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Preaching the Gospel to Ourselves

 What is the point of preaching the Gospel?  Well one might say, "I preach the Gospel so that people might be saved."  For years I would have said the same thing.  The Gospel is the starting place for the life of Christ and once a person receives Christ the Gospel is left behind for the deeper truths of the Scriptures.  Only in recent years has my attitude changed.  The Gospel is not the just the beginning, but also the middle and the end of the Christian life.  As a result, I preach the Gospel to myself each and every day.  This not with the goal being saved again and again and again.  Rather, I preach the Gospel to keep my life centred on that Gospel.  I would suggest that preaching the Gospel to our selves daily is important for several reasons.

1.  Preaching the Gospel to myself daily results in daily praise to my wonderful God and Saviour.  The old cliché says that familiarity breeds contempt.  I might not go that far, but certainly familiarity produces a forgetfulness.  It is too easy for me to forget the depth of my depravity before Christ.  It is too easy to forget how desperately I needed God's grace.  It is too easy to forget the wonder of God's love that saved a wretch like me.  Preaching the Gospel to myself constantly reminds me of the grandeur of God's love and causes my heart to overflow in adoration to the one who gave himself for me.

2.  Preaching the Gospel to myself daily keeps me humble.  The converse of the previous point - the Gospel magnifies Christ - not me.  I was and still am totally and completely in need of Jesus.  I could not save myself.  I needed Christ to do it for me.  In the same way that reminds me that I still cannot do anything to please God on my own.  I still desperately need Jesus every day to continue and finish His good work in me.

3.  Preaching the Gospel to myself daily defeats the lies of the enemy.  We live in a feelings oriented age.  I constantly hear brothers and sisters in Christ speak of the faith life in terms of feelings.  I believe this is a trick of the evil one.  There are many days that I don't feel like a Christian.  There are times when I am more in the pit than on the mountaintop.  At those times the enemy comes and whispers in my mind.  "You don't know Jesus.  A real Christian wouldn't feel like that or do that."  By preaching the Gospel to myself, I put the lie to those whispers.  My salvation is not based on how I feel.  It is based on the fact - the truth - that Jesus died in my place on the cross.  My feelings and circumstances are in constant flux, but the one who saved me - Jesus - is the same yesterday, today and forever.  I trust Him to complete the work He has begun in me.

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