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God's Word, Our Foundation
- Josiah Kenniv
- 7 hours ago
- 11 min read
Introduction
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to drift? Not dramatically—just subtly, quietly, unintentionally. It’s like this: Imagine you’re at the ocean. You walk out into the water up to your waist, just relaxing, not thinking about anything. You’re not trying to go anywhere—you’re just standing there. Ten minutes later, you look up… and you’re 50 yards down the shore from where you started. You didn’t swim there. You didn’t try to move. You didn’t decide to wander. The current just carried you. Not because you were doing something wrong—but because you weren’t anchored to anything strong.
That’s what life feels like for a lot of you. You’re not trying to drift…but you look up one day—and emotionally you’re somewhere you never meant to be. Spiritually, you’re somewhere you never planned to go. With friends you never meant to follow. With habits you never meant to form. With beliefs you never meant to adopt. Not because you made some huge decision…but because you weren’t rooted in anything that could hold you. And that’s exactly what Psalm 1 is about. Before it talks about blessing, before it talks about delighting in God’s Word, before it talks about the rooted tree or the blown-around chaff, it starts with this simple reality: You are always being shaped by something. You are always drifting toward a direction— and unless your roots are deep, the current will choose that direction for you.
Psalm 1 doesn’t ask, “Are you being formed?” It assumes you are. The question Psalm 1 asks is: What’s forming you? What’s shaping how you think, how you feel, how you act, what you believe, where your life is headed? And it’s going to show you two very different ways to live: the rooted life and the weightless life.
Psalm 1 has so much to teach us! Follow along as we learn together.
EVERYONE IS BEING FORMED BY SOMETHING (Psalm 1:1)
Common influences that shape us
Psalm 1 is a passage I turn to often when I think of God’s Word. It details the trajectory of someone who is rooted firmly in the truth of God’s Word. Someone who is deeply engaged with the Bible, the Psalmist states, is like a tree that is planted by streams of water. What they love, think, feel, and do are shaped by that which they engage with consistently, deeply, and honestly, that is, God’s Word. We are all being shaped by something. Consider a few of the most common categories of influence.
The Algorithm
What you engage with is what shows up on your for-you page.
TikTok or Instagram telling you what success, beauty, or happiness looks like.
“Hot takes” that sound wise but have little truth behind them.
Your Emotions
“I feel anxious, so God must be distant.”
“I feel guilty, so God must be disappointed in me.”
“I feel empty, so the Bible must not be working.”
“I feel attracted to ______, so this must be who I am”
Friends / Social Circles
Changing convictions to keep a friend group.
Agreeing with things they don’t believe just to survive lunch.
Moral choices shaped by “what everyone else is doing.”
Letting one driven, opinionated friend become the de facto authority in their life.
Influencers and Online Personalities
A creator they’ve never met telling them what to think about faith.
Trend-driven ideologies (“speak your truth,” “you are enough,” “live your truth”).
Deconstruction stories shaping their view of Scripture.
Fitness or productivity influencers telling them what purpose looks like.
Cultural Messaging
Love = total affirmation.
Truth = whatever you feel most deeply.
Holiness = harmful; authenticity = supreme.
The Bible is outdated or too restrictive on identity, sexuality, or justice
Achievement Pressure
Grades = identity
Sports = worth
Social media performance = value
A future résumé shaping them more than God’s Word ever has
Aesthetic Christianity
Posting verse graphics without ever reading the passage
Wearing “Fear of God” with no idea what fear of God means
Loving Christian music but not loving Christ
Knowing the language but not the Lord
Formation happens automatically unless you resist it. You are being discipled every day, just not usually by the Bible. Consider how the Psalmist illustrates this progression.
The walk–stand–sit pattern
First, you walk with certain counsel. That means you start LISTENING. Casual exposure, low commitment, high influence. This looks like music lyrics that shape belief, jokes that normalize sin, advice from peers who don’t love Jesus, and harmless content that contains harmful ideas. The idea of “walking” is allowing ungodly voices to shape the way you think.
Second, you stand. This means you start ADOPTING certain ungodly habits that become normal to you. You’re no longer moving by these ideas, you’re stopping, settling, taking your place among them. This looks like changing your opinions to fit your friend group, repeating ideas you didn’t get from Scripture, editing your faith to fit the room, and making decisions based on feelings instead of truth.
Third, you sit. You start belonging in a way of life, a community, a worldview. This looks like becoming cynical or sarcastic about faith, mocking Scripture (even subtly), feeling more comfortable with secular voices than godly ones, treating holiness as optional, and seeing God’s Word as restrictive rather than life-giving.
First, you listen. Then you linger. Then you live there. If you’re not intentionally shaped by God’s Word, you’ll be unintentionally shaped by everything else.
