Day 14: Listen To The Wonderful Counselor

In my previous message, I have given you a question to ponder about: how much has God really initiated in my individual life?

Let me give you a thought from Psalm 1. Many of you are familiar with the beautiful words of Psalm 1.

“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, not sit in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in season; his leaf will not wither; and whatever he does will prosper.”

That’s an unconditional promise of success. You’ve got to measure success by Bible standards, not contemporary Western culture. Success is not necessarily driving a Cadillac or a Mercedes. There’s a much higher level of success than that.

Rightly understood, God promises success to a person who meets certain conditions which are stated. There are three negative conditions and two positive. The negative conditions are: not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, not stand in the way of sinners, and not sit in the seat of the scornful.

The positive ones are: delight in the law of the Lord, meditate in His law, day and night. And God says the person who does that will succeed. In the deepest and truest sense, when he stands before Jesus in eternity, he will not have a lot of wood, hay and straw to be burned up.

This is the second question, as a practical application: where do you get your counsel from? Because you cannot get your counsel from the wrong source and prosper. So, where do you get your counsel, your advice, your direction from?

You realize that you have right of access to your Head who is called the Wonderful Counselor. Are you availing yourself? You know in the business world people pay very large sums of money for letters from so called experts telling you where to invest. Well, what about consulting the real expert? What about getting your counsel from the Wonderful Counselor? It’s going to demand, for most of you, some pretty radical changes. Some of you will have to stop doing some of the things you’re doing. I don’t mean you’ve got to go out and stop tomorrow but I mean that there will be a process of adjustment. And if you do it faithfully, I want to tell you after about six months or a year, one day you’ll lean back and sigh, and you’ll say, “Oh, thank God I’m free from a lot of pressures that never did me any good.”