by Dr. Ken Crocker
Look around today and you can see we are being buried under an avalanche of advice. It seems like everyone is trying to tell us what to do. And it’s a very rare person who doesn’t like to give advice to others. It’s been said, “All of us admire the wisdom and good sense of those who come to us for advice.”
Good advice is often essential to our decision-making process. Unfortunately, there is a lot of conflicting advice. For example, I preach active optimism but if you don’t like that you can buy a book on how to cure yourself of positive thinking. The church teaches generosity but if you don’t want to be generous you can buy Ann Rand’s book entitled, The Virtue of Selfishness.
Our world is filled with books, books, and more books on everything from diarrhea to how to build a house out of old beer cans.
Before you look for advice you must decide whether you want advice or approval. When people only want approval for something they are going to do anyway; they stack the deck. For example, if they want to tell a little white lie they ask a person who tells little white lies if it’s okay to do so. If they want to neglect church attendance, they ask the advice of someone who doesn’t attend church.
The Bible teaches a very important principle about advice in Psalms 1:1 which tells us to refuse to take counsel from ungodly people. Their advice always leads to trouble. “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”
We are taught instead to carefully examine the character of the person giving advice.
Most of us do this anyway because when someone gives advice we often say…”Look whose talking!”
Where can you go for good sound advice? Jesus Christ is the choice of tens of millions of people. They have tried his advice and found it produces sound and satisfying results.
God bless you,
Pastor Ken