This morning, I wanna talk about a vital discipline in the Christian life that is foundational to the keeping of our hearts. And you could call this various things, but I have called it here, speaking truth to our hearts. So that's the discipline that I want us to consider this morning, speaking truth to our hearts, or you could even say speaking truth in our hearts. And what I'm talking about here is truth, that is the truth. So truth that comes from God, the living and the true God. He is the truth and we have the truth revealed in the word of God. So what we are talking about is speaking truth, the truth of God's word to our hearts and applying it to our hearts. And before we begin to think about this, I want us to read familiar words. And I read some of these verses yesterday, but if you have a copy of the scriptures, Psalm 119 is where we will begin our thinking on this theme of speaking truth to our hearts. Psalm 119 verses nine to 16, the second stanza in this Psalm. If you're familiar with this lengthy psalm, you'll know that its focus is upon the Word of God. Psalm 119, verses 9 to 16. We read, how can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your word. With my whole heart I have sought you. Oh, let me not wander from your commandments. Your word I have hidden in my heart. that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips I have declared all the judgments of your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and contemplate your ways. I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word. How can a young man cleanse his way? Or how can a young man keep his way pure? Really, how can any person? It's not just for young men or young women, but how can anybody keep their way pure? How can we live a life pleasing to God? We could put it that way. And to make this more personal, how can you or I live our lives in such a way that is pleasing to God in all of the ups and downs of life to keep walking with God in purity and in uprightness. And in answering this question, the psalmist focuses on that which must guide our lives, which must be the regulating principle of our lives, and that's the Word of God. So look how he answers. How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your Word, or by guarding it according to the Word of God. So we need to have our lives guarded and guided by the Word of God. And as we're thinking about keeping our hearts, we say, if we're going to keep our hearts with God and from sin, then we need our lives guarded and guided by the Word of God. And that Word, if we are to take heed to it, needs to be deeply in us. And so that's why he says, your word I have hidden in my heart, deep within my heart, that I might not sin against you. How does the word of God, just think about this, how does the word of God do this in our lives? How does it guard our way and it keep us from sin? Because it doesn't happen automatically as if all you need to do is read the Word of God or to know it and believe it. It's not something automatic. If you're cooking something, it's not enough just to know the recipe. That's not gonna put the food on the table. You have to execute it. You have to go through the steps. There needs to be application, and that's the case in the Word of God. It's not automatic that the Word of God will guard our ways and keep it pure, but it must be applied. And that, of course, includes our obedience to the Word of God, that we're not just hearers of the Word, but we're doers of the Word, as James says. But it's not even just that. We have to think about the Word of God and dwell upon it and meditate upon it and to get it deeply within us. So that is necessary here. We have to let the Word of God work in us and to work on us. The Word which is described in Hebrews chapter four in this way, the Word of God is living and powerful. and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." This is what we need, this living and powerful Word of God. We need it to work in us and on us. And I believe that what the psalmist has in mind here, especially as he's talking about, well, how can a young man cleanse his way by taking heed according to the word, and your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you, I think what he has in mind here includes the discipline that I want us to consider, which is speaking truth to our hearts. So that the truth that's hidden in his heart The psalmist is speaking to his heart or speaking in his heart by meditation. Look at verse 15. If you have this open, he says, I will meditate on your precepts and contemplate your ways. He has hidden it in his heart. And then he meditates upon the word of God that he might not sin against God. And this is no small part of the psalmist fight against sin and his endeavors to walk with God. And that's true for us. this meditation, this speaking truth to our hearts. So what I wanna do this morning is to briefly define what I mean by speaking truth to our hearts and then to demonstrate that a little bit so that we can understand and we can walk away and do this. So let's think first about speaking truth to our hearts. Speaking truth to our hearts. The biblical concept of the heart is much more broad than we often think. So if we are talking about the heart in our day and age, a lot of people will associate the heart almost exclusively with emotions and especially the emotion of love. So that if we want to say that we love something, it's a video or something else somebody has posted, a text message you've received, we have a heart icon for that. Or there's other ways. We're writing a letter to someone. I heart you. So we use the heart, the image of a heart, to say love. We love this or we love that. But when you look at the Bible, the concept of the heart includes much more than that. It's much more broad. And it's not just our emotions, though it does include