“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.”
– Proverbs 12:15
This kind of counsel wisdom, in Proverbs 12:15, is all over the book of Proverbs. Over and over and over again, we see encouragement, and exhortation, to listen to counsel. And to look for advice, surround yourself with many counselors. Because, well, ultimately, we cannot trust ourselves. We can only trust in God and God uses others in our lives to help us see things we can’t see. We need others and so we look to others. Ideally, others who are wise, who have a God-centered view of the world. Not that we can’t seek counsel or advice from those who are not followers of Jesus, or who may not have a God-centered view of the world.
We all have blind spots. God uses others in our lives to help us see that which we cannot see on our own.
We Need People to Point Out Our Blind Spots
So again, there’s common grace there that we can learn from, but it is good to seek out counsel and advice from others who are in God’s word and have a God-centered view of the world. Because there are all kinds of things that may look right in any one of our eyes. And it is because of our fallenness, we don’t see perfectly. We all have blind spots, and we can’t see them because they’re blind spots. That’s kind of the point. And we need others, I need other people in my life. I’m so thankful. Right now, just names that are popping into my mind who I go to for counsel and wisdom. Who are so helpful to me. And I praise God for how they have guarded me and kept me and encouraged me and challenged me in so many different ways.
Proverbs 12:15: Asking God to Make Us Listen to Wise Advice
And so we pray, Oh God, right now, that you would keep us from doing what is right in our own eyes. Lord, ultimately we only want to do what is right in your eyes. And we realized that in order to know what is right in your eyes, we need others to help us. We need you to help us through others, maybe a better way to put it.
So make us wise help us to listen to advice, and not just to seek it out, but to listen to it. To surround ourselves with wise counsel, and then to heed that counsel, knowing nobody else is perfect either. Knowing that you alone know what is best. So we pray that you would help us even to sift through particularly, receive different kinds of counsel from different people, and what do we do then God? We trust that you will lead us, we trust that you will guide us. And we trust that you will use others in this process.
So we pray that you would help us through those around us and surround us, God I pray with good godly counselors. I pray that for my life, I pray that for everybody who’s listening right now. In your church, God, we pray, that we would seek out a community that is full of good, wise, Godly counsel. And then, oh God through others, help us to walk in wisdom and help us to be this kind of counselor for others as well. Oh God, we don’t just pray this for our own lives.
Asking God to Give Us Wisdom for the Sake of Others
We pray that you’d help us to give good, wise, advice to others to help them. Oh God, in this we praise you for how you’ve designed your church to help us walk in wisdom. What a gift, a local church, a community of brothers and sisters, who are encouraging one another and counseling one another, helping one another, through all kinds of decisions in life. So God make us, and this way the church that you’ve designed us to be. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
