FBC Daily Devotional – January 4, 2022

Well, good Tuesday morning to you. I hope your week's gotten off to a good start yesterday. It's of course the first week of the new year, and so therefore,

I hope your new year is getting off to a good start. Well, today in our Bible reading plan, we're in Acts chapter 21 -22, and in that passage, the

Apostle Paul has the opportunity to stand before a council and recount his testimony of conversion.

And that is a dramatic testimony, isn't it? I mean, here's a man who you know, he knew a bunch about it.

He was a very religious man and very zealous in his religion. But he was out to persecute

Christians, the followers of Christ, followers of the way. He was on his way to Damascus and the

Lord appeared to him and knocked him off his knocked him off his donkey, whatever he was riding, fell to the ground, blinded him, and you know,

Saul responded and said, Lord, what would you have me to do? And, you know,

Saul became a believer. I mean, it was dramatic and the grace of God evident in his life is,

I mean, a true night and day experience. He was getting ready to go persecute

Christians and God met him in his grace and converted him, brought him to faith in Christ, and from then on out he's furthering the gospel and furthering the cause of Christ.

This is a dramatic conversion experience. And you read something like that and you may feel like, man, you know,

I don't I don't have that kind of a, you know, dramatic experience.

I mean, I grew up in a Christian home. I've been attending church since the time

I was, I can remember, for as young a kid, and I've been in church all my life.

And, you know, I came to a place where I personally realized I needed Christ and I trusted him as my

Savior and called upon him to save me. But, I mean, there wasn't like this dramatic night and day change in my life.

Well, there wasn't. There may not have been in your life. But what you did need, just as much as Paul needed, was the grace of God.

So all that your parents did, all that you got in church growing up, and all the rest of that, that may have been helpful in informing your thinking and so forth, but that in itself didn't save you.

You needed the grace of God just as much as Paul needed the grace of God to save him. And the grace of God is evident in your life, not only at the point that you can remember of realizing you need to trust

Christ, that you were a sinner and needed to be saved. But God's grace is evident in your life in perhaps in what he saved you from.

He saved you from all of the guilt and the heartache. I mean, Paul, later on, he said, you know,

I'm the least of all the disciples. I'm the least of all the apostles because, you know, I was saved out of due time, if you will.

And he recognized what he had done prior to his conversion and how heinous it was persecuting believers.

See, if God delivered you from that, from ever doing any of that kind of stuff, doing any really bad stuff, if you will, that's

God's grace. Be grateful for the grace of God in your life, however it has been expressed to you.

We also read today in our reading the first psalm. So in our Bible reading plan, we read through the entire

Old and New Testament over the course of two years, but we also read the book of Psalms and the book of Proverbs two different times.

So we're restarting the book of Psalms today. And in Psalm 1, we read what really determines our happiness.

And that's brought out in that very first couple of verses. Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the

Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. So if you see five things there that are key for your happiness, let me just rattle them off and you note them.

And I hope they they make sense to you and sink in. My happiness is determined by number one, the counsel

I'm accepting. Number two, it's determined by the general direction of life in which

I'm headed. I'm following. I don't stand in the way of...

Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. So there's the counsel. Doesn't stand in the way of sinners.

What's the direction of my life? And doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful. So the third key to my happiness has to do with the companions that I'm keeping company with.

Do they encourage me in the things of the Lord? Or do they get me to turn away from and not want to think about the things of the

Lord? Number four, the degree to which I delight in God's Word. We kind of touched on this yesterday, didn't we?

Regarding King Josiah and his attitude toward God's Word. But his delight is in the law of the

Lord. And then the last thing is the extent to which God's Word shapes and impacts my life.

So that end of verse two says, his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law he meditates day and night.

Now, I wouldn't suggest by that that the psalmist is saying that the happy person is one who doesn't think about anything else.

I mean, you can't live like that. You have to think about your responsibilities. You have to think as you're doing your job and so forth.

But what you do is you find your mind being shaped by and your thinking shaped by God's Word as you meditate.

What does God have to say about this? You know, you face a decision at work or in the home.

What's God's will regarding this, you see? And you start thinking about the application of God's Word to this particular situation, this particular need.

And the extent to which my mind and my life is shaped by God's Word, it will influence my level of happiness.

I hope you're a happy person walking in the right path, pursuing the right objectives, delighting in God's Word, and finding yourself shaped and impacted by what you read and hear from the

Word of God. All right. Well, Father, we do thank you for these two passages today.

One that just speaks of your amazing grace in our lives, no matter how dramatic our conversion, how dramatic the night and day life is that we have lived.

And also, Father, thank you for this encouragement from the first Psalm about being truly happy.

So I pray that you would encourage us today in these things. Bless them to our hearts, we ask in Jesus' name.

All right. Well, I trust you have a good rest of your Tuesday and that God will bless you in it. Good day.