that. Our emotions come from the heart, but also it includes our minds. and it includes our wills, our volition, the things that we plan. We plan in our hearts. So when we're talking about speaking truth to our hearts, we're talking about speaking truth to our whole inner person. and especially to our minds. I mentioned this verse yesterday, but Romans 12 too. Paul is saying, how are we transformed? He says, be transformed. And he's talking about your whole person being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Again, that word was noose. But by the renewing of your mind, so that's, the heart includes our minds. And when we're speaking truth to our hearts, the mind is essential. Several years ago, one of my pastors, Jim Sebastia, if you all know him, he led us through a series on spiritual depression. And he was using a book by that title, by Martin Lloyd-Jones. And there was a concept that really gripped me and has stuck with me to this day. And the concept is listening to ourselves versus talking to ourselves. So he's saying we listen too much to ourselves rather than talking to ourselves. And he gives the example from Psalm 42 and 43 where the psalmist, there's this refrain in these two psalms which really go together. Why are you cast down, oh my soul? And then he speaks to himself, hope in God. Listen to Martin Lloyd-Jones on this. He says, 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 there talking to you. They bring back the problems of yesterday. Somebody's talking. Who's talking? Yourself 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 are you cast down, oh my soul, he says. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you. Then he continues and he gets really to the point that I'm trying to make. He says that the main art and the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand. In other words, you have to take control of yourself. You have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul, why are you cast down? What business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, or admonish yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself, hope in God, instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God. who God is, and what God is, His attributes, and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. That's basically what I'm talking about. That's what I need when we're saying, speaking truth to our hearts. In a copy of the book I have of Flavel's Keeping the Heart, J.I. Packer has written an introduction, and he gives another term to this idea of preaching to ourselves or speaking truth to our hearts, and he calls it admonitory meditation. So we're meditating, but we're also admonishing ourselves, exhorting ourselves from the word of God. It's engaging our minds with what he calls key lines of thought from the Word of God in order to keep our hearts. And he uses the language, Packer does, of deploying these key lines of thought in our minds. As if, to me at least, it suggests military language. So if you have troops and you're deploying troops, what are you doing? You are putting troops, you're sending them out strategically, placing them on the battlefield. in order to do battle and of course to win. So when we are deploying these key lines of thought in our minds, the battlefield is our minds. And we need to understand that the mind is a key battlefield in the Christian life. And so we strategically need to be deploying the truths of God's word in our minds that we might guard our hearts with all diligence. I think most of you will have experienced this before, but there are key lines of thought that, when deployed in your mind, help you to keep a close walk with God. There are certain truths of God's Word, and maybe you even have certain scriptures that you call to mind in order to comfort you. or times when maybe you're doubting, you're possibly in this sort of spiritual depression. There's key truths, I'm sure that you have, that you have spoken to yourself. that can encourage you, that can silence doubt and calm your fears. You might turn to Psalm 23. That's a beloved Psalm that many people have used, especially in their dying days, as they see, as they're in the valley of the shadow of death, they're speaking truth to their hearts. God is with me. The Lord is my shepherd. But there's also key lines of thought in the Word of God that will not only keep us with God and comfort us and help us, but bring us back to God when we've wandered from God. So the Word of God, we have all these lines of thought we ought to deploy in our minds to keep us with God and to call us back to God and faithfulness when we have begun to wander. So this admonitory meditation or speaking truth to our hearts is in effect, says Packer, talking to ourselves before the Lord, reminding ourselves of truths about the ways of God and the grace of Christ that will energize and stabilize us for a return to and continuation on the path of faithfulness, no matter what. So often it's truths that we already know, And we need to remind ourselves. Much of what I do in preaching, I understand I'm not bringing anything new to people. There might be some people who, for them, this is new. They've never heard this portion of scripture. Maybe they're new to the faith. But much of what I do is just reminding God's people of the truths they know and pressing them home again, because that's what we often need, to remind ourselves of truths that can help energize and stabilize us in the Christian life. So really, in other words, we're reminding ourselves of truths that will help us, in the words of the psalmist, to cleanse our way, to keep our way pure. Now, I want you to understand this discipline isn't the invention of clever men like J.I. Packer or Flavel. This is something we find in the Word of God. So Psalm 42 and 43 was the example that Lloyd-Jones was using