Monday Mess: August 17, 2026, What Holds And What Blows Away-Psalm 1:4-6

Monday Mess is a weekday devotional series created to help you start your week with faith, focus, and purpose. Each episode takes a biblical truth and brings it into the real messiness of everyday life.

Before the meetings, responsibilities, frustrations,  and unexpected moments of the week begin, take a few minutes to center yourself on God's Word and remember what matters most.

New week. New challenges. Same faithful God.

Start your Monday with a little Monday Mess--and get your week started with a bang!

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SPEAKER_00 0:30

Good Monday evening, everybody. Pastor Christopher here. This Monday mess, Monday, August 17th, and this is the messy Monday, or Monday mess, every Monday taking a biblical truth, maybe a practical challenge, and a little encouragement to help us put our feet on the floor, our faith in gear, and our focus back on Jesus. Because Mondays may seem and be messy, but God is faithful. His word is true, and his grace is sufficient to and for whatever this week brings. So, grab your beverage, if it's your coffee in the morning, if it's water, if it's tea, whatever may be, open your Bible and let's get this week started off on the right. Started off on the right point. Welcome to Monday Mess. Let's make a mess of Monday and let God make something meaningful out of it. So we have here, and we're continuing our devotional series in Psalm 1. We're actually going to finish it here today, and we're going to be in a few more Psalms throughout the next couple of months. But we are finishing up Psalm 1 with verses 4 through 6. And what we're focusing on is what holds and what blows away. Psalm 1, verses 4 through 6, I'd love to share with you here this evening. They say this, but not the wicked. They are like worthless chaffs, scattered by the wind. They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly, for the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destruction. And I've never really experienced hurricane season. I always hear about it and think I don't think I would want to do and be involved in that, but every year after hurricane season, we see similar news footage. We see two houses on the same street. One is standing, one is flattened, the same storm, the same wind, the same rain. The difference was never the weather, it was the foundation. One house was built on something that could hold, the other looked fine until the pressure came and revealed what was underneath. Psalm 1 kind of ends in the same way. Two kinds of lives. Two kinds of endings, the tree and the chaff. One has roots, there's weight, there's substance, the other has nothing holding it in place. Chaff is what's left over, the husk of a wheat, the thin outer shell that gets separated during harvest time. And farmers used to throw wheat into the air and let the wind carry the chaff away while the grain fell back to the ground. What's real stays. And what's not gets blown away. And the psalmist is saying here a life without God may look full from the outside, but then the wind comes, when the wind comes, there will be nothing left to hold. There's this uncomfortable picture here, but it's uncomfortable, but very honest as well, because the wind always comes. Maybe it's a a diagnosis, a layoff, a betrayal in our lives, a loss of a sudden, and it takes the air completely out of our lungs, out of the room, out of our lives. And in those moments, what we're made of really gets exposed. The stuff that was built for show collapses. The stuff that was built on God holds. We've seen it in other people's lives. The person, maybe we've experienced it too, but the person who walked through something devastating and somehow came out the other side with their faith intact. And the person who looks spiritually solid until one Christ has stripped everything away, same storm, different foundation. The psalmist doesn't say the wicked are evil people doing evil things. The word wicked in this context simply means without root. Without anchor. It's not holding on, without a source. They're not necessarily bad people. They're unplanted people. People who never chose a stream. People whose roots never went below the surface. And the tragedy isn't that the wind destroys them, it's that the wind reveals they were never anchored to begin with. Maybe we look at our own lives and feel the vulnerability. We've been maybe coasting on spiritual momentum from a season that ended a long time ago. Maybe we've been running on reserves instead of drinking from the stream, and if the wind came today, maybe we're not sure what would hold and what would blow away. That's not a reason to panic, though. That's not a reason to freak out. It's a reason to plant. It's a reason to get rooted. Right now, today, before the storm arrives. The last verse offers the most comforting promise in the entire psalm. It says, For the Lord watches over the path of the godly. Watches over. He doesn't just micromanage. He doesn't control. He watches over the way a parent watches a child at the playground. Close enough to help if needed. Attentive enough to see what's coming. Present enough that the child doesn't play alone. We are not walking unseen, friends. God's eyes are on our path. He knows the turns ahead that we can't see, and his watching isn't passive. It's protective. Matthew 7, verses 24 through 25 echoed the same idea from Jesus Himself. Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. Same rain, same wind, same streams. The difference was the foundation, and the foundation is always the word of God, and it always prevails. The word of God. Heard and lived, not just studied and shelved. Psalm 1, as we are concluding on this devotional series in our Monday mess, is asking us a question worth sitting with long after this evening, today, tomorrow. What is my life built on? Not what do we say it's built on, what is it actually built on? Because the wind will answer that question for us if we don't answer it for ourselves. The tree stands, the chaff blows away, the house on the rock holds, the house on the sand collapses. Direction matters. Family foundation matters, and the season we're walking into isn't going to test both. It's going to test both. So plant deep. Build on the rock. Stay close. The one who watches over us hasn't looked away. Will never look away. Foundation work isn't visible. When we see a beautiful house from the street and we just gasp over it. In awe, we don't think about the concrete and rebar underneath. That's where the real work happened. In the unseen place where nobody congratulates us. That's what the word of God is. Foundation work. It doesn't feel glamorous a lot of times, but it's what holds everything else up. When we spend time in Scripture, in God's word, and we let it shape our thinking. We let it make decisions. Help us make decisions based on it. We're laying foundation, and when the storm hits, when the storm hits, that foundation is what matters. The righteous person isn't exempt from the wind. The house on the rock still experiences rain and streams and winds. The difference is that one life was prepared for the weather. One life anticipated hard things and built accordingly. Not to avoid the storms ahead, but to ensure that the building that we're building in a way that holds when the storms arrive. Yes, the chaff blows away. Yes, the unerring anchored life crumbles, but that's not predetermined. It's a choice. We can choose to plant, to build on the rock, to delight in God's word instead of pursuing what the world promises to stay close. Every choice, friends, family, brothers and sisters in Christ, prepares us for the wind we know is coming. That's not pessimistic. That's wise. That's the thinking that builds lives that last. God watching over the righteous is an invitation for us to trust. When we've built on the rock, when we set our roots to the stream, we don't fear the wind, we don't white knuckle through hard seasons, we can exhale. We can feel weight lifted. We can have peace, reassurance. The one who sees our path. And the reason is because the one that sees our path has his hand on our lives. He's not surprised by storms. He didn't miss the turn coming, and he didn't put us on a path that he couldn't protect. So we need to answer this question honestly. If the wind came tomorrow, what in my life would hold and what would blow away? And we can write down both lists like a pros and cons. Hold. Blow away. Then start building what lasts. Not just Kim and I, because we have a wonderful church family, we have very supportive in prayers and everything else. She is feeling much better. Um just thank you for all the prayers and just those things. We are we are beyond blessed. God has blessed us with wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ, a wonderful church family, and truly showing that he is at work, even through circumstances and and things that we don't see coming or things that we don't want to experience, but he is at work. And I know there's a lot of other things going on. I don't want to just think of myself, but we are all blessed with a Heavenly Father that is supported, that is with us on this walk. But we have so many great brothers and sisters that can and will join us on this walk, living life with us. And I'm just beyond blessed. I'm sitting here looking at the view from um kind of upstairs loft, my office in the house. I was enjoying it this morning with a cup of coffee. There's nothing better than God's nature right at the beginning of a day with a great cup of coffee. And I'm looking over it again and just how he continues to bless, even when we have things that we don't want to experience, things that happen in our lives. But he uses it as a redemptive, as a blessing every single time. I look forward to gathering once again for another great time of praise and worship next Sunday as we continue in our win the day series, and we're gonna be focusing on cutting the rope. We're gonna be in Mark chapter 4, and I hope you have been challenged, I hope you have been encouraged, convicted, um, blessed by this series so far. And it's just been a great time for me as well. So, as I close this evening, thinking about more than a fool, Austin is one of my God's favorite bands, and I will always remember this song is more than a fool. We are renewed every single day that has blessed us, and he continues to bless. Until I see you again, I hope you have a great week. I love you all, and until we meet again, take care. See you soon.