Accentuate the positive

Last week, we began looking at the first psalm. We noted that it seemed to be a guidebook for living happily ever after - or at least for contented living! The psalmist set out some instructions first of things we should NOT do . . . now we will look at what he said we SHOULD do!

Let's "accentuate the positive," shall we?

Let's look now at verses 2 and 3; we will see that he tells us true happiness can be found if we build our lives on the foundation of God and His Word:

but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. 

3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. 

If we just read through that quickly, and don't give it much thought, we might think it's a very pretty text. A platitude. Not much there . . . but whooaaaaaa, partner! The psalmist just said a mouthful!

Probably most of us would say that we avoid walking in the counsel of the ungodly, and we sure as the world don't stand around in the path of sinners. And now way do we sit down with scoffers and mock the Word of God! No way!

But how many of us can say that we delight in the Word of God? So much so, that we meditate on it continually?

Ohhhhhhh. Well, that is different. He's talking about a significant investment of ourselves.

Maybe we'd better look more closely.

What does he mean by delighting in God's Word?

Let's look first at the word the author of the psalm used. "Delight," as found here in our focus passage, is also used in other verses of the Bible.

The young man, who was the most honored of all his father’s family, lost no time in doing what they said, because he was delighted with Jacob’s daughter. (Genesis 34:19)

She would not go in to the king again, unless the king delighted in her and she was summoned by name. (Esther 2:14b)

In both locations of the word, the Hebrew text is talking about the way a man delights in a woman. Now there's a clue!

When a man (a young man, especially!) delights in a woman, there's nothing he won't do to be with her . . . we can see that especially in that verse from the chapter in Genesis. For the love of a woman, a man agreed to be circumcised! In fact, the whole city's worth of men said they would, but that's another story that we studied before, when we studied Dinah. (grin)

But I digress.

A young man who delights in a woman will go out of his way to be near her. If they are both on a campus, he will rearrange the path that he walks in order to go past her dormitory, or to "happen" to be near her classroom when she leaves. He will figure out where she usually sits in the library or the cafeteria, and make certain that he is nearby. (Don't ask me how I know these things. I'm pushing aside the mists of time to recall.)

Seriously, a man will even rearrange his priorities so that he has plenty of time to spend with the woman. He will complete tasks early to leave time for this. He wants to have as much time as possible with the woman he delights in. Not because he has to, but because he wants to. He lets nothing interfere with his time with the object of his delight!

You know where I am going with this, no?

Do we delight in God's Word in that way? Do we rearrange our schedules so that we can get some tasks done early? So that then we can spend time reading and studying the Word? Do we want to have as much time as possible to read our Bibles? Is our attitude one of duty (well, I need to read a chapter a day) or of avoiding guilt that we've neglected it? Do we "grind" through a chapter and check it off a list? Or are we delighted to read His Word, to commune with God, and to think about how to apply what we have read to our lives?

The Bible is God's letter to us. We are reading the counsel of an all-knowing, all-wise, and loving God that tells us how to live. We know that His commandments are for our good. It certainly should not be a "duty" to spend time in God's Word! The way to true happiness is to delight in it.

The psalmist also tells us to meditate in the Word. Continually. 

Meditate means to think about what the Word says after we read it. To think about how to apply it to our lives. To truly take it in and make it a part of us. Some translations say "continually" and others say "day and night." Either way, it takes knowing the Word pretty well, since we can't go around with our nose in our Bible all day! 

It's said that whatever shapes our thinking will shape our lives. The only way for us to reject the counsel of the wicked as we were told in the first verse, is to hold in our minds the Word of the heavenly Father. 

True happiness will be found in a life that is built upon God and His Word.