Stop To Start
Submitted by Ron Black
May 13, 2024
Ps 1:1-2 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
I bought a compound bow about twenty years ago. I had no one to teach me how to set it up, so I experimented till I hit the target each time.
After five years, I took it to a bowsmith to get it cleaned and checked. He asked who had set up the bow. All the sight pins were backward, all else was wrong. He said that there was no way anybody could hit anything with it. Yet, I had gotten pretty good with it.
At his range, he watched me shoot. The arrow was upside down, I held the bow wrong, and I did everything wrong.
He set the bow upright and showed me how to shoot right. He not only told me what I needed to do, but he told me what I needed to stop doing. At first, I went from being able to hit the bullseye to not being able to hit the target. After unlearning all the bad habits, I became a better shooter. I had to stop the bad habits to start doing right.
The psalmist is telling us the same thing in verses 1 and 2. To be blessed by God, we must spend time in His Word daily. Reading, studying, and memorizing it. Not just in the morning but all day. The Bible needs to be the most important thing in our life. It must be the first thing we read in the morning, and the last thing we read at night. But to do that, we must unlearn our bad habits to put the Bible in its proper place.
The psalmist uses three things in verse one. We must stop listening to the wrong advice, we must stop being with the wrong crowd, and we must stop doing the wrong things. Then, start a new plan.
You can do that by identifying time wasters and bad habits, then replace them with time in the Bible, time with fellow believers, and going to church each time the doors are open.
Experts say it takes 30 days to learn a new habit.
Challenge: Take the next 30 days and stop doing the wrong things. Then, start putting God and His Word at the center of your day and life.
Did You Know? "Bookkeeper" is the only word in the English language with three consecutive double letters.
