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. (Psalm 42:5-6a)
I say to God, my rock: "Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?"
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. (Psalm 42:9–11)
The psalms contain numerous examples of "self-talk," where the author seems to be speaking out loud through a particular situation. Have you ever noticed how your thoughts can wander down a path of their own—almost unprompted and unguided? Perhaps you wake up, and thoughts of anxiety or fear immediately enter your mind as you think about something coming up that week. Or maybe seeing someone else's success gives rise to discontent or dissatisfaction.
These struggles are caused, in part, by the vestiges of the indwelling sinful nature that still remains in us. Though we have been given a new nature in Christ, there still lingers the quivering of a not-yet-dead corpse of the old self, even as we are being renewed day by day. On this side of heaven, every believer continues to battle the remnants of the old nature.
Until our glorification, we would do well to learn what Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones calls "talking to yourself instead of listening to yourself." Commenting on Psalm 42, he writes:
"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 are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? 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 a moment, I will speak to you.'
"The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: 'Why art thou cast down?' What business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: 'Hope thou in God'—instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, who God is, what God is, what God has done, and what He has pledged Himself to do. Then, having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: 'I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.'"
(D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures, pp. 20–21)
What a simple yet profoundly biblical practice. Match the talk of your mind with a corresponding superior promise of scripture.
So when your soul is cast down, and your mind tells you that you are a victim, talk back with, "Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God" as the sons of Korah did in Psalm 42. When thoughts of anxiety insist that the future is uncertain, preach to yourself that “[my] Father knows what [I] need before [I] ask Him” (Matthew 6:8, paraphrase). When thoughts of guilt tell you that your failures define you, answer with the gospel promise that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).