God has given us so many beautiful truths, but sometimes the flow of the Word is so great that it is difficult to appropriate it all. The Living Word is so rich that it can almost overwhelm us unless we learn how to assimilate it into our very being.
The Lord has set us on a course of intercession, of judgment, of seeing His Kingdom come and His will done in the earth (Matthew 6:10). In order for us to be effective in this, the Word must become for us both the gunpowder in the bullet and the fuel in the tank; the key of blessing and the sustenance we need day by day. We are believing for the life that is lived as though it were miraculously sustained, the life that is enriched by some secret source, the life that prospers even though everything around it fails. Have you ever noticed how a healthy, agile cat lands on its feet, no matter how it is thrown? This is exactly what we want for our lives. Although problems sometimes come into our lives to prevent us from living that blessed life, there is no problem for which Psalm 1 does not give a secret solution.
Many secrets of success have both a positive and a negative aspect. For example, if you want to build a house, the first thing you must do is clear the ground, haul away the rubble, and dig down far enough to lay a good foundation. It is very interesting to see how tall buildings are constructed in Hawaii. One of the first steps is accomplished by pile drivers that drive large steel pilings deep into the ground. Once the first pile is almost buried, the workers weld on a second pile and drive it down. That process is repeated until those underground pilings are driven into the lava beds (which form the foundation of the Islands) to a depth that will be sufficient to support the building. In a time of wind and storm, those buildings have a great deal of give; yet they stand solid and firm because they are built on a deep and strong foundation.
As a child of God, you say, “I would like to have a good foundation to my life. I do not want to spend these years building and building, only to have all that I have built blown down. I want to succeed in my walk with God; I never want to fail. I want nothing to get in the way and hinder my success.” How do you do that? Psalm 1:1 gives you the first step, which is very basic: eliminate the negative; clear away the rubbish. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
In itself, this verse is not the complete key of success. Of course, you are blessed to some extent if you follow it, but I know people who neither walk with the wicked, nor stand with the sinners, nor sit with the scoffers—yet there is no particular blessing on their lives. While the first Psalm is one complete formula for success, the first verse covers only the negative side—cleaning away the dangerous rubbish. When you do this, you are taking out an insurance policy against failure at a later time.
You need to get rid of any hidden bombs that you are carrying around within you. You do not know where they are planted or how and when the enemy will detonate them. How tragic it would be to walk so far with the Lord, to “run the race” (Hebrews 12:1–2), and then—just when you are ready to cross the finish line as a winner—to have the enemy push the button and destroy you (I Corinthians 9:24–27).
The blessed man does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. The word “walk” speaks of a manner of life. In your life-style, there must be no conformity to the wicked. Some words change their meaning a great deal through the years. For example, the word “conversation” in the King James Version is an Old English word, and is now translated “conduct,” “manner of life,” “way of life,” or “behavior” (I Timothy 4:12; Hebrews 13:5). Isn’t it interesting that the word “conversation,” which once referred to a person’s way of life and the way he walks, is now used to refer to the way he talks? Yet is there really any difference? Because the word “conversation” originally referred to our way of living, eventually it came to refer to our way of speaking; what we voice is an expression of how we live. We are not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly. We must abandon completely, in our mind and in our thinking, the way of life and manner of speech that the world embraces. This is the first secret of success.
Nor stand in the path of sinners. “Standing in the path of sinners” does not mean standing in their path and blocking them by saying, “Don’t sin!”; it means that you have positioned yourself on the same ground as the sinner. When you do that, you are not walking with him, but you are taking a sympathetic, tolerant position toward the sinner. The different positionings mentioned in this verse reveal wisdom beyond what is apparent. Your “walk” refers to your entire way of life. Your “stand” is actually your basic attitudes toward life. Neither of these is to be the same as a sinner’s.
Thirdly, you are not to sit in the seat of scoffers. (The King James Version says, “the scornful.”) When you sit in the seat of the scornful, you have taken a position of judgment. Your evaluation of people or circumstances is the same as those who look at the things of God and scoff at them. When you have eliminated these three negative positionings from your life, then you have positioned yourself to go on to an assured place of success and fruitfulness.
Now that we have seen what a blessed man avoids doing, let us read in Psalm 1:2 what this successful man does do. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. This gives the positive picture. Just as we must close the door to the negative flow, so we must keep open the channel by which God ministers to us—the channel by which miracles come. A miracle does not come because the time is right or because a particular opportunity presents itself. A miracle is a potential within your heart all the time. It is simply an application of something that is within you.
