Hey friends, Ruth Joe Simons here. Welcome back to the podcast. I was trying to think if I could remember when I started the hashtag

preaching to my own heart. Do I have any OGers out there who remembered when I started preaching to

myself? You know, it was years ago. I've told the story before. We've had multiple seasons and episodes on preaching truth to ourselves. But years ago, it basically started because Troy and I were reading books that were encouraging us and helping us understand how to speak to our own souls and address our own souls as the psalmist does in Psalm 42 or

or as the psalmist does in Psalm 103 or even just reminding ourselves what is true because

in my early married days Ruth Joe Simons was not exactly the most calm or consistent or patient young mama.

And oftentimes I would spiral and my mind would just go round and round and I'd get super stressed out and fearful and worried.

And Troy would say, honey, I think it'd be a really good thing for you to just take a deep breath and preach

truth to yourself, preach it to your heart.

And so years later, as I was writing and on social media trying to collect my thoughts,

I started a hashtag preaching to my own heart.

And mostly I wrote it that way because, yes, I was

preaching to myself. Yes, I was encouraging you to preach to yourself as you read that post.

But really, every single time I wrote a post, and even now, when you hear me say, preach this to

yourself or when I write something about preaching to my

own heart, it's because it's something I am actually needing to hear myself. I don't know why that

sounds weird. It shouldn't because everything I write and everything I speak on should and always comes out of me learning at first.

But I think we live in a world where a lot of times people are experts, not necessarily examples.

Being an expert is somebody who says, I've learned the way and I'm going to show you the way.

But being an example is I am going to

live it out first. I'm going to not just lead you to the truth. I'm going to be your companion.

I'm going to go with you. I don't know if that's a good definition of that, but I just think

so much of preaching truth to yourself is

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