GOD’S WORD IS THE ONLY FOUNDATION THAT CAN HOLD YOU (Psalm 1:2)
Why “try harder” and “change your environment” fall short
What’s the natural progression of this thought process, then? If we’re being formed by the things we engage with, what is the most obvious next step? If you’re like me, you might begin with a “Just Try Harder” mentality. More discipline, more willpower, and spiritual transformation will come. The problem with that approach is that it is driven by guilt, and as you have no doubt learned, guilt is a poor motivator. How long until your conscience is soothed? One week? One month? When that happens, we go right back to our original habits. Just try harder is a poor substitute for real transformation.
Maybe you gravitate towards the idea of changing your environment. You download a new Bible app, you start a new devotional, you start listening to more Christian music. Perhaps, you think, if I just rearrange things, I will eventually care more. The issue here is that reorganization does not equal transformation. It’s hard to change ingrained habits by moving things around in your life.
Finally, maybe you fall prey to the idea that you should wait until you feel something first. That is, you’ll wait until you're motivated, inspired, and emotional. Maybe it’s a church camp, a conference, or an especially moving worship service that gets you moving. But just like guilt, emotional momentum is not a replacement for heart transformation. You cannot wait to feel something to read God’s Word. What happens on the days, weeks, months, or years when you feel little to nothing at all? These strategies fall short in every meaningful way.
Delight and meditate: the psalmist’s framework
What if there were a way we could reframe this entire conversation? During Cornerstone Youth meetings, we talk a lot about reading the Bible and the value that it has to transform your life. But oftentimes I see a disconnect between knowing that truth and acting like it’s true! I have heard all three of the above scenarios from teens in my youth group in response to a challenge to be in God’s Word more consistently. The issue is that none of those things will help you get to a place where being in God’s Word is something that you actually want to do.
The psalmist reframes the conversation with two words: delight and meditate.
What is delight? Delight is affection trained over time. It is not shallow emotion, nor is it something gained rapidly. Delight means valuing something because you know it gives life. Delight begins before you feel it. Delight is formed by proximity. You instinctively know how this works. The things you spend the most intentional time on grow your delight of that thing. Think about a tv show, music of various genres, aesthetics, etc. Delight grows where attention goes.
You eventually delight in what you consistently return to. Are you consistently returning to your Bible?
The second word the psalmist uses is meditate. Meditation could be described as slow, thoughtful soaking. It is not mystical; it is repetition with intention. It is like replaying something over and over again in your mind. Thinking deeply, not just skimming. It is the opposite of scroll culture, where your attention is honed in for 30-60 seconds at a time.
We all mediate all the time. It’s typically more related to anxiety loops, what-if scenarios, fears, failures, and insecurities. The psalmist is calling you to take that same mental energy and root it in God’s Word instead!
You are always being formed by something! So the next step in Psalm 1 is to choose what forms you. Formation happens through delight and meditation. Delight grows as you meditate; meditation grows as you delight. It’s a cycle, not a switch!
If your life is being shaped by whatever you constantly return to, then return again and again to the only thing that gives roots—God’s Word.
THE LIFE BUILT ON GOD’S WORD IS ROOTED, RESILIENT, AND FRUITFUL (Psalm 1:3)
What the “tree” metaphor means
If we’re all being formed, and the psalmist says the way to be formed rightly is by delighting and meditating on God’s Word, then it raises a massive question: what kind of life does that actually produce? What happens when someone roots themselves in God’s Word? The psalmist explains this with a metaphor about a tree. He says a tree is first planted. “Planted” means intentionally placed, not randomly sprouted. It implies stability, purpose, rootedness, belonging, and intentionality. Generation Z, the current demographic of my youth group, is the most uprooted generation in modern history.
Why Gen Z feels uprooted
Digital culture has, in many ways, replaced physical community. I mean that in many ways, your friendships, your identity, entertainment, communication, learning, conflict, and exploring your beliefs are all taking place primarily through screens.
Identity pressure is higher than any generation before. Every generation has had to figure out who they are, but Gen Z has to do it publicly, constantly, with endless options, and in a culture that tells them their identity is made and not received.
Mental health instability is off the charts. Your generation has the highest rate of anxiety ever recorded. The highest depression rates of any generation. And the lowest reported meaning and hope. The American Psychological Association has labeled your generation the “most stressed generation.”
Cultural norms shift faster than ever. Your generation is growing up in a society with one of the fastest moral shifts in U.S. history. You are in an era where the social norm flips every 18-24 months. Truth is viewed as fluid, and people with different ideologies are in constant conflict with each other.
There are more I could mention, such as a distrust of institutions like the government, media, schools, corporations, the church, etc. Or less physically present than previous generations. Or financial and economic instability is rewiring your future outlook.
All of these point to one prevailing truth: you need something to be rooted in. The only place strong enough to hold you is God’s Word. Thus, the person who is being formed by God’s Word is intentionally planted, rooted in the ground, in a way that offers stability, consistency, and belonging. What a gift from God!
