Date: August 25, 2021 | Series: Youth for Jesus | Number: Vol. 4, No. 15
“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Prov 15:22NIV)
Why was Solomon a great and mighty king? Was it because he was all-wise and all-knowing? No! Indeed, God, as we are told in the bible, blessed this man with wisdom, insight and a breadth of understanding that was as measureless as the sand on the seashore (1Kings 4:29). But that is not to say that he knew everything and needed nobody’s counsel or advice to succeed in life or as king. Only God knows everything and needs nobody’s counsel or advice to do anything (Isaiah 40:13-14).
But man is not God. Man is man, however wise or knowledgeable he may be. So, he is limited in many ways and will, from time to time, need the counsel and support of others to thrive in life or to escape from trouble. And one of the things that will show that he is wise and understanding is his recognition of the fact that he does not know or understand it all – he needs the wisdom, knowledge and understanding of others too to perfect his own. Otherwise, he is a fool, even if he or some other people think of him as wise.
So, Solomon, in his wisdom, says to us in our opening bible text, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” Have you ever failed at anything you were so sure you would succeed at? If you have, do you know why you failed? Well, even if you do not know why yet, Solomon is telling us here that one major reason people’s good plans or projects fail or fall apart is that they do not get adequate counsel or get counsel at all.
See, when we allow others to counsel us about what we want to do or about a problem we want to solve, whether through their direct words of mouth, books or audio or video recordings, we are able to see the loopholes, errors, impossibilities, possibilities or opportunities we are perhaps overlooking. And this enables us to make better informed decisions. But when we act like we know it all and do our thing, then, the surprises we get may end up being what will drive us to seek the counsel we ought to have sought before.
Therefore, before you make any major decision in your life, get counsel, adequate counsel. Meet or listen to as many people that are informed or highly experienced about the matter that you can listen to. But then, you must also understand that it is not every counsel that is good for you. Some counsel is bad and dangerous enough to destroy you. So, you need to be able to distinguish a wise and good counsel from a bad and destructive one.
Some people have all kinds of counsellors around them and that are ever ready to give them free counsel. But because they lack the wisdom of the Spirit to recognise what counsel will do them good and what counsel will destroy them, they are often embracing the wrong counsel and making life harder for themselves. And when they are done failing at something, they would say, “But I sought people’s counsel on this before I did it.”
Now what such people do not know is that success or salvation does not come just by taking counsel from people but also by taking the right counsel in its right amount from them. What was the difference between Solomon and his son, Rehoboam? It was the ability to distinguish a right counsel from a wrong and destructive one (1Kings 12). And if you want to possess and increase in this ability, give yourself to the word of God. That is because it can be trusted to make even a simple and naïve heart wise enough to distinguish what is good and profitable from what is bad and destructive (Ps 19:7).
At any rate, learn to seek and to take the right measure of counsel for every major step you are taking in life. That may just be the difference between success and failure for you or between salvation and destruction.
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