Instruct a Wise Man

December 5

‘Nobody tells me what to do!’ ‘I think for myself.’ ‘I make my own decisions.’ ‘I bear the consequences of my choices.’ ‘What I do affects no one but myself.’ Ever heard any of those assertions? Most of us have heard them at a time when we were endeavoring to offer unsolicited advice.

Most of us have learned that unsolicited advice should remain unextended, for it rarely achieves its intended result and often causes strife where we’d hoped for good will to be its outcome. We wrestle with ourselves before concluding to keep our counsel to ourselves because we sincerely want to advantage the hearer by our insight.

Sometimes we forget that it takes a level of maturity to be able to receive any lesson that hasn’t been learned through ones own involvement. Sometimes we forget that many of our own lessons were learned at the ‘School of Hard Knocks’; we forget that others are enrolled there and learn their ‘A,B,Cs’ of life through its tough curriculum.

The Bible gives us valuable insight into just who might be willing to receive our hard-won counsel. Proverbs 9:9 says, “Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning.” The individual who is wise and righteous desires to grow in these attributes, and he will value a word to the wise.