Once, in my teenage years, I quoted these words from a Charlie Daniels’ song to my dad:

“I ain’t asking nobody for nothing, if I can’t get it on my own. If you don’t like the way I’m living, just leave this long-haired country boy alone.” I told him that was a motto for my teenage loner life. He listened, as he often did, and then replied “That’s sad.”

In the conversation that followed, he told me about how he relied on the counsel of others in his life. (And through that conversation, he modeled the value of talking/listening/counsel to me.) My dad may have come to that on his own, or he may have remembered it from Proverbs.

Fools think their own way is right,
but the wise listen to advice.

Proverbs 2:15

That’s good advice for teenagers. That’s good advice for their dads. That’s good advice for national leaders. That’s good advice for us. The person who always thinks their own way is right may be fooling themselves. It is wise to listen to the advice of others.

This doesn’t mean that we will always change the ways that we are thinking. But it is good to test our thoughts on others that we trust. In his prayers at Winter Haven Rotary, one of our church members, Dr. Fred Lenfesty, would often ask God to make us “needful of the minds of others.” He meant to say that.

Thanks, Dad. And thanks, Fred.

Prayer

Dear God, surround me with others on the path of discipleship, that I may be helped through the counsel of others as I follow our Lord and Savior Jesus, in whose name I pray. Amen.