Tag Archives: psalm 1

January 6, 2025 · 5:28 AM

Learning To Meditate

For many years, my son and I planted a small garden behind our house. We read each packet of seeds to see how far apart each seed needed to be planted as well as their depth. We planted different types of vegetables and marked the rows to help us remember. I wanted to teach him a few things by doing this. One is the law of sowing and reaping so he would know that he will only get what he plants. Another is the importance of planting seeds in the different gardens of his life. One of the most important gardens all of us need to tend is our mind. The seeds we plant there not only determine our thoughts, but also the direction of our life.

Psalm 1:1-3 says, “Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do” (NLT). I love these verses because they directly show the correlation between those who plant seeds of God’s Word in their mind and those who don’t. We plant the seeds by meditating on it. Meditating is simply working it into the soil of your mind, thinking about it, how to apply it, and growing it. When we do that, the psalmist reminds us later that it will keep us from sinning. More than that, it will produce harvest in our lives throughout life’s seasons.

Joshua 1:8 says, “Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.” If you’re struggling to defeat the enemy in certain areas of your life, meditate on God’s Word. If you’re looking to grow closer to the Lord, meditate on His Word. The difference between success and failure in so many areas of your life depends on you taking the time to go deeper into the Bible. Don’t just read it, think about it. Let words jump off the page and look them up. Look at the historical and cultural implications of what God says. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes and to show you how to apply it. When you’re reading, give yourself time to pause and reflect throughout each passage. That’s how you plant it in your mind and find success.

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June 28, 2022 · 5:26 AM

Nourishing Your Soul

One of the things we’ve lost to modern life is making bread. Yes, you can go to the store and have your choice of loaves, but I’m not talking about that bread. I’m talking about real bread. The kind where the ingredients were simple and it took a while to rise. It was then put into the fire to cook. In those days, the bread was the meal. Today, we’ve made bread a side dish to the meal. We’ve added so many preservatives that people have become allergic to it. It’s no wonder that God referred to His Word as bread and even water at times.

Psalm 1:2 describes a person who,follows God by saying, “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And on His law [His precepts and teachings] he [habitually] meditates day and night” (AMP). If God’s Word is like bread, meditating on it is like letting it rise. It will grow within you. The rising of bread is created when microorganisms break down the grain and unlock nutrients that our bodies can’t happen unless that process takes place. The same thing happens when we meditate on God’s Word instead of just reading it. The next verse gives us more insight.

Verse 3 says, “And he will be like a tree firmly planted [and fed] by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season; Its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers [and comes to maturity].” When we approach God’s Word with the intent on meditating on it and breaking it down to understand and apply it, we are fed by the water of the Word which will firmly plant us and cause us to produce the Fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). So don’t just read God’s Word. Let it rise within you. Let it nourish your soul and help you produce a life that is deeply rooted in Him.

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September 9, 2021 · 5:59 AM

The Right Route

Whenever I’m on the road and need directions, I usually use Waze to help me get there. It finds the quickest route and gets me there at the promised time. To do that, it often takes detours through neighborhoods or back streets I’ve never been on. I’m at the mercy of this app, and have to trust that it knows what it’s doing. Sometimes it takes me through places where I wonder if I’m safe.

There are times when it tells me to exit or turn, and I think, “That’s odd. My exit is just ahead.” Early on, I just thought it was a glitch and kept driving. After trying to correct me a few times, it finally gave up and added a lot of time to my arrival time. It saw what I couldn’t up ahead and tried to help me avoid it. When I didn’t listen, I got stuck in the traffic it was trying to help me avoid. I’ve learned to trust that it knows best and can see what I can’t.

God is a lot like Waze in our lives. He knows our destination and the route He wants us to take. He plans out each detour to help us avoid hurts or pains, but often we think we know best and drive right past what He’s telling us to do. We can’t see what He sees up ahead in our lives. It takes trust to follow His instructions when we don’t understand. He even takes us on detours through places we didn’t know existed, but it’s all for our benefit.

