People are generally willing to give advice. Good advice. Bad advice. It doesn’t matter. We all want to get our two cents in whenever we can.

As much as we are willing to give advice, we also take it. But who do we take it from? I’ve known those who will keep asking for advice until someone tells them what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. For the sake of affirmation of their own opinion, they cast away the good advice that would have, eventually, proven to be more beneficial.

And the king said to Jehoshaphat, “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah the son of Imla, but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil.” And Jehoshaphat said, “Let not the king say so.”

1 Kings 22:8 (ESV)

As it turns out Micaiah, for all his gloom and doom toward King Ahab, was the right one. All four hundred of the other prophets brought to speak over the situation had been filled with a lying spirit speaking what the king wanted to hear rather than what he needed to hear.

Micaiah was strong enough to speak truth even though he knew it wasn’t what the king wanted to hear. In the end, the king followed the advice of the lying spirits and lost his life as was previously prophesied. Micaiah could walk away with a clear conscience having offered the true word of the Lord.

When you offer advice, do you offer truth? In love, of course. When truth is offered in the spirit of love, it is easier to receive.

When you accept advice, do you accept truth? Sometimes the truth isn’t easy to take. A lot of times truth isn’t easy to take.

What would you rather have: pretty words and death or truth and life?

Daily Bible reading: 1 Kings 21-22; John 3:1-21