“This I know, that God is for me.”
OK, I’ll own it. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. When it comes to photography, Shannan has a much better eye than me. I write “re-read” in the margin of my books because I didn’t get it the first time. And it only took me 40 years to learn the lesson I’m going to share with you today.
I serve Lancaster Bible College | Capital Seminary & Graduate School as president. I have a background in higher education, but the better part of my working years have been in the church, most notably as a pastor with responsibilities for preaching and teaching. For years I’ve told others:
“God gave me this work to do because I need the messages the most.”
That’s not false humility. Samuel Johnson said, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” Amen to that. I needed those weekly gospel reminders of God’s presence, grace, forgiveness, power, majesty, and invitation to community.
All those years I was preaching to others I was preaching to myself. But last week, that truth came home in a different way.
Last week was loaded with responsibilities, culminating with a very busy and very important Friday. Friday was Charger Day, an opportunity for prospective students, their families and friends to visit and taste college life at LBC. That day we also had the administration from another college visiting our campus to “pick our brains.”
Our team had asked me to bring the message for Charger Day chapel. Not a problem (so I thought), but I was struggling throughout my preparation. I considered multiple things I might share until finally landing on the message, “The Most Important Preacher.”
The message comes from Psalm 56 where David, mired in struggles of his own, is “preaching to himself.” In his book, Note To Self, Joe Thorn defines this all-important discipline:
To preach to yourself is to challenge yourself, push yourself, and point yourself to the truth. It is not so much uncovering new truth as much as it is reminding yourself of the truth you tend to forget.
Why is this such an essential part of the Christian life? Let me extend my thanks to Paul Tripp at this point. Paul explains:
No one is more influential in your life than you are, because no one talks to you more than you do. Whether you realize it or not, you are engaged in an unending conversation with yourself. What you say to yourself is formative for the way you live. You are constantly talking to yourself about your identity, spirituality, functionality, mentality, personality, and so on. You are constantly preaching to yourself some kind of gospel.
This is so important! Repeat after me: As my preaching goes, so I go. Unfortunately for me, the days leading up to chapel my preaching was not going particularly well.
I have been experiencing a few post-Covid health challenges. Fatigue and dizzy spells have been my unwelcome guests. The day before and the day of Charger Day, the dizziness was more acute. I asked some friends to pray for me. With all these guests, I definitely wanted to stay vertical throughout the day.
Mind you, I’m preaching about the importance of preaching to oneself. And if there ever were a time when I needed to preach to myself it was now: Multiple responsibilities, pesky health challenges, 300 or so guests coming on our campus, another college visiting us. So I went into my study for some last-minute sermon review and thought to myself: “Yep, this is why God has me preaching.”
And then, as if the clouds parted to reveal the sun in all its glory, I had a moment of clarity about this matter of preaching to myself.
For all these years — even as I gave messages like the one I was about to deliver on preaching to myself — I was still framing God’s work through the lens of Sunday (or in this case, Friday). Yes, I knew the truth about preaching to myself. I had preached about preaching to myself. And even though I had “preached to myself,” I was still equating the discipline with the day.
It was as if God’s whispered, “Tommy, you don’t need a preaching assignment or a pulpit to deliver a message.”
David certainly didn’t! In fact, his circumstances made mine look tame. David was in enemy territory, running for his life from Saul, the King who should have been protecting him. Afraid, but unafraid, in his moment of peril, David reminds himself (preaches to himself) the truth about God:
8 You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your book?
9 Then my enemies will turn back
in the day when I call.
This I know, that God is for me.
10 In God, whose word I praise,
in the Lord, whose word I praise,
11 in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
What can man do to me?
Psalm 56:8-11 ESV
David did not wait for a Sunday preacher or a Sunday sermon. He stepped into the pulpit of his heart, defied his own feelings of frustration and doubt, and spoke truth to himself.
God has given me the “formal preaching job,” but he wants me to preach to myself every day, in good times and bad, when it’s easy and when it’s hard. It is my assignment.
He’s giving you that job too. So thank God for your preacher. Pray for your preacher! Listen to your preacher! But by all means, don’t wait for Sunday. You don’t need a Sunday preacher to hear God’s message. Do what the psalmist did, do what David did — preach God’s truth to yourself — and preach it often.
The most important preacher you’ll ever hear is you.