Take Few Opinions, But Do Take The Right Few – Part One

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Episode Summary

Part-one of a two-part series: Often foolishness is disguised as wisdom today and there’s an unending number of people that will try and sway you one way or another. We must teach and model for our kids how to detect and only pursue Biblically sound wisdom. It can become so easy to embrace the wisdom that supports how we feel about something, but what happens when how we feel is wrong? We have to have good mentors in our lives that we can bounce things off of and know we will get sound advice.

In a world where there are a million opinions, experts, and everyone seems to have the best plan for your life, it’s important to remember to take few opinions, but to certainly take the right few. God’s word exhorts believer’s to seek for understanding, knowledge, and wisdom as well as to seek wise counsel. But how does one pick the right advice to follow in a day and age with so many opposing opinions?

I hope you join us for this episode in the Courageous Parenting Podcast as we discuss who you should and should not take advice from, how to test and approve wise counsel, as well as many other essential elements. Finally, we want to urge you to remember who the only one worthy of following truly is, Jesus Christ. The Bible promises us that if we seek Him with our whole heart we will find Him. Remember that no one else’s advice or will for your life will ever compare to God’s will. In fact, all others are quite inadequate, so make sure that those you are getting advice from are seeking after God’s will for your life to and not their own.

In This Episode We Cover:

  1. Who You Should Take Advice From
  2. The Mistakes People Make
  3. Differentiating Between Advice & Having A Mentor

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Scripture In This Episode:

James 3:17 – “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”

Luke 21:15 –for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.”

James 1:19 – “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath;”

1 Corinthians 5:12-13 –For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore ‘put away from yourselves the evil person.'”

Ephesians 5:15 – “See then that you walk [a]circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,”

Matthew 7:16 –You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?”

Isaiah 11:2 – The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”

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Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting podcast, the weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world. Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom. And I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married 20 years, and have seen the fruit in raising our eight kids biblically based on the raw truth found in the Bible. We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from the faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world.

Welcome to the podcast, everybody.

Hey, guys.

So we just prayed before we did this podcast because we understand that right now things are very challenging around the world. Yeah. And in America, very. This is a very somber time for many.

But I just want to encourage you, I hope that this podcast is exhorting. I hope that it’s encouraging, uplifting. We are going to talk today about taking few opinions, but you do need to take the right few.

You see, there’s so many people that want to give advice. So sometimes it’s hard to get the right advice and, you know, when to choose who to actually truly take an opinion from. And we’re in an age where more than ever we need to have wise counsel. Yeah, super important.

That’s true. And at the same time, we also are in an age where there is basically counsel and persuasion and manipulation happening all over social media. Well, so you try to discern what at wisely what next steps should be in certain things, what to participate in, what not to participate in, what to believe, what not to believe.

There’s plenty of foolishness disguised as wisdom. There’s everybody wants to give an opinion and there’s plenty of ways to give an opinion. I actually think that’s amazing that we all have the ability to have such a voice. But with so many voices, with so much noise, we have to be even more wise and understand how to select the right stuff.

That’s right. And so, you guys, our last podcast, I hope you took advantage of it. It was critical thinking in an uncertain world. And we cover some really important questions to ask. Six keys, actually. Know, we talk really candidly about making sure that you’re not focusing or making your decisions through a biased opinion or a world view that’s tainted by a biblical one because we’re Christians. If you’re listening, you’re most likely a Christian. And there’s just so much good truth in that podcast that we really hope that you would listen to that along with this. This is the other side of critical thinking. To be able to make decisions in an uncertain world is who do you seek wisdom from? Right. You take opinions from. So it says take few opinions, but do take the right view, which is what we are titling. Today’s podcast. And we just want to encourage you guys, because God’s word tells us to seek wisdom.

He does. He does. And so we’re going to dive in and we just thank you for being part of the one million legacies movement. It’s incredible. I think the podcast is close to six hundred thousand downloads since it started just a year and half ago or so. And the parenting mentor program fills up every time, every six weeks. And the homeschooling blueprint. We are getting so much feedback from that and the postpartum course and the book. And it’s just really amazing how God is using all these things. We thank you. And if you wouldn’t mind giving some review on iTunes or you listen, they’ll be great. Five star just takes a tap and it really helps the algorithms get the movement out there. So we sure appreciate that.

So there are a few ways to dive in. There are a few ways that God encourages. And he he gives us guidance in his word on how is the best way to seek wisdom. And there are two main best ways to seek wisdom. One is by reading the word and one is by getting wise counsel.

Let’s hear what the word says. And James 3:17 and oh, so funny. Let’s talk about Bibles for a second. When you’re not reading your own Bible, it is immensely.

Oh, yeah. We’re using my Bible and I have all the doubt anyways.

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure than peaceful, gentle, willing to yield, fold mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of the righteous has sown in the peace by those who make peace.

