Reflect

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. I don't know if you realize this, but up until recently, most cultures, almost all cultures in this world, up until the modern era, tended to really revere ancient texts and wisdom, as well as maturity of age. You know, the elders were the seed of wisdom in most cultures. We'll find that in the Bibles as elsewhere. But then the modern age came apart, about the Enlightenment, for instance, and the point was to throw off all of these external authorities and say, no, we're going to learn just through our own reason and our own experimentation what the truth is and what really matters and what life is all about. Descartes, who said, I think, therefore I am, that's what it is all about, our rationality. And so through reason and testing, we can solve all the problems of life and figure out all the mysteries of life. It's the only way to find any truth that's worth knowing anyways. So the question is, how have we done on this? How are we doing? Technology is wonderful. Hey, in fact, I could order right now my lunch right online and get it delivered. I don't even have to go in anywhere. It's great stuff. And life is so much safer and so much more comfortable. Thank you for air conditioning in Southwest Florida, right? Was it Carrier invented it, like it was his birthday just this week, and we can celebrate that that guy figured it out. That's the one thing I am so, you know, those things I can't imagine living in the South without that, just even like 75 years ago or 100 years ago. Maybe that's why Florida was not too populated back then. But if you look at our lives today and compare them to our ancestors a couple hundred years ago, though we have many more comforts, though we may have some more justice. And it assumes it is assuming that we were freed people back then, a couple hundred years ago, because there were a lot of people who were enslaved or facing all sorts of difficulties under certain burdens. So but for the freed people back then compared to the people today, and I'm not trying to dismiss all of those things by any means, but our lives are much easier, right? They didn't have vacations. They didn't have health benefits. Their life expectancy was much shorter. And yet, paradoxically, if you were free, if you were somewhat well off, you had a piece of land, et cetera, and you compare their happiness to our happiness today, they were happier. There is a lot more self-pity and a lot more whining and complaining and a lot more meaninglessness and despair today in our modern era. And not just today here, but what I've noticed as well is I've traveled overseas. I've gone to Nicaragua, to Haiti, to India, to Thailand. And there is a lot of poverty. There's a lot of injustice. There's a lot of other things. But what I've noticed among Christians in some of those countries is there is a joy and there is a happiness beyond what I see in the United States. And often if you ever go on a mission trip overseas, you think you are going to provide them with so many wonderful things. And you get there and you realize the poverty of your own faith and the wealth of their wisdom and maturity and love and mercy. They've got something we don't have. We've got the stuff. But they've got a rootedness and a centeredness about them that we're missing. So, today we're going to talk about that, of how you can replenish by going back to some of the old traditions, if you want to say it, to reflection, to meditation in God's Word and how that will make a difference. So today we're going to be looking at Psalm 1, and we're going to look at what the good life really is and how many people are missing out on that life. And the question is really not so much those people over there and what they're not doing, but it's me. How am I missing out? Where am I trying to find the good life? And how can I have more of God's life that he intended me to have? And I think Psalm 1 answers all those questions. So let's read it. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the wind drives away. 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. So from this psalm we're going to learn three things today that will increase, I believe, your satisfaction and the word that this psalm uses is your blessedness, your happiness, in fact. That's what the word actually means. We'll look at that. That you will be replenished...