of this man speaking to himself, hope in God. But I want to give you just a couple more examples to show you that this is a thoroughly biblical practice. You don't have to turn there, but Psalm 73 is a psalm where we see Asaph doing this. And if you're not familiar with the psalm, Asaph is very troubled. He's vexed in his mind because he's looking at the prosperity of the wicked and he's not seeing any judgment. It's troubling him and he actually says that he nearly fell. He's talking about spiritual ruin there. So he's in a very critical condition, looking at things as they are. He says here, being envious of the boastful when he saw the prosperity of the wicked, Psalm 73.3. But if you know the psalm, remember the turning point of that psalm. was when he went into the sanctuary of God. When he went before God and he understood their end. In other words, he went before God and he heard from God and he understood the end of the wicked. He understood that though he looks now at them and apparently sees no judgment of God upon them, He knows that a day of judgment is coming. He knows what their end is. He knows that they will be judged for their wickedness. So he begins to speak truth in his heart. His grieved heart and his vexed mind, he begins to be stabilized and energized again to continue faithfully by speaking truth to his heart about the final judgment and of God's justice. I want you to consider one other example from Lamentations chapter 3. And if you want to turn there, it's right after Jeremiah. And as the title suggests, Lamentations is a lament. It's a lament, and we have amazing words here. And if you know the hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness, it's based on words here that are tucked into this lament. And the turning point here in this lament, and it's really the climax of the book of Lamentations, is when the prophet recalls to mind certain truths about God, and begins to speak those truths to himself, and that is the turning point. So this is in Lamentations 3, verses 16 to 24. He has also broken my teeth with gravel. and covered me with ashes. You have moved my soul far from peace. I have forgotten prosperity. And I said, my strength and my hope have perished from the Lord." So if you just stop there, he's like, here's a man who's depressed and he has no hope. My strength and my hope have perished. Remember my affliction and roaming, verse 19, the wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers and sinks within me. This I recall to mind. Here's the turning point. Therefore, I have hope. And I believe this recalling to mind points forward now to what we see in verse 22. This I recall to mind. Therefore, I have hope. Through the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I hope in him. You see, he went from saying, my hope has perished from the Lord, and he says, now I hope in him. He's preaching to himself. This is what we need to do. There are mornings you need to remind yourself. God's faithfulness, His mercies are renewed every day to me. God is faithful. And whether we can see that or not, we need to speak the truth. So this is what we need to learn to do. This is what I'm talking about. And in the time remaining, I want to briefly demonstrate how we can do this. And I want to do that using two different seasons of life, prosperity and adversity. In Flavel's little book, the bulk of his book is actually applying, he's looking at 12 seasons of life in which we need to be especially diligent in keeping our hearts. And what he's basically doing is applying the Word of God in those seasons and saying, okay, here are key lines of thought in the Word of God that you need to deploy in your mind. Here are truths that you need to speak to your heart in these various seasons of life. So I'm just going to demonstrate that using two broad seasons, prosperity and adversity. So let's First, look at speaking the truth to our hearts in prosperity. Demonstrating something. This is not all. This is just giving you an idea of how you can speak truth to your heart in prosperity or in other seasons. You know this is a broad category, prosperity. I'm not just talking about you have a lot of money, you have a lot of things. Prosperity is broad. I think it's fair to say that all of us are more or less prosperous. living in the land that we live in, living in the time that we live in with all of the things that we enjoy, the medical advances, things that we take for granted every day, modern roads, all these kinds of things, plumbing. We are prosperous whether we really think of ourselves in those categories or not. All of us more or less fall into this category. And why is special diligence needed in a time of prosperity? It's because in prosperity we can tend to forget God, practically speaking. We can have so much comfort and ease that we don't turn to God and realize that we need to look to Him every day for our daily bread. That can be hard when there's a whole pantry full of food. We can grow proud, we can grow carnally secure, earthly in our prosperity. One man has said, to see a man humble in prosperity is one of the greatest rarities in the world. So what are some truths that you can speak to your heart in prosperity? Well, first we need to consider the spiritual dangers of prosperity. The Bible has a lot to say about this and you can deploy these truths in your mind and say, I am in a dangerous position, I need to understand this. For example, Israel. Consider how God warned his people, Israel, saying basically, when I bring you into the promised land. He had delivered them from their bondage in Egypt. He had redeemed them. And he says, when I bless you and make you prosper and bring you into the promised land, and I remove your enemy so that you can be planted there, and you're gonna have houses you didn't build, you're gonna have wells that you didn't