I love that. So this is a great word to encourage you in seeking wisdom from the word of God, from the Holy Bible, the unchanging and valuable word of God. And one of the things that stay stands out to me. I mean, obviously, we could go line by line with this, but it says here, without partiality and without hypocrisy and see, that’s the that’s actually one part that can be dangerous and taking advice from humans is that there’s can be biases. Partiality is biases, there can be hypocrisy, someone giving you advice that they themselves would never actually take.

That’s why I’ve always, even in my younger years, have always told people I used to mentor literally hundreds, sometimes thousands of people. And when I would give a speech in front of people and I’d always say take few opinions because, you know, a lot of times they’re agenda driven and people don’t even realize the third vises agenda driven, whether it’s through competition or other things. So you’re really looking for that pure wisdom you can trust. And we’ll talk about how to get that.

Yeah. Another aspect that’s really important is seeking wise counsel.

Right. And so a lot of times people think, oh, wow, OK. What is that supposed to look like today? Right. Because when you grow up and you become an adult, you start adult thing. You have to make decisions. And sometimes those decisions can be really hard. And one of the things that we have always done is we’ve always looked to what other people are doing. We’re very observant. Yeah. And were quick to go, OK, that had that result.

We’re not going to do that. Oh, look how that turned out for them. We should pray about that. Right. Yeah.

But we have also sought out counsel from people, both people who we just thought had fruit in their lives that maybe were not our mentors. Yeah. But also we have sought counsel, regular counsel from mentors, which are two different things that we’re going to talk about today. And so I just thought that it would be kind of cool to share a little bit about, you know, the importance of seeking wise counsel. Yeah. So obviously, we’ve shared on the podcast that we’ve been in a lot of different scenarios where we have needed counsel from other people. And you guys, this is this is something that takes humility.

It really does. Toy ask. Boy, that was counsel.

That was one of the hardest things for me to do. I would say all the way up until he’s like thirty nine.

It was very, very hard for you to ask people for help and to ask their advice. And really proud of you for sharing.

Yeah I, I will give myself a little bit of credit. I did have a mentor in my younger years. Part of that was I married this really brilliant wife that had a lot of Bible knowledge and I was a new Christian. So I really need an older guy. I really knock some sense into me. But self anyways, that’s another story.

Yeah. So I want to share a scripture with you. That that’s from Luke. Chapter 21, verse 15. It says, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist. Interesting.

Mm hmm. This is a this is Jesus is talking about and times, actually, which is interesting because we’re in us, we’re in uncertain times. That’s what this passage of scripture is talking about. Know you’re one of these things being it goes down and it says that he will give you a mouth and wisdom which your adversaries will not be able to contradict and resist. When I think about that, the wisdom that he gives us is obviously the ability to recall or remember the wisdom that’s in the word. Yeah. Another aspect of this is the gift of the Holy Spirit. He gives us the Holy Spirit, which is the helper. The helper helps us made wise decisions. Right. Like, for example, if you or you have two paths in your life. Which one do I go down? You may notice things if you start examining that, you wouldn’t see if you were just quick to act in your flesh.

Right. I think I’ll see you in that scripture. So good because the enemy is scheming against you. And the more you’re pressing of our theories for the kingdom of God to really glorify God with your life and share the gospel and teach people the good news and so forth, the more the enemy hates that and doesn’t want you to succeed. And so sometimes it’s really I’ve seen this so many times when I’m oppressing closest to God and dealing with the challenge or the enemy’s schemes coming at me. It’s sometimes the actions you take are really different looking to people around you. But it throws the enemy off.

Right. Because he. That’s true. That’s true. And you can’t get that by yourself.

You need the Holy Spirit. And you need sometimes to run it by someone you trust.

Right. And so we’re going to talk about some important key, I guess, ideas or tips on how to figure out how to run things by. Because in today’s society, there’s just tons of opinions coming at you all the time. And before we jump into our six main reasons here, because we actually have six reasons for you. Six tips for you guys. There’s one aspect of seeking wisdom that I think is really important. And it’s it’s a biblical concept. It’s in James one 19. I’m just going to read it real quick. It says, so then my beloved brethren let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath, one translation says, and slow to become angry. It doesn’t say not become angry. It says to be slow to it. Right. Which means that we do sometimes, you know, another passage Scripture says in your anger, do not sin. Right. And so, I mean, this is very relevant to what we’re even watching happening around the country today. Right. And regarding sin and being quick and. And I think that when it comes to getting wisdom into the decisions that we make and how we’re participating with our voice, even on different topics, we sometimes need to be slow to speak, slow to contribute to the noise. Right. I’m not wanting our words to be noise, but slow to speak. Watching, being observant, prayerful, fasting and not making decisions hastily and quickly. That’s what this is saying and saying. Be slow to speak and slow and quick to listen. Be quick to listen and slow to become angry. Not just like, you know, jumping in really quick with anger. And I think that this is an important wisdom from God’s word that we all need to remember. And also, we actually need to judge the people that we’re getting guidance from. Are they doing these things? Are they doing these things? Because if they’re not doing these things, we need to be careful.