Streams, fruit, and resilience
The psalmist moves on to say that the person who is being formed by God’s Word is planted by streams of water. This means you are connected to a source that never dries up. It is constant nourishment that isn’t dependent on moods, trends, friends, and circumstances. This is a stream that will never run dry and will always nourish your soul when you are thirsty.
As a result of being planted like a tree by streams of water, you will also yield fruit in season. The fruit that the psalmist refers to is real visible transformation. It’s the visible results of inward transformation. And it grows predictably! When the roots are right, the fruit will grow. Fruit like peace amidst chaos, wisdom in confusion, self-control in temptation, compassion instead of cynicism, stability in storms, and a deeper love for Christ.
Psalm 1 gives us a promise that if we root ourselves in the Word long enough, the fruit WILL appear. Not overnight. In season.
The psalmist continues and promises that if we do these things, our leaves will not wither. In other words, we don’t fall apart when life hits us. Emotional and spiritual resilience. My friends, I see you at times withering from comparison, from pressure, from loneliness, from overstimulation, from identity confusion, from sin patterns, from digital exhaustion, or from fear of the future. But recall, if you stay connected to God’s Word, you won’t collapse. You’ll endure. You’ll bend, but not break.
Finally, the psalmist shows us that when we are planted like this tree, all that we do will prosper. Now we’re not defining prosperity according to the world’s definition. It’s not money, achievement, popularity, or an easy life. It is having a life that is aligned with God’s design. It is spiritual thriving.
God, through Psalm 1, is offering you clarity in confusion, direction in chaos, consistency in inconsistency, joy instead of numbness, identity instead of performance, and rootedness instead of drifting.
All of this is possible if you stay rooted in God’s Word!
CONCLUSION — TREE OR CHAFF? (Psalm 1:4)
The warning: chaff
So far, we’ve seen the beauty of the tree—the rooted life God invites us into. But Psalm 1 doesn’t end on a feel-good note. It gives us another picture. A sobering picture.
Chaff is the light, dry, papery shell around the grain. When harvesters threw the grain into the air, the valuable part—the kernel—fell to the ground. The chaff? It just… blew away. It weighed nothing. It rooted nowhere. It meant nothing. Chaff isn’t evil—it’s empty. That’s the warning. When you are at your weakest and most vulnerable, your support evaporates because you have no roots. You are empty, not planted anywhere solid.
And Psalm 1 is saying, “If you’re not rooted in God’s Word… you will end up like this.” Because you never planted yourself anywhere solid.
When you are chaff, it feels like…
Every stressful moment knocks you down
Every temptation pulls you off course
Every insecurity becomes your identity
Every opinion shifts what you believe
Every online voice shapes your worldview
You don’t choose your direction. The winds do. And some of you know exactly what that feels like. You know what it’s like to feel unstable in your emotions, your friendships, your sense of self, your faith. You know what it’s like to feel tossed around, not because you want to be weak, but because you’re not rooted in anything strong.
Psalm 1 isn’t insulting you. It’s inviting you. But here’s the truth we can’t skip: You cannot make yourself into that tree by your own effort. You cannot “try harder” your way into stability. You cannot “fix yourself” into being unshakeable.
Our problem: the heart, not just habits
Why? Because the deepest problem isn’t your habits—it’s your heart. Psalm 1 describes a kind of life that none of us can fully live on our own. To “delight in God’s law” perfectly? To meditate day and night? To never walk, stand, or sit in the wrong influences? None of us gets that right. Not perfectly. Not consistently. Not deep down. If Psalm 1 is just a checklist, we all fail. That’s why we need a Savior before we need a strategy. Jesus Christ is the true Psalm 1 Man.
Jesus: the true Psalm 1 man
He is the One who…
never walked in sinful counsel
never stood in sinful paths• never sat with scoffers
delighted in God’s law perfectly
meditated on God’s Word continually
lived rooted in His Father
bore perfect fruit
never withered
prospered in everything He did
and faced the full storm of judgment without being moved
On the cross, Jesus took our instability, our sin, our rootlessness, our blown-around brokenness. He died the death we deserve. And He rose to offer us His life—a rooted life, a righteous life, a stable life. So Psalm 1 doesn’t end with a command. It ends with an invitation.
The invitation to plant yourself in Christ
You can’t root yourself. But you can plant yourself in Christ. If you’ve never turned from your sin and trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, Psalm 1 is describing the life He wants to give you. Not religion. Not performance. Not rule-keeping. A new heart. New desires. New roots. New life.
And if you are a believer but you’ve been drifting, spiritually dry, blown around by the winds—this is not a guilt trip. This is God saying: “Come back to the stream.” “Drink from the water of my Word again.” Jesus is the Living Word. Scripture is the Written Word. You need both. One saves you. The other grows you. Root yourself in Him.
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