Psalm 1
I tried something recently that I thought was going to have one result and didn’t have as much as I thought. I don’t have a lot of discipline, so it just has to be “chop.” Matthew chapter 5 says if your right hand offends you, cut it off. So I thought I just need to cut some things off in my life. So I decided this year, I was going to drink no sodas at all and no sweet tea. Now, if you’re from the west coast, I don’t know if you’re really in to the beauty of sweet tea, it’s basically pancake syrup in a cup. And I decided I was not going to do it and for a whole year drink only water and some juices. I got fired up. I was on Twitter talking about it, calling it the HydroForce. People are joining it with me, and I haven’t had one. It’s been pretty awesome.
Now, about four weeks ago, I had all of the allergy stuff attack. I had to go to the doctor, had to weigh myself, and I haven’t had a soft drink or sweet tea this entire year, and I am fatter than I have ever been. And I stood on that scale, and, man, I don’t even know what I was thinking – “I’m walking out of this room, I’m going to Wendy’s to get a vat of Coke and a vat of tea, and just IV it straight in to my body for a week.” I was just so ticked off. I was like, “Just look at all of this stuff I’m not doing. Why am I not smaller?” So, I go tell my wife, and she goes, “Well, you know, you could exercise a little.” And I’m like, “Whatever.”
So the truth that God kinda hit me with there is sometimes we think we are going to get somewhere by just not doing stuff, by cutting things out of our lives, and sometimes we think we’re Christians because of what we don't do and where we don't go, and the things we don’t do anymore. As great as this is, sometimes our lives as believers are just diets we go on. We cut things off, which is a good thing, but we don't add anything to it.
Psalm chapter 1 is good stuff. Verse 1 says, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. On it, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields fruit in its season. Its leaf does not wither, and everything he does prospers.”
You have to have some roots. You have to guard your time with God. The first thing the enemy is coming after in your life is your time with Jesus. He would much rather us coast from Sunday to Sunday on some lesson that you hear once a week, but as great as church is and as great as the pastor is, none of that goes home with me. When you go home, it's just you and Jesus.
As great as it is that you are guarding some things from your life -- you can be very careful what you watch and what you listen to -- you don’t need things dragging you back to what you were –- you need to urge yourself in to what you're trying to be, right? And that’s all good, but if that's all you're doing, it's just a big behavior diet. So you have to start planting things into your life.
CHALLENGE: Get into the word. Dive in. Drink it in. Read a verse and ask God what he's showing you about Him, what he's showing you about you. Is there anything he's asking you to take out of your life? Is there anything he's asking you to add to your life? Is he making you a promise in the verse? Are there characters in the story? What characters do you seem the most like? Where are you finding yourself in God's word? In James, it says the word of God is a mirror. We need to start looking a little bit more in to this mirror.
- Mark Hall