've heard it, but as Paul David Tripp always says, we're spiritual amnesiacs, and thus we need to be reminded again and again of the truths we know...but forget.
Stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself from God's Word!
His Word is eternal, true, and supernaturally powerful, so that's the perfect source for our preaching. We don't need to reinvent the wheel or come up with some super-duper inspirational speech. Nope, we simply open God's Word and start to preaching! Write it out. Meditate on it. Speak it out loud. Sing it. Pray it. However you do it, go to the Word and preach it to your weary, overwhelmed, burdened self.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones expresses this perfectly:
"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 start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. . . . 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 moment, I will speak to you. "
As the Psalmist in Psalm 42 declares, "Why are you downcast, 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." In other words, talk to your soul. Preach to your soul. Hit your soul with God's perfect and powerful Word!
Preach it, baby, preach it!
To God be the glory.
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