A Little Advice About Giving Advice

When I reflect on times I have offered advice to various friends and family members, I often think, “Gosh, if I had known then what I know now, I could have done much better by that person.” Especially on the occasions when people weren’t as receptive as I would have liked or I just screwed up and counseled them into failure, it would have been nice to have the knowledge and experience then that I have now. So it is with life; most of us learn too many things the hard way and tend to think we know a lot more than we do at any given point in life.

Learning to accept God’s will for my life has been easy enough as He has continued proving to me that His intentions are for my ultimate good, that He would keep me whole and taken care of through the toughest of trials, and that each difficulty He allows me to walk through will be instrumental for my personal growth. Learning to accept that He can and will do the same for the people I care about—now that has been a challenge. I can fall flat on my face and recover well enough, but it is a different wound entirely to watch people I care about fail miserably—a heart wound. Watching them hurt is torture to me, and if I feel like I can prevent that pain, it is in my previously mentioned control freak nature to try.

So, is it wrong to give advice? No. In fact Psalms 37:30 says, “The godly offer good counsel; they know what is right from wrong.” And Proverbs 1:5 says, “Let those with understanding receive guidance.” The Scriptures encourage us to be both givers and receivers of wise counsel. This post, however, will focus on the giving side. So, without further ado, here are some helpful tips I’ve learned over the years of giving both good and bad advice.

1. Never talk down to someone.

No matter how immature or unwise the words and actions of the person you are attempting to advise, do not treat them like they are stupid, inept, or unimportant. Remember that God loves this person, and it is His will for you to be a voice that encourages and builds up (even if it comes through the bestowing of a difficult truth). Ephesians 4:29 says, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (emphasis added). Correction must come in a way that is loving and gentle. Seek to bring out the best in this person, not highlight the worst. Essentially, think about the way God corrects you, and emulate that.

2. Don’t assume that a person’s growth process should look exactly like yours.

The hard truth is that people—even the ones we love the most—have free will, personal views, and stages of growth just like we do. As much as we may wish we could wave a finger and somehow bring those people to personal and spiritual maturity neatly and painlessly, we cannot. It is God’s desire for them to go through the process, just like it is His desire for us to go through the process. Each person is different, with a different, God-directed route toward maturity. While I believe God has given us each other for counsel, encouragement, love, and all of the other wonderful gifts of social support, ultimately each person’s path is his or her own. And it is and must remain God-directed, not man-directed.

Make no room for the comparison game. The methods God will use to teach and get His point across to each person will be different, while His principles will remain the same. Do your best to keep your advice specific to the situation. Avoid random tangents about this person’s personality or character traits you find to be problematic. If he or she came to you for advice about something, it doesn’t mean you now have a free pass to nitpick. It is God’s job to judge people holistically and help them become who they are supposed to be. He was satisfied with making only one of you. So, focus on helping this person become more like Him, not more like you.

3. You must obtain wisdom before you can dispense wisdom.

Everything you say should be aligned with the Word of God. If not, don’t say it. James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously without reproach, and it will be given him.” If you want to be the kind of person with wisdom to give others, you should start by frequently obtaining wisdom from the Source.

Don’t think so highly of yourself that you start trying to fly solo in giving advice. According to I Corinthians 3:19, “…the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God.” Without God’s Word, we are misguided on our best day. So, never leave home without God’s Word written on your heart. You never know when it will come time to be a mouthpiece of His Word to others.

4. Less is more.

One thing I have discovered about giving advice is that I spend more time wishing I had kept my mouth shut than congratulating myself for wise words well spoken. Honestly, people usually just need someone to listen.

The very nature of specific advice is that it is responsive. To give a solution, you must first be presented with a problem. If I walked into a doctor’s office, and he simply wrote me a prescription without even examining me, I’d question the legitimacy of his medical license. When you blurt out a million words of advice without even taking the time to hear what the problem is, the likelihood of that advice being relevant is slim. While the likelihood of that person thinking you are insensitive and maybe even crazy will only increase.

Scenarios like this occur more often than one might think. When you know someone and have a general idea of the lifestyle he or she lives, it becomes easy to assume what you need to say without taking the time to really listen. Don’t fall into the trap of giving irrelevant advice that might even be good, but will ultimately be discarded because the person is not ready to receive it. Only work on the problem presented, and if you do have something to say, keep it short enough that the conversation can remain a healthy dialogue, not a preachy monologue.

5. God can be trusted. Leave them in His hands.

Even if you have been an attentive and sensitive listener, you may not have a wealth of knowledge about how to fix the problem. That is OKAY! Do not feel defeated. You are not failing someone when you don’t know how to fix everything. You are presenting this person with an opportunity to trust God in a deeper way. In the meantime, love well. Be a shoulder to cry on. Be a sounding board. Be a voice of truth and encouragement.

No matter how deeply your love for this person may run, God’s love for him or her is literally infinitely deeper than yours. He wants the best for all of His children. When the people we love are making destructive decisions, it is easy to start believing they will never come around. We are limited by our small and temporal perspectives, but God has eternal perspective and sees how even the destructive decisions can lead to the ultimate good of each person. So, if they are not responding to you, trust that God will do whatever it takes to reach them. Chasing after the unreachable is in His very nature. It is one of the most beautiful aspects of His grace.

Finally…

Prayer. Prayer before giving advice, prayer during the process, and prayer for continuous direction afterward is always the best bet. God is the perfect advisor because He already knows the beginning from the end. You cannot go wrong, seeking Him. The best advice starts when are connected with God in prayer and ends when that connection is broken. My advice? Don’t ever break that connection.