Let me the set the scene for you:

Blue lights line the back of the stage. Three spotlights shine on the front of the stage.  It is a packed house. There I am, in the middle of it all with my microphone and a glass of water.

I tell my first joke, and the crowd erupts with laughter.  I keep telling one joke after another and the crowd is dying with uncontrollable laughter.  I hear something behind me that gets my attention —  I turn and see my wife doubled over in laughter.  Laughing at me.

You see,  In my head I was on a stage.  But in actuality, I was in front of the mirror in our bedroom.  I was mouthing my jokes to an audience that was in my head.  My wife asked what I was doing and I had to answer, “I was imagining myself telling jokes to a comedy club.”

As funny as this story is, we all are having conversations with ourselves.  Some of us have learned to just not move our lips when we are having that conversation.  In fact I would say the person you and I talk to the most– is to ourselves.

It is within this inner dialogue that we preach to ourselves one of two things:

    1.  A gospel that we don’t have enough time, energy, money, talent, life, moral fortitude, holiness, resistance of temptation, Bible knowledge, church attendance, serving in a ministry, giving… (The list can keep going on and on.)
      Or..

    2.  A gospel that puts Christ in the middle of it all.  That He is enough. That He fills in all of our lack. That His righteousness is what brings us into right standing with God.  That His life is enough.

I love how Paul David Tripp writes in his devotional New Morning Mercies, “We either preach to ourselves a gospel of aloneness, poverty, and inability or the true gospel of God’s presence, power, and constant provision.”

Today read Psalm 42 and got a glimpse of the Psalmists heart as he is going through intense pain.  (Some scholars believed that this Psalm was written by King David when he was hiding in caves again because his son, Absalom, had taken the throne.)  What you will find when you read this Psalm is that the writer even though he is going through terrible circumstances, he always comes back to this thought, ‘I will put my hope in God!’

When life gets discouraging which Gospel will you preach?  A gospel of “I don’t have enough?” or a gospel that “Christ is all I need.”

When a doctor’s report comes,  a friend turns their back on you, or your dream job chooses someone else.  What message will you preach to yourself?

When fear and anxiety rear their head. What message will you preach?

When the kids are out of control and the marriage seems too far gone. What message will you preach?

You see the gospel doesn’t try to cause us to deny reality, but on the contrary it wants to embrace Christ in our circumstances.  So today, and tomorrow and the day after that preach to yourself a gospel that says, “I know that ____________________ (fill in your own blank with your own circumstances), but, I will put my hope in God!”