What our people need in their moments of desperation is what my son needs in the middle of the night. He doesn’t need a lecture about his subconscious, what a dream is, and why it doesn’t need to be feared. Instead, he needs the comfort of knowing I’m there. As pastors, we have the distinct joy of simply being there with our members and, by doing so, reassuring them with the comfort, care, and compassion of God.

One of my sons frequently suffers from night terrors. For those who don’t know, night terrors are like sleepwalking—the person is technically still asleep but acting like they’re awake. My son’s terrors happen a few times a week and usually manifest in his screaming for 5–10 seconds before calming down again and falling back into normal sleep.
But sometimes his terrors are so loud he wakes himself up. When that happens, I typically go into his room, rub his back, and ask him what he was dreaming of that scared him so badly. I reassure him that I’m there; and ten times out of ten, that simple fact brings him all the comfort he needs to fall back to sleep.
Pastoring Like Parenting
Just as children sometimes need just their father’s presence, sometimes Christians need just a pastor’s presence.
The New Testament makes the connection between pastoring and parenting explicit in his list of elder qualifications. Paul tells Timothy that an elder must be able to manage his household well, and then observes, “For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Tim. 3:5)
The word Paul uses for “care” only appears two other times in the New Testament. Interestingly, they’re both found in Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. The compassionate Samaritan not only delays his journey to tend to the man, he remains with him.
Pastors, too, ought to manage God’s household by giving their people time and attention, like a father, and like the Good Samaritan.
The God Who is There
As under-shepherds, we represent the Great Shepherd to our people. And our God is the God who is there. Over and over in the Bible, we see the Lord reassuring his people with his presence (Gen. 26:3, 31:3, Ex. 3:12, Deut. 31:23, Josh. 1:5, Ps. 23:4, Isa. 43:2, Matt. 28:20). Through all the trials and hardships that God knows a life of faith will bring his people, he doesn’t promise solutions; he promises presence. He promises to care not through unveiled plans but through unceasing proximity.
While this sounds wonderful, if you’re anything like me, it’s a pill that’s often tough to swallow. I’m a “fix it” guy. I tend to be able to find the challenges with a plan and propose solutions.
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He first delighted in us, and now we love to delight in him in return. This is our introduction into the blessed life, and this is the truth we need to press deep into our hearts to make it through our wintery seasons faithfully. Once we’ve first been properly introduced to the truth of Jesus Christ, we can delight in the honesty of the blessed relationship described throughout the Psalms. 

Most nonfiction books have an introduction. This is typically a brief but essential section at the beginning of the book. One of its purposes is to present the information necessary to comprehend what the book is about. The author answers the question, What does my reader need to know to understand the rest of this book? The book of Psalms is no different.
While the Psalms has been known as the prayer book of the Bible, it doesn’t open with a prayer but with an introduction. You could say Psalms details for us the blessing of direct and honest access to the Creator of the universe. Psalm 1 shows us where that access to God is found. 
The author gives a sweeping view of the blessed life through contrast. We either delight in the ways of the wicked or in the law of the Lord (vv. 1–2); we’re either blown like chaff or firmly rooted (vv. 3–4); we’ll either burn up in the judgment or stand confidently with the congregation (vv. 5–6). The psalmist details these contrasts to show us a progression. Your delight informs your roots, which inform your stability on the last day.  
What’s Your Delight?
If you were to set a marble down on the hardwood floor of my house, it would slowly begin to roll away. That’s because the foundation of my home has been settling and shifting for the last 82 years. Each time I begin a construction project, I must consider that nothing is square.
Psalm 1 tells us the wicked are building on uneven supports. They’re expecting steady results but working from a flawed foundation. 
But to delight in the law of the Lord is to build on a level rock. It provides stability, clarity, and accuracy that the shifting sands of the wicked, sinners, and scoffers cannot. The foundation on which you set your delight informs the direction of the structure it supports. Just as my uneven foundation makes nothing in my house square, the psalmist is saying the direction of your life will be misguided if your ultimate delight is placed anywhere but in God.  
Where Are Your Roots?
At the start of each spring, the fruit trees in my yard begin to blossom.
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If you’re willing to be patient, prayerful, and really persistent with your life and those in it, then you’ll find room for wisdom. God will give you wisdom in abundance if you ask him (James 1:5), and that wisdom will both save you from making mistakes that can be easily avoided and act rightly when the gray of life seems to offer opposing options.

