January 1

Psalm 1  

 

Happy New Year to each of you!! 

 

Let's start the new year off by imagining you are walking on a beautiful beach on a Caribbean island today. The palms are waving and the greenish blue water is gently lapping up on the shore. All of a sudden your toe catches something in the sand. You look down, push the sand away and there you discover one of those old-fashioned Arabian lanterns. Then you remember all the times you read in the comic books about genies being in these things. You look at the lantern and say to yourself, "why not?" So you rub the lantern and instantaneously a genie pops out. He says he is there to grant you one wish from these five choices:

You can have 500 million dollars.

You can have success in everything you touch for 50 years.

You can be stunningly beautiful or handsome for 50 years.

You can be the most popular person on the planet for 50 years.

Or you can be blessed.   

Which one of those would you choose?  

 

The writer of Psalm 1 instructs us that "blessedness" is by far the best choice. Blessedness is from the root word " to be straight, to make right, or to be well ordered." It is best understood as inner peace that cannot be taken away.  

In Psalm 1 blessedness is actually experienced by the choices we make in life. It's found when we read and meditate on God's Word. It's found when we choose to turn away from the foolishness of the culture and allow the Bible to feed us and guide us. 

There are two kinds of people in the world, the blessed and the wicked. What is most sobering is how the book of Psalms defines wickedness from the very start. Wickedness is not defined in terms of heinous acts of violence or socially deviant behavior. Wickedness is defined as being self-centered, rather than God-centered, or self-instructed, rather than God-instructed.

 

We usually think of wicked people as those who sell drugs or commit some kind of crime. But wicked people are those who have Bibles but are too busy to read them, people who believe in Jesus but not enough to listen to Him.

 

So if you want to experience a blessed life choose to read and obey God's word each day this year. Choose to allow God's word to direct your pathways away from the ways of the world. If you make this choice, you will be like a tree planted beside a source of abundant water. Your life will be fruitful and ever blessed.

 

 

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"Multiplying leaders to change the world"