dig, you are going to prosper. He says, beware. You would think, right, that that would be the time. He said, surely they're gonna be overflowing with thanksgiving and praise to God and worship. But he says, when that happens, beware, this is Deuteronomy 6.12, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And sadly, that's just what happened. We see again and again in the word of God, but Deuteronomy 32.15 puts it in these striking terms. Jeshurun, that's another word for Israel, another poetic name for Israel, Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. He forsook God who made him. He became prosperous and he forsook God. And there's many examples in the Bible of prosperity leading to pride. So you can study those and remind yourself. But you know this even from your own life, in your own experience, in your life, but also if you've observed other people. Just as knowledge can tend to puff us up and inflate us with pride, so a little prosperity can tend to puff us up. And we need to not assume that we will be the exception. When we see other people, when we see in the word of God these dangers, we should not assume, well, I can enjoy prosperity and be free from these dangers. Flavel says that outward gains are ordinarily attended with inward losses. He indeed is rich in grace, whose graces are not hindered by his riches. Read that again. He indeed is rich in grace, whose graces are not hindered by his riches. Now I know that most of you are in your 20s or so and perhaps you're not experiencing outward gains. You're thinking, I'm in debt, I'm poor, I'm just trying to scrape by. But this still applies to you. And not just because in general we live in prosperity, but this applies to you because the question I would ask you and the question I ask myself is do you desire those gains? Is your heart set upon being rich? And young men, I think this is especially a snare that we fall into. that our great ambition is to be great, we wanna make money and be rich, and we wanna climb the ladder, whatever ladder that might be, and that may not be a bad thing to climb the ladder, I'm not saying that, but it's the desire and the ambition, because if that is the case, God warns us in very strong terms about this kind of desire, and we have it, for example, in 1 Timothy 6, 9, where he says, those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare. and into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition, those who desire to be rich. So beware, you may not be rich, but do you desire to be rich? And in context there in 1 Timothy 6, just by the way, he's encouraging us to pursue godliness. And he says, godliness with contentment is great gain. So I hope you're all ambitious. but in a godly way. And I hope your great ambition, like Paul's was, is to know Christ, to know him and to be godly, to pursue godliness, righteousness, and holiness. In your prosperity, also consider the words of Jesus. In Matthew 19, 24, he gives this very striking illustration. It's easier for a camel, a huge camel, to go through the eye of a needle, a tiny opening, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. We're familiar with those words, so maybe we don't think about it, but think about it. Like, I'm in that category, and Jesus says this, and I shouldn't assume I'm the exception. You compare the words of 1 Corinthians 1.26, Paul is saying not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble are called. So we need to think about the dangers of prosperity. But a second line of thought is to consider the supreme value of your soul. The supreme, ultimate, surpassing value of your soul over everything else in this world. Now the eyes of men are set upon the outward things. What matters in the eyes of the world are the outward gains. What we wear, their houses, cars, jobs, these kinds of things. But we have to remind ourselves, what matters in the eyes of God? Is he concerned about our outward glamour and extravagance and wealth and all of these things? Well, in a sense, he's concerned for our well-being, but God looks at the heart. God is concerned about the inward graces, far, far, far more than outward excellencies. And there's many texts of scripture we could look at, but one that brings this principle to bear is 1 Peter 3. And Peter is speaking to wives here, but there's a broader application. He says, do not let your adornment be merely outward. Rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart. with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. So think of what matters in the sight of God. But you also need to remind yourself of the value of your soul, not just in the eyes of God, but in light of eternity. So you need to think about ultimate realities, and in particular, remember that Christ is returning, that we will see him and he will judge the living and the dead. Paul lived with this, someone's called it a fundamental orientation to the end of the age. So Paul often speaks about the day of Christ, the day of our Lord. So he lived his life oriented to this coming day. Say, I don't know when it's going to be, nobody does, but he will come. And so that's what we need to do. Consider the supreme value of your soul in light of eternal realities. Reason with yourself in these times of prosperity and say, what will matter when Christ returns? What will matter on the day of judgment? It will only be one thing. Whether you are united to Christ, whether he is yours and you are his, whether you belong to him and have embraced him in faith and love him, that's all that's going to matter. That he's your savior, that your judge is your redeemer and not these other things that we get so easily caught up in. It's easy to focus on the here and now. We're busy, we have our work, we have lots of legitimate concerns, and we get so focused on what is right in front of us that we never look up, or