Doing the dishes is one of my spiritual gifts. There aren’t many things I believe I’m excellent at, but the dishes are one of them. Efficiency. Stacking the drying rack. Maximizing space in the dishwasher. You name it. If it’s in the realm of dishes, I’ll happily label myself more than proficient. Yet even MJ had lousy shooting nights.
About a month ago, I was doing the midday dishes (as is my habit), and I found out I (still) have great reflexes, but I also realized that my wisdom could be improved upon. And great reflexes plus limited wisdom will equal bad outcomes.
Let me set the scene: it’s days after our third child has been born, which means we’re all running on a full 4 hours of sleep a night. I’m here washing a large knife and intricately stacking a drying pile because this is just what I do…then the knife falls off the pile. My reflexes told me to catch it, so I did. But if I weren’t just listening to my reflexes and instead yielded to common wisdom, I would have let the knife fall. Because wisdom says, it’s easier to clean the knife again than heal the gash catching it will cause. But I caught it, it cut me, and I’m pretty sure I’m wiser for it.
It’s been said that to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But we all know that if wisdom were that black and white, then life would simply equate to only needing to know the right things.
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Your deep insights and revelations come from spending minutes, that turn into hours, that turn into days, that turn into weeks. It’s once the truth of Scripture has been so branded on your heart that you finally begin to draw out the deep meanings of the text. This is why, very practically speaking, I encourage folks to memorize chunks of Scripture. Because the hours, days, and maybe even weeks and years it takes to commit passages to memory will have an eternal impact on your life with God.

Meditation is an often-neglected aspect of Christianity but in the introduction to the longest book in the Bible, the Psalmist tells us that this practice is a vital part of what true “blessedness” looks like. Psalm 1 begins, “Blessed is the man…[whose] delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night” (vv. 1-2).
Now, there may be many reasons why we pull back at this word but let me state two. First, often folks associate mediation with eastern, non-Christian religions. So, in an effort not to accidentally do what is un-Christian, we end up intentionally failing to do what is a good Christian practice.
A second hesitation I often come across is far more practical. Many simply tell me, “Matt, I just don’t know how to meditate on God’s word. I don’t even know what that means. I wouldn’t know how to begin.” However, I’m confident—whether you know it or not—you do know how to meditate on God’s word. And I can say that with certainty because I’m sure you know how to hold a grudge.
Holding Holy Grudges
Think about it. What are you doing when you’re holding a grudge? You’re constantly throwing yourself back into whatever the instance was that offended you. All your spare, quiet moments are consumed with bitterness that eventually turns to rage and hatred because you’re constantly thinking about the offense.
Whether you’re mowing the lawn or doing the dishes, you’re imagining the person that upset you and what you’d say to them now if you had the chance. You probably win every argument you have about it in the shower. You spend so much time thinking about the instance you’re able to pull out every little detail of the offense, or the offender, that you can remember the whole interaction with vivid clarity.
This is what we ought to be doing with God’s word.
Biblical meditation is filling your mind and heart with God’s word. It’s swishing it around and around again in your head until the wakes of His word splash down into the depths of your heart. It’s like thoroughly chewing a piece of meat before you swallow it so that you know you’ve got all the rich flavor out of it.
And when you do this, one of the most interesting things you’ll find is that your deepest and most meaningful insights about Scripture don’t come from reading it once or spending a passing moment with the verse of the day. No, your deep insights and revelations come from spending minutes, that turn into hours, that turn into days, that turn into weeks. It’s once the truth of Scripture has been so branded on your heart that you finally begin to draw out the deep meanings of the text.
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If you’re reading the psalms consecutively, after being confronted with the inescapable fact of your sin in Psalm 50, you turn the page, and your heart is prepared to pray Psalm 51—David’s famous psalm of repentance. In praying Psalm 51, you realize you bring nothing to the table but your sin, dependence, and need. After being shown in the previous psalm that you’re either trying and getting tired or just tired of trying, you’re ready to receive. 

One of the things I love about the Psalms is the intentionality of their arrangement. The ordering of the psalms is purposeful. Unfortunately, many people will simply grab a psalm here or there, assuming they are disjointed poems. However, like the rest of the biblical books, they are arranged this way for a reason.
For example, let’s consider Psalm 50 and Psalm 51.
Psalm 50
Psalm 50 is a psalm about God’s justice and our sinfulness, and there are three primary parties described: God (vv.1-6), his people (vv.7-15), and the wicked (vv.16-21).
God is the mighty one (v.1), a great tempest and devouring fire (v.3) who is declared righteous by the heavens (v.6). As the only one righteous, God is the only one able to judge justly.
The other two parties are distinctly different but can be dealt with together under the heading of ‘sinner.’ In this way, David beautifully and holistically shows that no one can find themselves excluded from God’s just rebuke.
As God speaks to his people (v.7ff), his charge isn’t that they’ve not been obedient law-keepers (v.8), it’s that they’re trying to avoid him with their obedience. They know they owe God something, but they’re trying to pay him back with money from his own wallet (vv.9-13). Instead, what he desires is their gratitude (v.14a).
If they only offer sacrifices from a place of duty and not delight, then they’re missing the point. Everything is God’s already. He doesn’t need their stuff; he wants their hearts. And his command for them to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving shows they’ve been attempting to buy him off by only going through the motions. Therefore, it’s God’s positive assertion that his people will be delivered when they sacrifice to him from the heart (vv.14-15) that shows us there is no salvation in with God through sheer diligence.
Next, God turns his attention to “the wicked “(v.16ff). This group is the “everyone else” category. The first group dealt with his people, Israel—those people who bear his name to the world.
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