Having a myriad of friends can be truly wonderful, especially in certain seasons of life. In college, I absolutely loved trying to see all the friends I had. Finding someone who would go with me to dinner, head to a midnight premiere, shop at the nearby mall, eat lunch on or off campus, or grab coffee at Starbucks was incredibly easy because we all lived within 1.5 miles of each other. Walking in the student center and finding a crowd of friends was a meal-to-meal event. I lived and breathed with these people.
But after college, keeping up with everyone got harder. I wasn’t seeing them in the student center every day nor was I getting together with them for meetings every Tuesday night. In my current season of life, I’ve chosen to pursue deeper relationships with fewer friends. Why? Working a full time job, no one has as much leisure time, so since my time (like everyone elses) is more limited, I invest more of it in fewer people—at least, the people who really, really know me. This allows me to develop close connections and true trust so that I can be a better friend (hopefully!) as well.
The more sources of advice, the better! Right?
Not exactly. Not only can getting advice from more people leave you feeling even more confused than when you started, you could end up following the advice you wanted to hear, but maybe didn’t need to hear. It’s certainly possible to ask enough people until you get the answer you want—even if deep down in your heart, you know it’s not best.
Plus, if you choose to talk about the intimate details of your life with multiple people, you will inevitably receive multiple opinions. And the danger is this: if you are easily influenced, you may change your mind frequently and drastically because of the amount of people speaking into your life. You may mean to just ask for guidance like a hiker might ask a park ranger about a mountain trail; however, you may end up looking more like a fish out of water flip-flopping along a shore. And it’s not about asking for more advice in hopes of pinpointing the right advice. It’s about asking the right people.
So who should you listen to?
Yes, it is of vast importance that we have people we can approach to seek advice, counsel, and guidance. But our advisers should be people whose lives and character we admire because of the choices they have made, the decisions they are currently still making, and the life they have built for themselves. And then we should pray for wisdom and discernment, for big decisions, little decisions, and day-to-day life decisions.
Pray, seek God’s counsel, and trust that He will provide it. 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 7 says, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind”—emphasis on the sound mind piece.) And James 1:5 tells us that if we ask for wisdom, God will give it to us. I don’t think this means God will give us the answer, but I do think it means he will give us the wisdom we need to make an appropriate decision.
Ultimately, it’s God’s will that matters most, so we should always pay attention to His guidance first and foremost.
The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.
John 10: 3-5