A few months back I was wrestling with my ongoing personal short-term memory issues. I am always forgetting the gospel. And then as a result, I live in light of this gospel-less amnesia. This is the posture that I hate. I hate it because of how it dishonors Christ and how it robs me of joy.
In thinking I was reminded that I set alarms for everything. I remind myself to pay bills, take medicine, go to meetings, talk to certain people, etc. These are the lives and times of creating calendar events and alarms.
So I thought, “Why not create an alarm to preach the gospel to myself?”
Now each morning my alarm wakes me up to Lecrae’s Don’t Waste Your Life. I have to shut it off manually and then I go about slumbering in the darkness to get moving. However, I have to dismiss the alarm entitled ‘Preach the Gospel to yourself’. This is great. Usually sometime between brushing my teeth and washing my face I am looking eye to eye with the guy who needs to hear the gospel most. And I preach it to him. I remind him of his wicked sin, God’s forbearing mercy, indescribable grace, perfect Savior, the brutality and success of the cross, and the truth of the empty grave. By the end of the sermon my soul is more refreshed than my freshly brushed mouth. And the truth of the matter is, I need it. My sinful self-absorption characterized by a forgetfulness of the gospel is far more repugnant than morning breath.
I suggest that you do whatever you have got to do to make the priority of preaching the gospel to yourself a regular priority. We are all forgetful folks who fail to delight in the goodness of God through Christ. This forgetfulness is devastating and worth radical remedies.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RWEllqh5J0]