we rarely look up and consider eternal realities, but we need to do that. I remember in elementary school, we were doing, we would call it ABC order. And I don't remember how young I was, but like, it's one of my earlier memories. It was really traumatic, but we were doing ABC order. I had this little sheet and it had a kite on it. And there were words that I had to put in alphabetical order. And I was really struggling and I was erasing the thing. My paper was a mess. Everybody was basically done. I was sweating it. And I was just so focused on this paper and the kite and the ABC order. and did not realize the teacher had written the answers on the board. Okay, I just needed to look up. And that's how it is with life a lot of times. We're so focused on what's right in our face, we need to look up and remember those things that are above where Christ is seated. So we consider the supreme value of our souls, but also think about scriptural examples that we have. The Bible is a wealth of scriptural examples. and good ones as well as bad ones, and we can benefit from both. The bad ones are warnings, but the good ones we can take as examples, but sometimes they challenge us as well. So think about those people in the Bible whose graces were not hindered by their riches, people who had the mercy of God bestowed upon them greatly and prospered, and yet they remain humble. And you can consider this, and it will help you. Jacob, for example, was humbled when God multiplied his family and multiplied his flocks, Deuteronomy 32. What about David? David was just a shepherd boy, a lowly shepherd boy, and he was humbled by God's mercies to him. When God confirmed his covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7, it's a key text. God confirms his covenant with David and speaks remarkable promises to him He says, Who am I, O Lord? Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house that you have brought me thus far? So he promised, David, I will build you a house, a royal dynasty. And ultimately, this pointed to Christ and his kingdom. But that's the response we need to have. Who am I, O Lord? that you should be so kind to me and merciful and I should prosper. And then over and over in the Psalms especially, David gives glory to God for his mercies, his deliverances, the prosperity he enjoys and so on. King Jehoshaphat is another example when God established the kingdom in his hand and all Judah, the Bible says, gave presents to him. Think about that. He's a king. He has the kingdom established. All Judah is bringing presents, so put yourself in His shoes if you can. You've got this position of power. People are bringing things to you. And then it says He had riches and honor and abundance. What was His response? It was not to turn away from God, but we read in 2 Chronicles 17 that His heart took delight in the ways of the Lord. In his prosperity, he turned toward God. And we could go on and on, Job, Abraham, Hannah, Mary, and so on. The Bible's full of examples of men and women, godly men and women, who in the mercies of God, experiencing God's mercies, experiencing various kinds of prosperity, they actually kept their hearts with God and humbled themselves. So these are some ways that we can speak to our hearts. in times of prosperity. Just demonstration here. These are the kinds of thoughts, biblical lines of thoughts to deploy in our minds so that we can keep our hearts with God and from sin in times of prosperity so that we're not like the rich fool in the parable Jesus told in Luke 12. He was not rich toward God. He had stored up all these things and set back, I'm gonna be easy, but he was not rich toward God. He was a fool. So, spiritual dangers, consider those the supreme value of your soul and the scriptural examples. So, that is, very briefly, prosperity. But let's consider now, how can we speak truth to our hearts in a time of adversity? Speaking truth to your heart in adversity, when we fall into various trials, when they catch us by surprise, when our way is dark and difficult, when we're overwhelmed with sorrows, perhaps even experiencing what we would call depression, when we're afflicted by disease, sickness, injury, when a loved one is taken away or soon to be taken away, it seems. How do we speak truth to our hearts? What is the danger that we're in in such times? One of the dangers is that we can lose hope and become despondent. Another danger is that we can complain against God and question God in ungodly ways. Question His goodness and His love toward us and so forth. What we need to do in these times is speak truth to our hearts, to remind ourselves of who God is. what God is, His character, His perfections, what He has promised to us, His past mercies to His people, but even to yourself to remember how God has been merciful to you. But what I want to consider is two things here in particular and somewhat briefly, and that is first that we need to consider, remind ourselves of the providence of God in times of adversity, if we're to keep our hearts. What is the providence of God? Do you know the doctrine of God's providence? It's a doctrine you need to know well. God is sovereign. That means He's over all things. If you look at the word sovereign, you see over and reign. So He reigns over everything. He's sovereign. and He is working out everything according to His sovereign purposes, His eternal decree. He is governing everything. He's at the helm, steering everything, and He's upholding all things. That's what is meant by His providence. He is upholding and sustaining everything, and He is also governing the universe that He has created. This is God's providence. This is what we need to think about and preach to ourselves, especially in times of adversity, but this applies in so many other seasons. We need to meditate on these truths and think about them until our hearts are