The purpose of counsel, as someone once said, is to provide guidance, expert advice, and an objective perspective to improve decision-making, ensure safety, and foster success. It acts as a safeguard against mistakes, helps resolve complex issues—whether legal, personal, or financial—and assists in navigating life's challenges by leveraging the knowledge and experience of others. The benefit of counsel cannot be overemphasized.
The Importance of Counsel
- Multiple Perspectives: Counsel enables you to consider several angles and perspectives before making a decision.
- Guidance and Wisdom: It offers expertise to navigate complex situations, such as legal matters via attorneys or personal issues via counselors. You leverage the expertise of others to make meaningful decisions.
- Strategic Decision-Making: Helps you or your organization define goals, identify strengths, and make informed choices.
- Risk Management: Protects you from potential pitfalls, legal disputes, and bad decisions.
- Clear Perspective and Clarity: Provides an objective, third-party viewpoint that brings clarity to emotional or complex situations.
Counsel in Specific Contexts
- Legal Counsel: Ensures compliance with laws, manages disputes, and provides expertise in negotiation and litigation.
- General Counsel: Often functions as a strategic partner, providing legal and business advice to leadership to prevent issues rather than just solving them afterward.
- Personal/Spiritual Counsel: Offers wisdom for life, relationship management, and moral guidance.
- Biblical Perspective: Seeking counsel is recognized as an act of wisdom that aids in achieving victory and avoiding destruction caused by a lack of knowledge.
- Establishing and Succeeding in Plans: Proverbs 15:22 states that plans fail without counsel, but succeed with many advisers, guiding decisions and actions.
- Safety and Protection: Seeking counsel, particularly from godly, experienced individuals, provides safety, prevents falling, and offers protection from bad decisions.
- Alignment with God's Will: True biblical counsel aligns with Scripture, helping individuals discern God's purpose rather than relying on their own understanding.
- Correction and Growth: It helps individuals see through their own blind spots, provides needed correction, and fosters spiritual maturity.
- Guidance from the Holy Spirit: Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Counselor or Helper, whose purpose is to teach all things and guide believers in truth.
- Preventing Failure: By seeking wise advice, individuals can avoid the disastrous consequences of foolish choices.
Sources of Wise Counsel
Counsel and advice are received through a variety of channels, ranging from human and professional sources to spiritual and internal sources, including mentors, spiritual leaders, books, and the Holy Spirit. These channels often include:
Spiritual and Divine Channels
- The Holy Spirit: Often described as a primary counselor providing internal guidance, comfort, wisdom, and correction.
- The Word of God (Scripture): Acts as a foundational guide for life decisions. Scripture is the ultimate source of counsel, offering infallible wisdom and direction.
- Prophetic Words: Sometimes God, through His seasoned servants, shares insights on specific areas of life at crucial times to provide guidance.
- Personal Intimacy with God (Prayer and Fasting): A direct, personal channel for seeking divine direction and wisdom.
People and Human Relationships
- Mature Believers/Elders/Mentors: Proverbs encourages seeking counsel from those with experience, godly character, and spiritual maturity. Experienced individuals who have navigated similar life phases can be of great assistance.
- Spiritual Authorities/Leaders: Clergy with sound teaching and outstanding testimonies can guide through godly counsel.
- Family and Friends: Close relatives and peers who provide informal, emotional, and practical advice.
- Counselors and Life Coaches: Trained experts who use specialized skills, such as asking questions, to guide decisions.
Personal Study and Intellectual Resources
- Books and Literature: Materials written by experts, mentors, or spiritual leaders offering wisdom on specific topics.
- Seminars and Conferences: Structured events designed for education and expert guidance.
- Personal Reflection/Meditation: Analyzing one's own life and circumstances in light of wisdom.
Situational and Formal Channels
- Life Circumstances (Trials/Blessings): Personal experiences, when intentionally reflected upon, provide lessons and guidance.
- Formal Consultations: Structured meetings with professionals like lawyers, doctors, priests, or financial advisors.
Key Considerations for Receiving Advice
- Discretion: Test counsel by ensuring it aligns with God's word; seek advice from multiple, credible sources to avoid bias or recklessness.
- Openness: Receiving counsel requires a teachable spirit and an open heart, rather than relying solely on one's own understanding.
- Actionable Steps: The best advice is often applied through small, actionable steps in one's life.
- Warning: The Bible warns against following the counsel of the wicked or ungodly advice, which leads to destruction and poor outcomes (Psalm 1:1, 1 Kings 12).
Conclusion
God is still leading us today, especially through counsel and advice from positive channels. Counsel from authorities is evergreen, especially spiritual authorities. You can access the leadings of God by opening yourself up to receive counsel from spiritual authorities: fathers, mentors, elders, men with results and experience. Most of these men and women have learned and earned this right over time through their personal experiences, victories, and results.
No one can outgrow advice; you should never come to a time in your life where you consider yourself to be above advice. Many people are saved from destruction because of counsel; never underestimate the power of counsel.
When we consider ourselves above counsel due to success achieved, heights attained, and progress made, we become guilty of vain glory. Jesus taught that those who exalt themselves will be humbled (Luke 18:9-14). James 3:16 notes that where selfish ambition exists, there is disorder and every vile practice. Philippians 2:3 instructs: Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Sometimes God will not come directly, so counsel may come through a dream. Open yourself up to counsel; and when you are listening to people who have results counseling you, even if you don't agree, keep quiet. Respect and honor their words born out of years of experience and expertise. You can go back and apply the Berean principle of crosschecking what you have heard, but never at the point of counseling. It is an insult to result; to sit comfortably with a person of significant result and assume that you are discussing with your colleague can be considered total foolishness. Beware! When you sit before great people and minds and they are quiet watching and listening to you, it is possible that your doom is close. Sitting with pride and arrogance before greatness is ignoring the opportunity to grow. Everyone needs counsel!
