Do You Resist Sound Advice?

The day you become too proud to seek or receive advice is the day you will fail until your bones turn to dust. Advice is crucial. No man is an island. Regardless of your social or economic status, you are not beyond seeking or receiving advice. There is a reason political leaders and kings surround themselves with advisers.

Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice (Ecclesiastes 4:13, ESV)

According to this scripture, even the ruler of the land, the king, needs advice. But a king who doesn’t know how to take sound advice is destined for doom. So the question is ‘how do you receive advice?’. Are you quick to make excuses and resist sound advice or do you listen and accept it in humility? Now of course, we must be careful who we take advice from as in one sense, everyone has something to say these days! (Read Seeking Wise Counsel). But we need to be able to evaluate our attitude when we receive counsel.

Regardless of who you go to for advice, if you are unable to receive advice in humility, failure is the only outcome. How you respond to sound advice can set you on either a blissful or destructive path. Receiving sound advice is as important as seeking sound advice. Sometimes we do not have a problem seeking sound advice, but we put up a wall when we receive the advice we sought. When you see someone make a decision that negatively impacts them, their family and community despite the sound counsel they received, it could be that they never learned to humbly receive sound counsel early in life. They probably grew up always having things their own way and today people under their influence suffer for it. Sometimes resisting sound advice does not only negatively impact you, but it could derail the destinies of individuals and nations. For instance, if Naaman had not heeded the slave girl’s advice to accept Elisha’s directive to wash seven times in the Jordan, he may have died a leper (2 Kings 5:13).

Now, let’s dig into scriptures and see how David received advice from Abigail. David’s response is remarkable in 1 Samuel 25. David and his men had essentially supported Nabal’s shepherds in their work out of goodwill. When David reached out to Nabal and asked him to share some goods with David and his men, Nabal rudely declined and refused to acknowledge all the support David and his men had provided Nabal’s shepherds. This deeply offended David and he prepared 400 men to attack Nabal. Abigail heard of this and quickly went to meet David:

28 Please forgive the trespass of your servant..… 30 And when the Lord has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you prince[d] over Israel, 31 my lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause or for my lord working salvation himself….” (1 Samuel 25:28-30, ESV)

Abigail pleaded with David not to shed blood unnecessarily, but to forgive Nabal’s foolishness to which David responds:

32 “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! 33 Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand! 34 For as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there had not been left to Nabal so much as one male. 35…See I have obeyed your voice, and I have franted your petition’’.

David’s response to Abigail is one we must take note of. When people offend or hurt us with their words or actions, we tend to make irrational decisions because of the pain we feel. David’s desire to kill Nabal was because Nabal did not reciprocate David’s kindness in his time of need. But when he received sound advice, he humbly reconsidered his decision and the action he planned to take. Abigail explains that there is no good in David ‘working salvation himself’. How David responded when he felt hurt by Nabal is how many of us respond when we feel hurt and believe we have a legitimate reason to feel hurt—we take matters into our own hands.

There are three things we can learn from David’s response to Abigail’s sound advice:

Discern and acknowledge God in the vessel He is using to give you sound advice.

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me!’’

First David acknowledges that God is the one correcting him through Abigail. If you do not acknowledge God’s sovereignty in every situation, you will struggle to accept sound advice and will always insist on your own way. Discernment is required to enable you to recognize the voice of the Lord in the midst of counsel. God promised to counsel us, and we know He can use any vessel or person to speak to us. God gave us the Holy Spirit who is the best counsellor and who knows all things (1 Corinthians 2:10).

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you (Psalm 32:8, ESV)

When you receive sound advice, acknowledge what it saved you from and be thankful.

‘Blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand!’

David thanks Abigail for her wisdom and acknowledges the depth of harm his decision to kill Nabal could have caused. Also, you must humbly acknowledge the depth of damage your decision could have caused if not for the counsel you received. How can you truly appreciate counsel unless you understand what it saved you from? Sometimes giving counsel can be quite uncomfortable so when someone takes out time to counsel you thank them warmly.

Embrace sound advice and take the necessary steps.

‘I have obeyed your voice, and I have franted your petition’

You may need a little more time in some situations to fully embrace counsel. But once you embrace it let the person who counselled you know that you will be following their advice and taking the necessary steps. This will not only encourage you, but it will give the person who counselled you peace that you understand what they told you.

The consequences of not being able to receive counsel could be dire. So take out time today to examine your attitude when you receive counsel. We need to open our hearts to receive sound counsel so we can make wise decisions. Regardless of what stage you are in life, you are not beyond receiving sound advice.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice (Proverbs 12:15 , ESV)