What tears you down?
- Disagreements with your partner?
- Financial struggles?
- Pain in your body?
Life has a way of throwing boulders in our path. It can make us cynical and angry and discouraged.
Yet the obstacles don’t have to ruin us. They may temporarily hinder us. But hurdles can’t grow larger than God’s blessings if we’re delighting in Him.
But how can we delight in the Lord when we’re bombarded by temptations and troublemakers and our own transgressions?
The Psalmist tells us in Psalm 1:2.
Spend day and night meditating on the law of the Lord, delighting in it.
Does that mean sitting in quiet time with an open Bible 24/7?
No. Even Jesus didn’t live that way.
Instead, we can delight in God’s truths by valuing what He values, walking where He walks, and loving how He loves.
We can discern these things when we spend time with Him in His recorded words and when we wake up to His continual presence with us as the Living Word, Jesus Christ.
Yes, day and night. We are always in His presence; we’re just not always aware of it.
Meditating on God’s truths isn’t just sitting in silence. It’s also speaking; imagining; studying.
- The older we are, the more we have to meditate on, to look back on, to speak about.
- But the younger we are, also the more we have to meditate on, to look ahead to, to imagine about.
If you’re memorizing Psalm 1 with us this fall, use this week to remind yourself that the Lord is always with you. Find delight in that knowledge. Think about it, meditate on it, live in it.
Micah said it this way:
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Micah 6:8
And Jesus Himself said,
“Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”
Luke 11:27-28
May this be us . . . blessed.
Memorize This Week
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
Psalm 1:2 (ESV)
That’s one of the many good reasons for memorizing Scripture–so it can come back to our minds while we’re doing other things. I love the truth that we are always in God’s presence, even if we don’t feel like it or aren’t aware of it.
Yes, even though we have the Bible at our fingertips (or in our pockets) on our phones, it’s still beneficial to have it in our hearts so that it goes everywhere we go, regardless of what we’re doing.
You may also have read Brother Lawrence’s book through the years, but I always think about it when I consider “The Practice of the Presence of God” by being more mindful of Him.