One day Peter and John went up to the Temple at the hour of prayer—three o’clock in the afternoon. As they passed by, they noticed someone whom they had probably walked by many times before without seeing—a lame man at the Temple gate. This time they looked at him; he looked at them—it was a moment of expectancy. It was not contrived; it was not scheduled. Moments later, the man who had been lame entered the Temple with them, exultantly leaping about and praising God. The miracle happened spontaneously because all the ingredients in the formula for a miracle were there (Acts 3:1–8).
In the formula for a miracle, everything negative must be eliminated. In your way of life, there is to be no scoffing, no bitterness, no counsel of the wicked. You have eliminated all of that. In its place is the positive. You are delighting in the Word, in all the principles and laws of God. You are meditating on them day and night. The formula for a miracle is within you, ready to explode at the proper moment.
You may be wondering, “How do I meditate day and night on the Word? Do I discipline myself to think about it continually?” If you eliminate the negative, you will find yourself turning more and more to the positive. There are more things that you can easily become negative about than you realize. If you don’t believe this, check up on yourself as you go through this day. Note every time you actually revert to murmuring; every time you grumble; every time you complain; every time you feel offended; every time you feel withdrawn; every time you feel critical of someone else; every time you compare yourself with someone else thinking, “If he is doing that, why can’t I do that too?”; and every time you think, “Who do they think they are, telling me to do something their way when I want to do it my way?” Every time you have one of these negative reactions, you are failing to walk according to the first verse of Psalm 1. Somewhere within you is the walk of the wicked, that position of the sinner, and that judging attitude and criticism of the scoffer. Somewhere it is wrapped up within you, to some degree, in some way. To eliminate that negative position is your first step.
The more closely you are aligned to the world, the more you tend to tolerate the cynical thinking of the world: “We are the ‘in’ group. We are free; we are on dope, we drink, and we commit fornication. Those religious guys are a bunch of ‘squares’; they have an overworked conscience.” There is a scoffing attitude in their spirits. The further you get away from that thinking, the closer you are to the life that is sustained by a miracle of God.
A miracle is not a one-chance-in-a-million event. Suppose you were to go outside, close your eyes, aim your shotgun to the sky, and pull the trigger. If a duck fell at your feet, that could be considered a miracle according to mathematical odds; however, a true miracle is not something that takes place as a thousand-to-one shot. A miracle is not a happenstance. It is not something that happens by chance. A miracle can happen anytime; it can be repeated time after time after time, because a miracle is not a happening. A miracle occurs by a formula effected within a person. You can be a miracle going someplace to happen. Rather than going through the day feeling and looking like an accident going someplace to happen (or like one that has already happened!), open your heart to the blessings of the Lord and say, “I will think, act, and believe that I am a miracle that is going to happen. Within me, I will have a potential for victory—not for defeat.”
As we read the rest of Psalm 1, we will see what happens to the two contrasting groups of people it describes: the wicked, and those who meditate on the Word. What does verse 3 say about the man who meditates day and night on the Word? And he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers. That is as good a formula for success as a person can have: Whatever he does prospers. Suppose he makes a mistake in his judgment. It will turn out right anyway. When a man meditates on God’s Word, it is absolutely amazing how God blesses him in everything he does.
God did not say to Joshua, “If you are intelligent enough, if you are sly and clever and shrewd, you can go into Canaan as the greatest general there ever was.” Instead, He said, “Joshua! Listen to Me. This is what you must do: Throw away all the books of strategy and warfare. Get out the book of the Law, and meditate on it day and night. Then you will make your way prosperous and have good success” (Joshua 1:6–9). Do you grasp this important principle? You will see the miracle of success worked in you because you are a meditator on the Word. This first Psalm is the golden text of the Psalms. All that you read in the remaining 149 Psalms is based on the key text in Psalm 1.
Because the blessed man is meditating and thinking upon the Word, he is like a tree growing by streams of water. A growing tree takes in a lot of water. In some of the southern California canyons there are beautiful cypresses, oak trees, scrub oaks, and other trees. I remember reading in the rangers’ report years ago that all of those trees take in through their roots approximately four hundred barrels of water a day. Their roots penetrate deep into the earth where they reach the underground water supply far below. Up in the rocks there is only sparse vegetation—cactus, sage, and other plants. It is amazing how much water is soaked up by those large trees. God wants you to be like one of those trees. People may not realize why you are so healthy and strong spiritually, but it is because you are feeding on the Word of the Lord. A tree puts its roots downward; but when you meditate on the Word, you send your roots upward into God. When you meditate on that Word day and night, you are assured of success in your walk with God.
