How to Have a Happy New Year
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How to Have a Happy New Year

Psalm 1:1–6  (ID: 0556)

Psalm 1 provides a blueprint for a happy new year, as well as a happy life. Such a life, Alistair Begg insists, is not gained through grim religious determination. Instead, it springs organically from the gift of God’s grace to us. Those who live life according to God’s wisdom are marked by the way they think and act and by their regular meditation on His Word. As each new year comes, let us embrace the psalmist’s invitation to delight in the law of the Lord.


Book One

The Way of the Righteous and the Wicked

1Blessed is the man1

who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor stands in the way of sinners,

nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

2but his delight is in the law2 of the Lord,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

3He is like a tree

planted by streams of water

that yields its fruit in its season,

and its leaf does not wither.

In all that he does, he prospers.

4The wicked are not so,

but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

5Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

6for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish.

Copyright © 2024, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Text provided by the Crossway Bibles Web Service.

Alistair Begg
Alistair Begg is Senior Pastor at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Bible teacher on Truth For Life, which is heard on the radio and online around the world.