Are affirmations biblical?

We can never go wrong if we follow David's simple method of exhorting our own souls. It is not only psychologically correct, but also scripturally sound. We need to learn these verses and repeat them over and over again when we feel depressed, fearful or discouraged. Doing this will work wonders for us just as it did for David and many others who have followed his example. It will help to keep our minds fixed on the Lord instead of on our feelings or circumstances.

Your body may be perishing, and all about you be broken up; well, never mind, you can say, "Eternal life is mine." Say it to yourself again and again, and walk in the power of it.

The question is whether we have appropriated and do appropriate these exceeding great and precious promises! This appropriating is by faith: we thank the Lord for every promise the Holy Spirit brings before us in our daily reading. We see something similar in Romans 6:11 where Paul says, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead … ”. It is not the reckoning that makes the fact, but I am to reckon in view of the fact. I appropriate in view of the fact that every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ is put to my account by the Father. It is therefore in the appropriating that we experience the “ … comfort in my affliction … ”. It is when we thank the Lord for His promises that we experience what the Psalmist affirms: “ … for Thy Word hath quickened me”. Notice, there is no prayer for deliverance from the affliction! But although the affliction remains, the comfort is there so that we may be able to bear it, and be victorious in it.

When once we do know, the reckoning enjoined in verse 11 becomes perfectly plain to us. Our case is governed by Christ's, for we are identified with Him. Did He die to sin? Then we are dead to sin, and so we reckon it. Does He now live to God? Then we now live to God, and so we reckon it. Our reckoning is not mere make-believe. It is not that we try to reckon ourselves to be what in point of fact we are not. The very reverse. We are dead to sin and alive to God by His own acts, accomplished in the death and resurrection of Christ (to be made effectual in us by His Spirit, as we shall see later on) and that being so, we are to accept it and adjust our thoughts to it. As things are, so we are to reckon.

And let the reader particularly note the force of the apostle's word, "reckon." How very different it is, in every way, from our word, "realise!" This latter word may do very well where natural or human things are concerned. We can realize physical or material facts; but where a spiritual truth is involved, it is not a question of realising, but of reckoning. How can I realize that I am dead to sin? All my own experience, my own feelings, my inward self-consciousness seems to offer a flat contradiction to the truth. I cannot realise that I am dead; but God tells me I am. He assures me that He counts me to have died to sin when Christ died. I believe it; not because I feel it, but because God says it. Reckon myself to be what God tells me I am. If I were sinless; if I had no sin in me, I should never be told to reckon myself dead to sin; neither should I ever be called to listen to such words as, "Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body." But it is just because I have sin dwelling in me, and in order to give me full practical deliverance from its reigning power, that I am taught the grand enfranchising truth, that the dominion of sin is broken by the death of Christ.

You will find it the very strength of your soul to go before God with a text and say, "This is written in thy word, and because thou canst not lie, I know that I have got that thing."

Just as there are caterpillars which always take the colour of the leaf on which they are feeding, so there are Christians who are always characterized by that upon which their minds are dwelling. If you dwell habitually upon mournful things, you will have a mournful face. Do you want to be happy? Dwell upon happy things. That is a simple recipe, but a very good one. Do you know how to be miserable? Dwell always upon that which is dark. You say, "There are plenty of these things, and are we not to recognize them?" Of course we should. But having confessed them to God, let us dwell upon the things that are good and right and blessed. Let us remember the works of the Lord. Let us remember His wonders of old.

For man with a fallen nature and in a fallen world to confide in himself is to play the fool. God is not in any of his thoughts. He is sure he needs no advice; he is right in his own eyes. What can his eyes do but help him to judge according to sight, which the Lord contrasts with judging righteous judgment? and what so dangerous as every question of self? For there is nothing a man dislikes more than thinking ill of himself, unless it is of believing good of God. Truly the way of a fool is right in his own eyes. He that is wise distrusts himself and hearkens to counsel; nor does he cheat God and his conscience by seeking counsel of the weak and easy-going, but of the godly.

Through all the ages of time the saints of God have been marked by confidence in God, a confidence produced by faith in the knowledge of God, and this knowledge according to the revelation that God was pleased to give of Himself. Man naturally has usually great confidence in himself, and this is what is highly valued by men, but the believer has to learn to have “no confidence in the flesh,“ and to realise that in himself he is nothing. When the Lord Jesus was on earth He taught His disciples, “without me ye can do nothing, ” for all their resource and strength was in Himself. Like Paul we have to learn from the Lord, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9), and when we have learned this we may be able to say with Paul, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).

Vain repetitions were, we suppose, the iteration of the same entreaties in the same words, because it was thought that there was merit in thus persevering in their cries, and that, as the Lord says, they would be heard for their much speaking. Even the Jews were not free from the same tendency, for their rabbis taught that there was great merit in reciting their eighteen prayers; and certain professing Christians have reproduced the very evil which the Lord here condemns. Even more might be said: for there are very few who are not tempted in this direction. It is well, therefore, to consider the twofold, all-efficacious antidote. The Lord speaks plainly of the one, and as clearly implies the other. The first is confidence in God: "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him"; and in the consciousness of this the soul will be satisfied to leave its petitions to His care and love. The second is, that prayer must be divinely taught: "After this manner, therefore, pray ye." This was a prayer given to the disciples for their use until the Spirit of God should come, after which all prayer must be in the Spirit (Ephesians 6:18; Jude 20, etc.) in order to be efficacious. This cannot be overlooked without great danger. If borne in mind, long prayers in public would be avoided, as well as the catching up and repetition of current phrases and expressions. No prayer is of any avail with God, if it be not begotten in the heart at the moment by the present action of the Holy Ghost. God loves reality, and ten words uttered before Him which are the fruit of the power of the Spirit are of infinitely more value than ten minutes of fluent expression of well-known sentences and truths. The latter, indeed, would not be prayer, but rather "vain repetitions."