encouraged. Really dwell upon these things until you are strengthened and remind yourself the one who is controlling everything is doing so in a most wise and powerful way and in a good way. So you see how reminding yourself about who God is, because if the one controlling all things and governing all things is a tyrant and he's not good and he's not wise, then that could actually really trouble us. But God is the all wise God and all powerful God who is good and great and so on. Say to yourself that nothing happens by chance. So you find yourself in adversity, you have to preach to yourself. Nothing happens by chance. Nothing happens by accident, but these things, even down to the details of my life, are ordained by God. Speak that to yourself. Also, say to yourself, all of my trials are ordained by the living and true God who is infinite, And wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, truth. Remind yourself of God. And go further than that. Because if you're a believer, you can say, the God who is reigning over all things and upholding all things and governing all things is my Father. And remember that. And Jesus would have us think that. Remember, He says, why are you worrying? Remember your Father. You have a Father who loves you and cares for you. So this should comfort us. Flavel says it like this, he says, suppose the cup be bitter, the cup that you have received in your life, some adversity. He says, yet it is the cup which your father has given you, and can you suspect poison to be in it? So consider the providence of God. In adversity, here's another line of thought, consider the purposes of God. Remind yourself of the many purposes of God in your afflictions. Remind yourself what you know to be true. You say, what do I know to be true? Question yourself and reason with yourself. I heard a line years ago that has stuck with me, and I hope it sticks with you. Do not doubt in the dark what you know to be true in the light. So when you come to those times of adversity, you can be tempted to begin to doubt what you know to be true. So do not doubt in the dark what you know to be true in the light. We know that if God in His grace has drawn us savingly to Christ, if we belong to Christ, if we belong to God, we know that He's for us and not against us. Though Satan might try to get you to think God is not for you, but against you. Look at these things in your life. But we know that he's for us, and we know Romans 8, 28, you've probably, many of you memorized it, that he's working all things together for good to those who love him, to those who've been called according to his purpose. He's working it out for good. Now, we don't know exactly how he's doing that. You might, but most times you don't know exactly how he's doing it or exactly what that is, but you can be sure that it's for your good. And you can be sure that the ultimate purpose is that you would look more like Jesus, more like your Savior. Now, the Bible teaches, and your own experience no doubt proves, that God often uses trials to refine us. So afflictions are like a furnace that refines metal, precious metal, removing the impurities. God does this in our lives. He makes us more holy by our trials. Adversity tends to humble us. to make us more dependent upon God, to get us to lift up our eyes to look at God, it produces in us patience. It tests our faith and strengthens our faith. That's why James says in James 1, count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into various trials, because of God's purposes in our trials. You also need to speak to your heart the truth about God's fatherly chastisement, his fatherly discipline. You need to remind yourself, not all of your trials, but some of your trials might actually be God's dealing with you as a beloved child, as a son, as a daughter. So Hebrews 12 is a text that you should turn to and remind yourself, if God is disciplining me and chastising me, it's because He loves me. Not because He hates me, but He loves me and it's for my good. And His purposes are not just to hurt me, even though it's painful right now. And any parent knows this if they're disciplining their children. They don't want to inflict pain on their children, but they want to do good to them because they love them. So that's what God is doing. You have to remind yourself, God may be chastening me because He loves me. And what He's trying to do is produce and bring about the peaceable fruit of righteousness, as it says in Hebrews 12. So you take such truths in the Word of God, these kinds of lines of thought, and you speak them to your heart. You reason with yourself. Let me just quickly give you a few ways that Flavel says we can reason. What if by the loss of outward comforts, God preserve your soul from the ruining power of temptation? Consider that God in sending you adversity may be accomplishing that for which you have long prayed and waited. Someone in the church recently warned me about praying for patience. And they say, if you're gonna pray for patience, you better be ready for God to send some kind of refining furnace in your life to make you more patient. Consider that in your troubles, God is performing that work in which you should rejoice if you saw the design and purpose of it. In other words, you have to remind yourself, if I could peel back the veil and see what God is really up to here, I would rejoice if I could see the outcome, what God is working and desires to work in me through this suffering. So that's just briefly some ways that we can speak truth to our hearts in times of adversity. You consider the providence of God, you consider the purposes of God in your adversity. Now I hope I've convinced you at least of the need to take up this vital spiritual discipline if you've not already. Or if you do do this, to do it with even greater diligence. To speak truth to our