Whose Advice Are You Seeking?

Hello Bride of Christ,

When faced with decisions I often seek the counsel of those I respect, admire, and know me best to help guide me in the decision I shall make. The counsel provided brings new insights, different perspectives, and confirmation of what I was already thinking. The root reason for seeking this counsel is reassurance. Assurance I am making the right decision. Assurance I will not fail, and even if I do, I have a support system to lean back on.

Counsel

The Lord knows how He has fashioned us. He knows we will seek counsel from various sources for our life; as a result He inspired the writing of Psalm 1. This is where we will spend our time together today because the Psalm draws a great parallel between two types of people. People that seek godly counsel versus people who seek ungodly counsel.

Psalm 1 reads:

"Blessed is the man

Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor stands in the path of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

And in His law he meditates day and night.

He shall be like a tree

Planted by the rivers of water,

That brings forth its fruit in its season,

Whose leaf also shall not wither;

And whatever he does shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so,

But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,

Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,

But the way of the ungodly shall perish."

The Lord spends the first three verses giving us insights to the type of people He desires us to be. He desires for us to “walk”, to be actively living lives guided by sound wisdom, and not inactively "standing" or "sitting", habitually living as one seeking his own way contrary to God's way. However, notice where this sound counsel and wisdom come from for the active person. 

The counsel this person delights and thinks about often is not counsel gained by friends, family, or other godly people, although those are not wrong places to seek counsel, but it is from the Lord directly. When I mentioned earlier that I often seek the counsel of those I respect, admire, and know me best to help guide me in the decision I shall make, I am certain most of you thought friends and family is who I was referring to, but in fact I was speaking about God. Over the years I have learned to seek God's counsel first. 

God is the one who deserves our respect, admiration, and knows us intimately for He has fashioned us and created us. As a result, surely He would know what we were were created for and what plans He has for us. 

Bride of Christ, do you delight in God's law, also known as the bible? Are you meditating on it day and night? Thinking about God's word, what it means, how it should shape your thinking and life?

The Lord Knows

As the Bride of Christ, you are the righteous. If you are the righteous then the Lord knows your ways. He knows the type of tree He has planted you to be. One that does not wither and does prosper in ALL seasons. However, we serve a loving God not a dictator so the choice ultimately lies with us. Will we be actively seeking His counsel? Will we actively think about it and acknowledge it in every circumstance? 

The results are very clearly laid out in the Psalm. We are either choosing to be healthy trees firmly planted producing life or we are being blown all around by the wind not adding value anywhere, but instead perishing. 

Choose today to walk humbly before your God, and delight in His law that you may experience what the Lord already knows about you!