Psalm 1 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. It gives great promises to those who listen to God’s instructions rather than man’s. One of those promises says that God charts the road you take (verse 6 MSG). God has charted out a road for each of us. It’s up to us to listen to His Word, meditate on it and follow it. He knows best how to get us where He wants us. It’s up to us to follow the path He’s charted out.

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.

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November 7, 2019 · 5:30 AM

God’s Secret To Happiness

Since I was a kid, I heard people tell me, “You become like those you run with.” It was great advice then and now for choosing who you hang out with and listen to. We’ve all received bad advice from someone in our life that has put us in a situation we didn’t want to be in. Some of us have a momentary awkwardness and others have a lifetime of regret because of the consequences of that choice. Either way, we got into the mess by taking advice from someone we shouldn’t have been hanging around.

Psalm 1 is one of my life chapters. What I mean by that is that I see it as a promise from God so I’ve tried to build my life on it. The chapter starts out by telling us, “Happy are those who reject the advice of evil people, who do not follow the example of sinners or join those who have no use for God” (GNT). If you want to be happy, stop taking advice from people who don’t know the principles found in God’s Word. Find better people to hang out with if you want your life to change.

If you’ve followed this site for a while, you know the struggles I went through years ago. When I hit rock bottom, I worked my way backwards to find out how I got there. It all started with choices to hang out with and associate myself with people who had no use for God and what I believed. When I looked at my life, I realized I wasn’t happy. God took me back to this chapter and called me back to being who He called me to be in verse 2. It says, “Instead, they find joy in obeying the Law of the Lord, and they study it day and night.”

If we will get away from the wrong crowd and start living the way God’s Word tells us to, we’ll not only find happiness, but joy. But God doesn’t stop there. He gives us another promise in verse three if we live that way. It says, “They are like trees that grow beside a stream, that bear fruit at the right time, and whose leaves do not dry up. They succeed in everything they do.” God promises productivity, success, favor, and happiness in our life if we will just live the way He wants us to and associate ourselves with like minded people.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other writing ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.

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January 2, 2018 · 5:43 AM

The Right Route

Whenever I’m on the road and need directions, I usually use Waze to help me get there. It finds the quickest route and gets me there at the promised time. To do that, it often takes detours through neighborhoods or back streets I’ve never been on. I’m at the mercy of this app, and have to trust that it knows what it’s doing. Sometimes it takes me through places where I wonder if I’m safe.

There are times when it tells me to exit or turn, and I think, “That’s odd. My exit is just ahead.” Early on, I just thought it was a glitch and kept driving. After trying to correct me a few times, it finally gave up and added a lot of time to my arrival time. It saw what I couldn’t up ahead and tried to help me avoid it. When I didn’t listen, I got stuck in the traffic it was trying to help me avoid. I’ve learned to trust that it knows best and can see what I can’t.

God is a lot like Waze in our lives. He knows our destination and the route He wants us to take. He plans out each detour to help us avoid hurts or pains, but often we think we know best and drive right past what He’s telling us to do. We can’t see what He sees up ahead in our lives. It takes trust to follow His instructions when we don’t understand. He even takes us on detours through places we didn’t know existed, but it’s all for our benefit.

Psalm 1 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. It gives great promises to those who listen to God’s instructions rather than man’s. One of those promises says that God charts the road you take (verse 6 MSG). God has charted out a road for each of us. It’s up to us to listen to His Word, meditate on it and follow it. He knows best how to get us where He wants us. It’s up to us to follow the path He’s charted out.

Photo by Truman Adrian Lobato De Faria on Unsplash

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October 27, 2014 · 7:44 AM

Are You Listening?

A while ago, I was trying to teach a group of people the importance of listening. I split the group in half and had one group wait outside the room. I told the people left in the room to do everything in their power to show they weren’t listening without speaking. I then told the group outside the room to think of a life changing event that had happened to them. I wanted them to go back in the room, find someone and share that story with them. I didn’t foresee what happened next.

The people who shared their life changing stories began getting upset. As they shared stories of a miracle baby that was born, a near death experience or something like that, they other people were taking pictures of their shoes, looking at their phones and counting ceiling tiles. The ones who were sharing their hearts began to yell, “Are you listening to me?!?” Their body language began to change. Their voices got louder. All of them were upset to the point that I had to cancel the exercise. I don’t think anyone who participated in that exercise will forget how important it is to listen.

