Fruit of His counsel

Counsel is the word of God; and the word of God thoroughly equips us for every good work. But if we just see counsel as useless, or ineffective, as something that only happens when things are going wrong, then we miss the point of it completely and it becomes exactly that: a useless, ineffective, vain endeavour. When we bemoan that counsel has no remedy, let’s ask for whose glory are we seeking this endeavour of counsel? Our glory? Or His glory?

We live in the information age; there is an abundance of information and noise, our world is a noisy place. Hearing is not our problem; we’re hearing all the time. But are we listening? Or are we seeking what our itching ears want to hear? And when we give counsel, are we listening to answer rather than listening to understand?

For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks… So, if we just speak or sing words, if we just say all the right things, and recite all the key verses that we memorise, and don’t connect to the meaning of those words, then who or what is in our heart? We must remember our great commission because within that is implied: go and tell them how much the Lord has done for you…

What are we distracted by? And from? And by whom? We are constantly being distracted from the very thing that can set as free: Jesus Christ, the way the truth and the life; who says it is the truth that sets us free.  It is a war. A war for your attention. For your discernment. A war for your mind. A war for your very soul…

When we “darken” the Lord's counsel, with our own understanding or we dull it or dampen it or soften it, to be all things to all people, to not cause offense – what we end up speaking is useless, without effect, empty. And it matters because God's Word wants to move. We must not stand in the way of that…

The question is: your will or the Lord’s will? This is the great battle at the centre of our Christian lives. Our will, our desires, our pleasures and comfort; yet, our Lord gave all for us, so that we might live, and have His way in our lives. The two wills are in opposition, therefore, we can’t have both - we must choose…

In this first ever episode of the Fruit of His counsel, we look at bringing Jesus back to the centre of not just our lives but to every word we speak when we are in service to the Lord. It is His word that is to go forth not ours. When we give poor counsel it’s because we lean on our own understanding and this really shouldn’t be so…