[Darris McNeely] A few weeks ago, I got a good friend of mine to come over with his chainsaw and we cut down a couple of trees in my front yard, in front of my house. One of the trees, big tree, been there for over 20 years, its roots were up on the ground and actually beginning to buckle and cause my sidewalk to come up. As the roots grew and grew, the tree was leaning over the branches and scraping the roof of my house. And of course, every fall, it just dropped a lot of leaves that were just an annoyance to me. And so, I cut it down.

As I was cutting it down, I thought this tree was probably a good idea by the builder of this home more than 20 years ago, when he put it right up here next to the house, next to the sidewalk but he didn't think it through. He didn't think it through the long-term. What's this tree gonna look like when it gets big? What's going to happen to the environment which I've placed it? In other words, he didn't plant it right. And so, more than 20 years later, I have to spend a few hundred dollars and time, and cut it down, and it's gone.

You know, sometimes we make decisions in our life. They seem good at the time but in short order, maybe even a few years later, we find out that they weren't and they don't bear good fruit. And they create problems. And we may have to go back and make corrections. A lot of decisions in the lives that we live are like that. And so, I was thinking about that life lesson from this tree that someone thought was a good idea but didn't quite plant it right.

Maybe think about the Psalm, the first Psalm that talks about a tree and righteousness. It goes like this. "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly or sets in a seat of the scornful but his delight is in the Law of the Lord. He meditates on it day and night." It says in verse 3, "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in that season, whose leaf also shall not weather, whatever He does, shall prosper."

When we live our lives by God's Word, when we make the right decisions, we're like a tree that's planted properly by rivers of water, in this case, living water, the Spirit of God, the way of God. Not like that tree that was planted in my front yard a long time ago, and just wasn't placed right, and it created it problems.

Think about that, as we make our decisions, as we live our lives, think for the long-term. What will this look like in the future? What would it look like 10 years from now, 20 years from now? Is this the right move, the right decision, the right words to make now in my life, based on the Law of God, and there's a better chance that we will be like that man in Psalm 1 planted in a good spot by rivers of living water?

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.