Word for Youth

‘The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.’ Proverbs 12:15 NIV

We may not always experience God’s guidance through Him giving us a Bible verse or speaking to us directly. Sometimes He uses other people to advise and guide us instead. Moses experienced this. Instead of getting help, he tried to do it all himself. At that point his father-in-law, Jethro, said to him, ‘What you are doing is not good’ (Exodus 18:17 NIV). Then he told Moses to delegate responsibility to capable leaders who could share the load with him. ‘Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said’ (Exodus 18:24 NIV). As a result, Moses’ problem was solved, and Israel made it successfully to the Promised Land. God brings the right people to you at the right time. People to advise, encourage and inspire you. We need to learn to recognise those people and be humble enough to listen to their wisdom and to put it into action. But we also need to learn to work out when we’re listening to the wrong people. We’ve got to be careful that we’re not listening to people who are leading us away from God and His plans for us, people who’re not giving godly advice, and we can work that out by making sure we’re only letting people speak into our lives who are trustworthy, objective, good at listening to us and who answer prayerfully. We can be praying too, we can ask God to send us the right people to help us, and we can pray about whether the advice we’re being given is advice that we should be implementing. Let’s be open to those who God sends into our lives to help guide us.