hearts, to deploy these key lines of thought in our minds, especially in these seasons that require our utmost diligence in keeping the heart. And I hope I've also sufficiently demonstrated what this can look like, how we take the word of God and speak truth to ourselves. I wanna say something to those who might not be in Christ this morning. I don't know where you're at, but for some of you, if you do not know the Lord, this still applies to you. There is truth that you need to speak to your heart. Truths that you need to remind yourself of, that you need to speak to, vital truths, and you need to speak these truths without delay. So if that's you, I would urge you, don't walk away, don't leave this time, and not think about these truths. What are those truths? You need the whole truth. But there are key truths that you need to speak to your heart. Truths about God. About His existence, of course, but who God is and especially that He is just and He is holy and He can't just sweep sin under the rug. It has to be dealt with if He is to be just and He cannot deny Himself. You need to remind yourself of that. You need to remind yourself that He will judge every sin and that there's no small sins. There's no small sin, someone has said, because there's no small God to sin against. You need to remind yourself about who you are as a fallen creature. That man has fallen and that we are all born corrupt and that we're all bent towards sin and that we all need a savior. And that we can't be right with God by any amount of religious observance or good deeds, whatever it might be, you can't be right with God. What you need to remind yourself and speak to your heart is saving truth. You need the truth that will save you. And Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me. Speak that truth to your heart. There's only one way. God has made a way for sinners to be right with him, reconciled with him, to have eternal life. And then speak the truth to your heart that the Bible calls you to repent, and that means to turn from your sin, and to turn to God in faith, and to embrace Christ, trusting in Him alone for your salvation. So those, if you're not a Christian, I would urge you, speak these truths to your heart. And brothers and sisters, those of you who know Christ, I wanna finish just with some very brief applications here for us. Very, very brief. Two final words. The first thing is, you have to know yourself. You have to know your circumstances. You have to know your enemy, the devil. And again, the world and the flesh as we consider it. So you need to be thinking. I've talked with a few of you about living the Christian life in this digital age of distraction. And we often don't think because we're just distracted all the time. But we need to think deeply and to reflect and to meditate. We need to know ourselves. We need to know our circumstances and dangers. But the second thing, and even more importantly, is if we're going to do this, to speak truth to our hearts, we need to know the truth. We need to know the word of God and not just in a superficial way. not just an isolated verse here and there, but like the psalmist, we need to have the word of God hidden in our hearts. So that means we need to discipline ourselves to hide the word in our hearts, to assimilate the word of God. I mean, just to make it part of ourselves, to internalize God's word and all of the word of God. And we do this day by day, line upon line, year after year, little by little. As we study the Word and meditate upon it and listen carefully to preaching and teaching, God will write that Word on our hearts and it will be internalized. And then you will have the sword of the Spirit ready when you need it. You will have those truths ready to deploy whenever you need them. So we have to know the Word of God. So I want to encourage you again to make it your aim to know God's Word. to make the word of God your close companion, to make this a priority in your life, to study the scriptures and hide it in your heart. If you're taking an exam, I know some of you are still students here, you've got an exam, closed book, closed notes. If your knowledge is all locked up in your textbook, you're gonna be in trouble on that exam. It's the same way in the Christian life. We have to have these truths ready to use. We need to know them, have them in our hearts. We need the living and active word of God unleashed in us, so to speak, to work in us and on us, to shape us and to transform us by the renewing of our minds, to transform us from the inside out, that we might keep our hearts with all diligence, that we might walk closely with God in all humility, that we might love him, serve him, obey him, trust him, that we might keep our hearts from sin all the days of our life. So may we all join with the psalmist here when he says these words, with my whole heart I have sought you. Oh, let me not wander from your commandments. Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, oh Lord. Teach me your statutes. Amen. Let's pray. Gracious God, that is our prayer, that you would teach us your statutes. We ask that you would take your word and that you would shape us and bless these moments as we've been able to open the scriptures. We ask, Lord, that you would help us to know the truth deeply within our hearts, to be lovers of the truth and doers of your word, and to know how to apply your word in every season of life. Help us in this, and I pray especially for those now who might be facing adversity and downcast, that you would encourage their hearts, remind them of who you are and what you are and what you have promised. Lord, we would also pray for any who might not know Christ, that you today would meet them and draw them powerfully to Christ, that they would turn from their sins cling to Christ in faith, trusting in Him alone. In Jesus' name, amen.