What happens if someone cuts off all of your branches? It does not matter. It will not disturb your roots if they are in God and if you are meditating on His Word. After the pruning, you will grow a new set of branches and come up stronger than ever. As you meditate on the Word day and night, you are saying, “Lord, I have my roots in You.” He says to you, “Son, what are you thinking about today?”
“I’m thinking about the promise in John 15:7: ‘If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you can ask what you will, and it will be done for you.’ ”
“That is a very good verse. Get your roots into it, and draw. Stay right with it. You can suck on that verse all day long. Meditate on the promise, ‘Whatever you ask, God will do it for you.’ ” When you meditate on His Word day and night, you are in tune with God and you become the miracle or the miracle worker, because it is in you. You are like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In whatever you do, you prosper.
What about the wicked? What will happen to them? Psalm 1:4–5 says, The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away. In other words, there is nothing of permanence in them. Whatever place in life the wicked fill, ultimately they are like chaff, a removable substance. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
When it comes to the matter of judgment, the wicked cannot stand. There is nothing enduring about them; they have no foundation, no enduring place. They have nothing that can bring them through God’s judgments. In no way can God’s system of judgment be compared with that of the world. The courts of the land comprise a system which was created as an expedient on the human plane, but God’s system of judgment is entirely different. It is accurate, righteous, and governed by principles and laws which will either break a person or bring him into the presence of God.
Verse 6: For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. The way of the righteous is permanence and success. The way of the wicked is a temporary existence. He appears on the passing scene; then the wind blows him away. What a picture of contrasts this is! Let us keep within our hearts these keys that bring success and permanence to all that God is bringing forth in us.
When we speak about meditating on the Word, we are talking about being tuned into the Word. We savor it; we love it; we watch it yield its sweetness. We also experience the Word becoming bitter in our stomach as it is incorporated into our very being (Revelation 10:9–10). We soak in His Word like trees planted by the rivers of water. This is how we are transformed. This is how we grow. Spiritual growth is a result of incorporating and assimilating the Word of God with intense faith and meditation.
As an analogy to the process of meditation, consider the process whereby a cow digests her food and produces milk. That process continues day and night. The cow swallows her food; then later, while she is resting, she regurgitates it and then chews that cud for a long time before swallowing it again.
The digestive process of a cow is similar to the process of meditating on and digesting a Living Word. How many times do you seem to recall or listen again to that Word, chewing it over again, each time finding it still alive and sweet, still productive in your life? You can listen to a Living Word tape or read a message many times in this manner. Even when it seems that you have exhausted every truth it contains and there is nothing more you can absorb, then listen to it or read it once again, and you will discover another secret, another key. As the Word unlocks itself, it releases the spiritual enzymes, minerals, and vitamins of the Kingdom. The enrichment comes because you meditate on the Word day and night. Any one Scripture has such great potential within it that you could move the world with it. One passage of Scripture has such power within it that if its power were totally turned loose in your heart, by it alone you could become a full mature son of God.
How blessed we are because we have the entire Scriptures available to us. There were times, even up to recent history, when this was not so. Christians at one time had to take apart the Bibles that were available and pass the pages around, so that everyone could meditate on them. Even today, in Communist-held countries, many Christians do this. Just imagine having only one page, covering perhaps one chapter, for several months. They hide that page, even when in prison. They memorize it and explode its power. It sustains them when everything else fails. This has been the actual experience of many believers.
I once saw a handwritten New Testament that was larger than a Sears-Roebuck catalog. In a region of the Ozarks where people do not have much money, someone with clear and legible handwriting had copied the Scriptures, just as the scribes did in Old and New Testament times, and put together a Bible. Isn’t it beautiful to see how people have cherished the Word of God throughout many centuries!
Do you appreciate how much the Word is coming alive again today at this dispensational time? There are deep truths coming out of the Word now that for hundreds of years could not be found in a biblical commentary or any other book. Did any of the men of God in the past know the truths that God is revealing now? New light is coming upon the Word in these days. You can meditate on it; you can be fed by it. If you appropriate the Living Word that is coming today, it will bring forth the miracle, in this time of restoration, that you want in your life.
Prayer: Lord, bless this Living Word to our hearts. Turn us afresh to Your Word. While we are busy doing Your will, let us be meditating and thinking upon Your Word. O Lord, we loose ourselves so that we will not be influenced by the counsel of the wicked, the stand that the sinner takes, or the judgment and sarcasm of the scoffers. Lord, we will delight in Your Word; we will meditate on it and think upon it with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength (Deuteronomy 6:5).