In a recent sermon, our pastor Dr. Jimmy Young rightly described every believer's great need to "preach the gospel to yourself daily." I'm so thankful for his wise exhortation, and I'm working to apply it more consistently in my own life.
One of my absolute favorite books on the planet is The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges. Few men have clarified our need for daily gospel self-preaching like Jerry Bridges. Here are some quotes from The Discipline of Grace that I hope will affect you like they have me:
"Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.
Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they have earned God’s blessing through their behavior.
Guilt-laden believers are quite sure they have forfeited God’s blessing through their lack of discipline or their disobedience.
Both have forgotten the meaning of grace because they have moved away from the gospel and have slipped into a performance relationship with God.
To preach the gospel to yourself, then, means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God’s holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.
This is the gospel by which we were saved, and it is the gospel by which we must live every day of our Christian lives…If you are not firmly rooted in the gospel and have not learned to preach it to yourself every day, you will soon become discouraged and will slack off in your pursuit of holiness."
