“Blessed is the man that
walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly…
But his delight is in the law of the LORD;
and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”
Psalm 1:1-2
Blessed is the man that
walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor standeth in the way of sinners,
nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD;
and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,
that bringeth forth his fruit in his season;
his leaf also shall not wither;
and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
Psalm 1:1-3
Want to be happy? Want to be blessed? Want things to work out in your personal situation?
Then stay away from people who will give you bad advice!
Simple, huh?
The world is full of people who want to tell us how to run our lives. In fact, advice is about the only “free” commodity there is anymore. And although at times we may need another head or two to bump together to come up with some different tactic, we are cautioned to stay away from advice given by people who don’t care to know God.
If we do take ungodly advice, we inadvertently become comfortable with those who are disrespectful of things that are holy.
This psalm shows the progression of bad advice…walking-standing-sitting…which eventually turns into sin. It doesn’t matter what sin it is, it could be a bad habit, a bad attitude, or a terrible action. But let’s imagine bad advice, or sin, as walking along our life’s road.
Yep, there it is, we turn around and look, and there we see ‘sin’ over our left shoulder (notice it’s not the “right” shoulder). It sneaks up behind us—because sin is usually sneaky. We look back again and then turn our eyes back towards the front and keep walking, but it’s not too long down the road until sin steps up right next to us.
Now we’re walking with Sin (counsel of the ungodly)
Oh well, I’m strong, we think, as we continue our walk with Sin keeping up with us. But then Sin starts to whisper something. At first we may disagree; we may even vehemently disagree, but then Sin starts to lull us into its way of thinking…we think these are our thoughts…we begin to like what Sin is saying. Wait, let’s stop and think this out together, we say.
Oops…now we’re standing on our life’s road with sin.
We soon find ourselves thinking the wrong things, doing the wrong things, and going to the wrong places. Sin has taken us off our road and now we are sitting along the path complaining how badly things have turned out for us. We criticize others, because we are miserable; we mock those who do good works, because our work is so unpleasant to us; we are intolerant of others, because we can no longer tolerate our life with Sin.
Now we sit in the seat of scorners…
So what preventive steps can we take to escape this downward spiral? We meditate on God’s Word!
Yes, it’s important to read the Bible. Maybe you are a disciplined person who reads through the Bible every year (wow! brownie points for you, I’ve never been that consistent). But this is talking about reading, then reading again, and thinking about it, and considering all that God has said about it, over and over again.
Maybe it’s because I’m a farmer’s wife, but I love this quote from Sprugeon:
“Meditation chews the cud, and gets the sweetness and nutritive virtue of the Word into the heart and life…It is not only reading that does us good; but the soul inwardly feeding on it, and digesting it.”
Meditating is taking God’s Word and reading it with our lips, thinking about with our minds, and allowing it to sink into our hearts, so our spirits can feed on it and grow to produce godly fruit. (Galatians 5:22-23)
