The Fork In The Road

However, remember this is a fork in the road. There is another way, another road that Psalm 1 describes. This is the road of blessing, prosperity and righteousness. This is the road that leads a person to be like a well-watered, deeply rooted, strong and healthy fruit tree. How do you get there? Psalm 1:1,2 says, “Blessed is the one… whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.” This is the route that repeatedly looks to God’s Word to guide and direct us. As the psalmist writes in Psalm 119:105, “Your Word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.” The Word of our God shines the light on our meandering ways. It shows ours our trespasses, the times that we have crossed the line and entered areas that God says are off limits to us: sexual thoughts for someone other than your spouse, selfishness that his more concerned about getting your way than God’s way. God’s Word shows us how we have walked down the road of compromise, maybe making the trip so many times that we’ve grown comfortable with sins that used to shock us, barely even recognizing them as sinful any longer: things like same-sex marriage, when human life begins, and the creation of the world. God’s Word is that bright light that shows us our sin and wondering ways that if continued on will only lead to destruction.

But remember, God’s Word is meant to show us the road of blessing and prosperity, the road of righteousness. God’s Word leads us to the cross of Jesus, a road that was walked by Jesus in our place. There are no meandering moments there in Jesus’ walk, only footsteps that perfectly followed God’s will for us. There is no compromising on what God wanted him to do, no cutting corners to make his life easier or more comfortable. There is nothing except complete dedication to knowing, loving and following God’s will at every moment of his life, willingly going to the cross to suffer the punishment of our trespasses, our wondering eyes, minds, hearts and lives. The Word of God shows us the way of righteousness, the righteousness of Christ which God has given to us through faith, that allows us to stand ready for God’s judgement. At the end of our life, we will be judged, “Right with God.” Why? Not because we walked the road so well, or tried so hard to do the right things. No. Instead, we will be judged, “Right with God” because Jesus walked the road perfectly in our place, and went to the cross to pay the full price of our sin. This is the way of God’s Word which leads to blessing and prosperity.

A Bible scholar commented on this psalm, “Whatever shapes our thinking will soon shape our actions.” The ongoing research of the effects that “screen time” have on our thinking only reinforces this point. The forks in the road will most certainly come. How will you be prepared for them? We need for God’s Word to continually shape our thoughts. The psalmist says, “Blessed is the one…who meditates on his law day and night.” I don’t think that the psalmist had in mind a 24 hour per day Bible study when he wrote these words. However, to think that hearing God’s Word for one hour a week is going to impact our thinking seems to take it to the other extreme. Through group and personal Bible study, reading the Bible at home, personal and family devotions, and Christian conversations, God is shaping our thinking and preparing us for those forks in the road. When we are more deeply rooted in God’s Word we find ourselves asking instead of, “What do I think or what do you think, or what would be easiest?” we begin to ask, “What does God say? What does God promise?” We become more and more those trees that Psalm 1 describes as “a tree planted by streams of water, which yields it fruit in season and whose leaf does not whither – whatever he does prospers.”