Listening is a lot different than hearing. Listening requires active participation on your part. It involves engaging the mind. There were many in Jesus’ day who heard Him teach. They could hear what He was saying, but they weren’t listening to easy He was saying. In john 10:27, Jesus said, “The sheep that are my own hear and are listening to my voice (AMP).” He separated the two words to make a distinction between His followers and everyone else. Only those who truly follow Him listen (engage the mind and heart). They are the ones who then engage their body to do what He says.

James 1:22, the King James Version says, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hears only.” When we learn to truly listen to what God tells us in a His word, we can’t go on living like we were. It changes us and compels us to live differently than before. Anyone can hear it and walk away the same. It takes someone who will listen to what it says to enact it. I think that’s why David was intent on meditating on it. When we stop and think about the scriptures we read, it helps us to listen and to focus on what God was really saying.

One of my favorite chapters in the Bible is Psalm 1. It talks about the blessed person and their characteristics. In verse two, he wrote, “His delight and desire are in the law of The Lord, and on His law (the precepts, the instructions, the teachings of God) he habitually meditates (ponders and studies) by day and night (AMP).” The person who actively tries to listen what God is saying through His Word is blessed. Don’t just read God’s Word to check off a box of things that Christians do. Meditate on it, think about it, listen to it and then act on it. That’s how He knows His sheep are listening.

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April 21, 2014 · 8:00 AM

Finding Good Soil

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My family and I took a road trip to west Texas. If you aren’t from Texas, that’s the part of Texas that actually looks like you imagine it. It’s how Hollywood portrays us. It’s very dry, the ground is covered with small shrubs that will one day be tumble weeds, oiled pumps dot the landscape and there are mesas that are perfectly flat on top. It’s beautiful in its own way, but as my wife out it, there’s nothing out there. She said on more than one occasion, “I don’t think I could live out here.” Even if we couldn’t, people do live there even though it’s far away from “civilization”.

We drove hundreds of miles over many hours as we headed back to east Texas. The further east we went, the taller the shrubs became, the more green the landscape became and the more abundant flowers became. As I watched the transformation, I began to wonder what made the difference. I saw a small tree growing out of a crack in a rock hill that gave me the answer. Soil. In west Texas, it was very dry. There was lots of dirt, but very little soil. Their land lacked the nutrients to grow tall trees, greenery or flowers. There was life there, but it’s growth was stunted by a lack of soil.

I then began to think, that’s where so many Christians live their lives. They choose to be planted where there is very little soil. Their growth is stunted, there’s very little water and it’s tough to live there. They struggle in their relationship with God, they get very little food from Heaven and they produce even less. They wonder why they don’t see growth like so many others. They wonder why their lives are dry and they don’t produce much fruit. They look at other believers and wish their life had that kind of growth. The answer to all that wondering is the soil they are planted in.

Psalm 1:3 says we are to be like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. We each choose where we want to be planted. The soil we ground ourself in is in direct proportion to the amount of Scripture we read and time in prayer. When we spend very little time with either, we lack the nutrients necessary for growth. We began to whither away when things get tough. We dry up when things in our lives hear up. We begin to die of thirst without the water of God’s Word. We wilt away because our roots are in shallow soil.

As with anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. If you put very little effort into your growth as a Christian,you will remain in a dry land struggling to produce and to stay alive. If you put in time and effort into the things that will benefit your walk with God, you will begin the slow process of moving towards Him. You will start to grow taller, your roots will grow deeper and your leaves will be greener. Before long, you will be like that tree planted by the riverbank producing much fruit in season. It all depends on where you choose to live. Your salvation isn’t dependent on what you do, but your growth is.

As you have therefore received Christ, [even] Jesus the Lord, [so] walk (regulate your lives and conduct yourselves) in union with and conformity to Him. Have the roots [of your being] firmly and deeply planted [in Him, fixed and founded in Him], being continually built up in Him, becoming increasingly more confirmed and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and abounding and overflowing in it with thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6, 7 AMP)

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