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There's a certain kind of advice you go looking for when you've already made up your mind.
You don't want counsel. You want confirmation. So you skip past the person who might push back and go straight to the friend who'll tell you what you want to hear.
I've done it. You've done it.
This week's theme: Company.
Today, a king who did exactly this, and split a kingdom in half because of it.
REHOBOAM
Solomon had just died.
His son Rehoboam inherited the throne. The kingdom was tired. Solomon's later years had been heavy with taxes and forced labour, and the people came to Rehoboam with a straightforward request. Lighten the load. Serve us, and we will serve you.
Rehoboam said give me three days.
Then he did something interesting. He went to two different sets of advisors.
First he went to the elders. The men who had served his father. The ones who had watched a nation get built. They said something wise and slightly uncomfortable.
"If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favourable answer, they will always be your servants."
Servant leadership. The oldest lesson in the book. Bend low, and people will follow you anywhere.
Rehoboam didn't like it.
So he went to the second group. The young men he'd grown up with. His mates. The ones who'd been in the palace with him, waiting their turn, absorbing his ambition and his pride. They told him to double down. Show strength. Come out harder than your father did. "My little finger is thicker than my father's waist" was the exact phrase they gave him to use.
He used it.
The kingdom split. Ten of the twelve tribes walked away and never came back. Israel and Judah became two nations from that day on, and the fracture lasted centuries.
Notice what happened. Rehoboam didn't ignore counsel. He got counsel from two different rooms. He heard the wise answer first. He just preferred the answer that came from the room full of his friends.
That's the thing about company. It isn't only the voices you hear. It's the voices you choose to weight more heavily. The room you naturally trust. The friend whose opinion carries a bit more than it should.
If Rehoboam had never asked the elders, this would be a story about ignorance. He did ask. He heard. He chose the other room.
Most of us are Rehoboam more often than we think.
We hear the wise voice. It costs something. We go find the room that will tell us what we already wanted to do. And we call it a decision, when really it was just a choice about whose voice we let matter.
YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY
Think of a decision you're currently sitting on. Big or small.
Ask yourself honestly. Whose voice am I weighting the most in this decision? And is that voice the wise one, or the comfortable one?
You don't have to change the decision today. Just notice which room you're standing in.
Father, forgive me for the times I've gone looking for confirmation instead of counsel. Give me the humility to weight the wise voice more heavily than the comfortable one. Put wise people around me. Give me the ears to actually hear them when they speak. Amen.
WATCH THE NEW VIDEO!
This week's new video on the channel goes deeper into the same territory. Three types of people the Bible quietly warns us about, and how to spot them in your own life without becoming cynical about people.
3 Types of People God Is Silently Warning You to Distance Yourself From.
OVER TO YOU
Whose voice have you been weighting too heavily lately? One name, one word, one line. Hit reply. I read every one.
God bless you, my friend.
The LowKey Christian
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