Give a listen as I share exactly WHY Psalm 1 is my favorite Psalm and why my favorite verse is verse 2.

My view towards the Bible has totally changed because of this Psalm.

 

Here is the video link:

Delighting and Meditating

The audio links to Spotify and iTunes are to the right, and below is the transcript I used for today’s podcast.

1:2 Delighting and Meditating

2  but whose delight is in the law of the Lord…

The man who is blessed does NOT walk, sit, or stand with the wicked, sinners, or mockers. He DOES do this – he delights in and meditates on the law of the Lord.

“Delight” expresses all that makes the child of God happy. The law is more than a delight; it is the believer’s chief desire. The law of the Lord isn’t something we learn because we are told to do it. The follower of God DELIGHTS in it. This is something that is a centerpiece of his/her life because he/she WANTS it. It brings pleasure. When we delight in something, we look forward to it. We can’t wait until our next opportunity to read it. As I am writing this to read during my podcast, it is a little after midnight. I woke up, and for whatever reason, I am wide awake. My first thought was “as long as I am awake, might as well do something I like to do – Bible study”. Whenever there is a hole in my day, I gravitate toward reading/studying the Bible, as it gives me pleasure. I delight in it.

It wasn’t always this way. In the beginning of my walk with the Lord (Easter, 1975), I devoured the Bible. I thought God was calling me to the ministry (pastoring – or maybe minister of music). God made it abundantly clear that He was NOT wanting me to be a pastor or worship leader and when I realized that, I almost quit reading the Bible completely. The “Law of the Lord” i.e. the Bible, was NOT a delight to me, it was a means to an end – going into the ministry. Fast forward decades later to 2021-ish. There was a pandemic rearing its head and I had just been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. For approximately two and a half years, I was housebound. I was isolated from much of the world with a ton of time on my hands. I had to do  pivot of sorts, and learn to teach guitar and bass virtually as face-to-face lessons were a non-starter. In order to learn the technology necessary to do this, one of my self-assigned projects was to develop a podcast, as the technology necessary was nearly identical to virtual lessons. I had to learn how to do FB Live. I had to find a software platform that allowed me to use video and audio. I needed a subject to circle my virtual technology wagons around, so out of the blue, I decided that I would do a Bible devotional podcast. I got a membership to Bible Gateway, an online repository of Bible translations and Bible helps. I then began to do short Bible studies/devotions and post them on YouTube and Facebook. I figured I would do this until I was really comfortable with all the technology and process I needed to know for my main income-producing vocation i.e. music lessons.

Something really intriguing happened. I started waking up early – we are talking 4:30-5:00 am on some mornings – excited to read what was coming next in whatever book of of the Bible I was studying. Once the pandemic was over and I was able to drive to the church to teach lessons, I would use the 30 minute drive to talk to God about what I was reading at the time (this is especially important in light of what the second half of verse 2 says).

Folks – I found myself delighting in the Lord. His Words were becoming a centerpiece of my life. Unlike the first few years of my Christian life, this time I was not studying the Bible to increase my capabilities for a job in the Church. This time, it was simply because there is joy in it for me. There is no possible financial reward for studying the Word. There is no college degree awaiting me in the future because of my study in His Word. There is nothing wrong with either of those two things, it’s just that those two reasons no longer have a hold on me in any way.

I simply delight in the Law of the Lord. It brings me pleasure, and it brings me joy.

2b  …and who meditates on his law day and night.

I hope you can see why this psalm is one of my favorites. Just look at what my heart has poured out concerning these first two verses!

The second half of verse 2 is the foundational statement for me that freed me from a form of legalism. When I was thinking I was going into the ministry, I bought – or received as gifts – a truckload a plethora of Bible helps – Bible dictionaries, commentaries, Greek/Hebrew study helps etc. When I would study, I would take up the entire kitchen table with my books and paper. There was joy in the hunt. And there was always a purpose – I was leading a Bible study, or I was preparing to preach. I was always preparing for something other than myself. I didn’t study the Bible to enrich my life – I studied it to enrich YOURS. But once ministry possibilities dried up, those books went on the shelf, never to be opened again… and this included the Bible.

Fast forward to 2021-ish and my beginning a Bible study podcast as mentioned previously. As it was not going to be a permanent thing, I kept it simple. I would read a paragraph or a chapter and speak off the cuff about what I had just read. No in-depth study, next to no time in preparation. I would wake up at the scheduled time, turn on the camera, turn on my microphone interface, read the paragraph or chapter, then comment, using a “stream-of-consciousness” style. I spoke about whatever that Bible passage evoked as a response in my heart.

Funny thing… after a couple of months of doing this, I began to wake up expectantly, wondering what God was going to show me next. After a couple of months of doing this, I found myself talking to God (we call that praying, by the way) about that day’s chapter on the way to work. Remember previously when I said:

“Once the pandemic was over and I was able to drive to the church to teach lessons, I would use the 30 minute drive to talk to God about what I was reading at the time (this is especially important in light of what the second half of verse 2 says).”

I found myself doing what the second half of verse 2 speaks of.

2b  …and who meditates on his law day and night.

I found myself waking up thinking about God’s Word. My last thoughts before falling asleep were of God’s Word. I found myself talking to myself about God’s Word.

The word “meditate” comes from the Hebrew word “hāgâ”: 

הָגָה1 hāgâ, v. to utter a sound, moan, meditate; to mutter; the act of thoughtful deliberation with the implication of speaking to oneself:

I have ALWAYS talked to myself. I am a very verbal person, and when presented with a problem, my process is to talk to myself  – aloud – through the problem until a solution was found. I visualized a big chalkboard in my mind, and my writing my ideas and thoughts on that board, erasing and writing as I refined my thoughts until I arrived at a conclusion. 

When I started my podcast, that was the process I used when talking extemporaneously about whatever the passage I was reading meant to me. I began to call this “thinking with my mouth open”, and this soon became a tag-line for my podcast. This was not planned – I didn’t know that what I was doing was in actuality “meditating” until I read this Psalm for the first time in years. 

So I would go to bed thinking and talking to myself about a Bible passage. I would be woken up early thinking about a Bible passage, I would record my thoughts i.e. “thinking out loud” as I recorded my podcast, and I would go through my day, revisiting that Bible passage when I had spare time, talking to God  and myself… “muttering”.

Well – that’s all well and good. God formed a process for me that enabled me to begin to enjoy His Word, and to enjoy producing my podcast “Coffee, the Bible, and Paige!”. Did anything ELSE happen as a result of my “muttering to myself” throughout the day? So glad you asked. That brings us to verse 3…. but you will have to wait until the next podcast for that.

Blessings!

Paige