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Hey church family, it is Devo time.
If you got your Bibles, which are required for Devo's, I think, Psalm chapter 1.
I told you I've been in the Psalms a whole lot lately throughout this period.
And I can tell you, just for me, last week was a tough week with the information about the young man,
Ahmad in Brunswick, Georgia.
Also, I lost a friend of mine who was in the ministry in a very tragic way.
And particularly with my thoughts about what happened in Brunswick with this young African-American man losing his life,
what it led me to think about is just the empathy I have for the fathers, the African-American fathers speaking to their African-American sons in America about identity and who you are.
in a way that I'll never be required to have a conversation like that with JP.
And the reason it led me to Psalm 1 is this.
I've been praying Psalm 1 over my son for 14 years.
He's 14 years old.
I typically pray Psalm 139 over Reagan and Psalm 1 over JP.
And a part of the reason I want to do that is both of them have to do with identity.
We covered Psalm 139 last week, which is about being an image bearer of God that he has created us.
and knit us together in our mother's womb.
And Psalm chapter one has to do with who you are
and where your identity comes from.
And I wanted to just plant the anchor of the truth of God's words
so deep in his, my little boy's soul,
that as he grew up, no matter what this world tried to tell him
about who he is, he could reject the lies of the enemy
and be rooted and grounded in the never-cheworthy,
changing always true word of God.
And just as true as it is for a little boy growing into a teenager that will be a young man,
that will be a grown man, these words are just as true for you and I in this very moment.
We live in a world that is always trying to tell us who we are,
always trying to label us by our ethnicity or political affiliation or socioeconomic,
and none of those are who we really are.
We are who God tells us that we are.
And so the book of Psalms starts out this way.
Chapter 1, verse 1.
Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked
nor stands in the way of the center,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers.
You see, there is a progression here.
There is an ever-increasing intensity
in the intimacy of these relationships.
It's one thing to walk with somebody.
You know, you can kind of walk and talk.
It's another thing to stop and stand
and get a little more focused on that conversation.
And then yet it's another step
to sit down with someone.
To walk with the wicked,
to stand with the center,
or to sit at the seat of the scoffer.
You see, ultimately, who we surround ourselves,
according to God,
matters like crazy, like crazy.
See, one of the things I want for my son,
one of the things I want for you
is I want you to be surrounded with people
that are not wicked, that are not sinners,
and that are not scoffers.
Now, when I tell us the Christians,
church people, sometimes they'll say,
yeah, but didn't Jesus hang out with the sinners?
He absolutely did.
And so here's how you determine who you hang out with.
It all comes down to the question of influence.
100% of the time
when Jesus was hanging out with sinners, he influenced them towards God, towards Jesus, and towards
a relationship with him. And he never, not one time was ever influenced negatively by that crowd.
So, as we share our faith with our one more, if you are the influence in a crowd, then for sure,
for the sake of the gospel and the Great Commission, you should be sought in that place to influence that crowd
towards the gospel and towards the Lord.
But if you are honest and you know that you are being influenced away from Jesus
and towards wickedness, sin, and scoffers, then you should not be a part of that crowd.
Coach Leaves to tell me all the time, show me your friends, and I will show you your future.
Let me ask you, for the hundredth time, are you in a disciple group?
Do you have a group of brothers or sisters surrounding you that are helping encourage you
and point you toward your relationship with Jesus.
If not, you will have a hard time living out and believing,
you'll probably believe it cognitively,
but you'll have a hard time walking out the rest of what it means
to be a son or a daughter of God according to the rest of Psalm 1.
Now, I know it's super popular these days to think that Christianity
is a long ranger sport.
But it couldn't be further from the truth.
I've told you a million times.
If you're saved, if you're a Christian,
then you are connected to the body of Christ.
A disconnected body part dies.
That the Bible says that the devil prows around
like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
If you've ever watched Animal Planet,
the lion always picks off the animal that is not a part of the herd.
If you are a believer,
and especially all of the folks that are watching from all over the place,
if you are not connected to the body, then you're not doing this thing wrong.
And if the people that you were surrounding yourself with
are wicked sinners and scoffers,
then they will lead you away from what God has for you.
So he says, blessed is he, who doesn't walk there, stand there and sit there.
But instead of that, instead of being,
swept along by the current culture that you find yourself in, but his delight is in the law of the
Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. It is talking about the Bible. Blessed are those
who delight in the scriptures. Blessed are those who delight in God's gift to us through his
holy and inspired word. You see, we talked about it last week, I think.
I don't know the person that has a deep, abiding, growing relationship with Jesus,
that does not have a deep and abiding relationship with the Word of God.
It is not enough to just believe that Jesus loves you,
and it's not enough to just believe that historically he rose from the grave,
not if you want to discover and deepen your relationship with Jesus.
I wish somehow I could just like open up your heart and take,
the Word of God and put a love for God's Word in your heart.
Because everything is riding on it.
Not your salvation, but your sanctification is writing on it.
I was at a conference recently in Texas.
Well, not too recently, like February or something.
And there was a panel, and one of the people in the conference asked the panel,
asked us, I know we're supposed to read our Bible, but what do we do if we don't really want to?
I mean, I know we're supposed to, and I know it's good for us,
but what if we just don't have a desire to read our Bible?
And I didn't want to be mean to the guy.
So we answered with some kind words,
but ultimately my first thought was, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh.
Nobody's ever had to require me to study the face of my wife.
Nobody has ever had to require me to try to get closer and closer and closer to my wife.
Do you know why?
because I love her.
I love her.
I don't take her on dates out of just pure discipline.
I take her on dates,
and I try to get the kids out of the way
so that I could be with her because I love her.
Jesus says, abide in me, abide in my word,
and I will abide in you.
Blessed are you, when you delight in the Lord.
I'm going to tell you, one of God's greatest graces in my life is this.
I spend a lot of time in the Bible, okay, I do.
And I love it.
I love it, I love it. I love it. I love reading it. I love preaching it. I love learning.
But sometimes, you see, Jesus said that he would send the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit would be the one who teaches you the Word.
And so sometimes, I've read this book, I've got degrees in it over and over and over and over, but then there are these times where the Spirit of God gives me eyes to see something in the scriptures that I haven't seen before.
and it's always right on time and it's so pertinent to what's going on in my life.
And when he does that, it is like a fresh rain from heaven falls on me and refreshes me once again
and just reminds me of how good he is to us.
First and foremost, that he died on the cross for us.
Also, that he sent the spirit as a gift to live in us, and he gave us his word as a gift.
So blessed are you when you delight in the law of the Lord?
If you get bored reading your Bible, you're not doing it right.
So I will say switch it up, man.
Thank you for listening to this Devo.
Read until the Spirit teaches you something.
Maybe you need to switch it up and listen to the Word and walk around
or always sit in a special place and not just make it kind of a haphazard thing that you do,
but blessed are you when you delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night.
And the person that does this, he is like a tree planted,
by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither.
In all he does, he prospers.
Now, this is not a prosperity verse like, if you trust Jesus, he'll take care of all the situations.
But it's more like if you let the roots of your life go deep down into the Word of God,
then God does have a plan for you, and he does have a purpose for you,
and he does want to prosper you.
maybe not with cash and prizes.
That might be the worst thing in the world for your heart.
But you know what real prospering is?
Real prospering is learning the secret of being content in every situation.
That no matter what season of life is,
that you are planted by streams of running water.
That means that you are not tempted to find your satisfaction
to quench your thirst by the temporary things of this world
because you know the true living water in his name is Jesus.
And your joy doesn't have to change
because Jesus doesn't have to change
and the more you dive into his word,
the more your roots grow deeper
into your relationship with Jesus.
See, that's prospering.
And he says, but the wicked are not so,
but are like chaff
that the wind drives away.
Listen, every morning when you get up,
I would highly suggest you do your time
in the word in the morning.
You should do it and evening
and midday, whenever you want to,
but it's a great idea to start with the word.
Every day someone says
there are two paths you can take.
You can take the path of delay.
lighting in the law of the Lord, or you could take the path that the wicked take,
and they're just tossed around by the things of this world.
And they're like chaff.
When the wind blows, they have to go with it.
But the people of God, the people of the book that we are planted by streams of running
water, that everything we do will prosper.
God's word will do what he says, it will do.
It says, therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation
of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
One of the things that God's word reminds us of through the cross of Jesus Christ,
over and over and over is this, is that God is not some cosmic creator
that put the pieces of this world together and then wound them up like a clock
and then just sent them into the universe to tick away to a bleak.
but God knows your ways. And again, this could be the scariest thing you've ever heard. Like,
uh-oh, he does? Yeah, he does. But through the cross of Jesus Christ, when you understand that the
gospel is not only that Jesus died for sinners, but he also imputed his righteousness upon us.
In other words, if you believe when Christ died on the cross, that counted for me, then Jesus'
is perfect life is counted or credited to you, that this is love. Not that we love God,
but he loved us and he sent his son as the propitiation for our sin, the payment that satisfies,
which means if you were in Christ and Christ made the payment that satisfies, then God cannot be
dissatisfied in you. That he knows you. He knows what you think. He knows the wicked thoughts
that we have. He knows the good. He knows the bad. He knows the things. He knows the things. He knows the
things we have done. He knows the things we will do. He knows our soul. He knows our struggles. He
knows our strengths. And even in all of that, he wants you. That's right. This lets us know.
Because what Christ did on the cross, you are not unwonted, that God wants you. And so if it is
true that he wants us, as demonstrated by the cross, then shouldn't we want to know what he wants
for us, there is no better way to know what God wants for us than to delight in his word and meditate
on it day and night. 1122, may we be people of the word. May we be so soaked and saturated in the
word of God that every time the Spirit stirs us, the Word of God comes out of us. And you will be
blessed if you do so. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you that as a good dad,
when you look at your sons and daughters, you sent us this gift of the inspired, infallible,
and errant, living word of God that pierces our hearts and divides bone and marrow,
that gets down in places in our soul that no words of a preacher or an author can get, but only the
spirit of God that author your word can dig down to those places. God, God, would you turn our hearts
towards your word? Would you incline our hearts towards your word? May we be people that wake up in the
morning and we cannot wait to dive into your word, knowing that we just dive into a pool that overwhelms us
with your grace. God, I pray. I pray that we would not walk in the way of the wicked or
standing the way of the center or sit in the seat of the mokker, but we would delight in the law of
the Lord. We would meditate upon it day and night. And God, that we would be like trees planted
by streams of running water, that we would bear fruit in season and that our leaves was never
wither. And I thank you that you know the way of the righteous. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.