Yeah, yeah. That’s so good. So when we go through the six things, we’ll cross our first we’re going to go. Who do you take advice from? They won’t be talking about mistakes people make. Then how to differentiate between advice and having a mentor. And then we’re going to talk about how to choose a mentor and foolishness often disguised as wisdom, what that looks like.

And then we’re gonna talk about virtual mentors and share some of our story. And we have some good encouragements for you guys at the end.

And that will launch into next week’s podcast.

Next week’s podcast is going to be an interesting one. We’re going to talk about how we ended up with eight kids. We can talk a little bit about our story and the importance of not stereotyping people. And we don’t talk about many different things, such as like the Quiverful movement. We’ll talk about a little bit about that and that we are not that.

So, yeah, and that has to do with this because in but it has to do with getting a mentor and so forth.

Right. And just just. We’ll be talking about this in this podcast a little bit later. But just understanding that sometimes people do make stereotypes and that impacts who they get advice from.

Yeah, absolutely. Let’s dive in. So who to take advice from?

First thing you got to do is pray and potentially fast. Yeah, right. I mean, we were just walking through something really intense and you fasted for. Three days just to I mean, I’m at you. I wouldn’t have shared that, sorry. That’s okay. Now, to get clarity. Yeah, to get clarity. And I think that it’s important that we all practice that with big and big decisions, such as who we allow to influence us. Because if we’re going to somebody for advice, we’re going to someone for influence. Yeah, right. And it’s potentially going to impact what decisions we make, what actions we take or not take, things like that. So prayer is is essential because we want to be communicating with God.

Yeah, absolutely is. And so what do we do when we’re trying to figure out if we should take advice from somebody?

So we have. Well, the first thing that we just said was to pray. And the second thing on our little list here is to test another way to put this would be to discern yet another word. A lot of Christians don’t like this word. Are you ready, Judge. Yeah. So test, discern and judge before you choose who you’re going to take it.

Now, before you go off on the handle in your head and goes, oh, another group of judgmental Christians and that kind of thing, we’re definitely not judgmental in extra biblical sense, but we are judgmental according to what the Bible tells us to do to make good judgments about other believers. Right. We’re not to make judgments about non believers. That’s not our job.

Right. But there is a scripture. Do you want to share this? Go ahead. We are going to. Okay. It’s in First Corinthians, chapter five versus twelve through 13, actually. And I would encourage you to go back and read this entire chapter, you guys. This is a really important topic because this is something that the church has been deceived on regarding judgmentalism and judging. It says for what do I have with judging those who are outside the church? So saying, why would you even bother with that? It’s not like there’s not saved you. That’s not your job. You can’t judge someone’s heart. That’s not what it is. Do you not judge those who are inside, but those who are outside? God judges, therefore put away from yourselves the evil person.

Yeah. So it’s important to discern really this is a discernment act right here, which is you’re discerning amongst other Christians who is worthy and good and safe, rather, to get advice from. Mm hmm. And that’s based on a lot of things. But one of them is fruitfulness.

True? Yes. And that’s one of the things that we’re talking about when it comes to testing and judging. You want to be able to look at the fruit. And before we go any further on this topic, I really want to share that effusions five scripture that we were talking about, because right now this is in regards to the uncertain times and trying to find people who are wise to get advice from. And I just you shared this scripture with me. I was like, that’s perfect.

It’s in Ephesians five, Chapter 15. Says, see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise redeeming the time because the days are evil. So it’s like be aware. Look around circumspectly. And that says, do not be unwise. We’re talking about seeking wisdom. Right. Do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

It’s also, you know, if we have too much time on our hands, which I think may be Covid may have created that for a good portion of people point a lot of time on our hands isn’t good. Actually, it’s redeeming the time it’s talking about, which is super important. Yeah. So that can be part of the mess our country is in right now.

Right. And so when it comes to fruit, the fruit that we’re talking about, that’s important to judges. Like, for example, let’s just we’re a courageous parenting. So let’s say you’re looking for advice in parenting. What is what is a good example of how you would judge the fruit? You would look at someone’s children and go. Do I want my kids to be like that? Yeah. And if you can say yes, then maybe that’s a good person to go talk to and get advice from on parenting. Right. And if you look at the kids and you go, whoa, I do not want that. Then maybe you’re a little bit more hesitant to take advice from them. And I would say that that is a really for us. I’m just being honest. That has been one of the first most things that we have always looked at because the Bible warns us. Yeah.

Do we want our kids to be like the person we’re learning from? Do we want our marriage to be like the person we’re thinking about learning from? Do we want our financial situation to be like the person? Right.

We’re learning for a disciple learns from his from the teacher. Right. And so we need to model that ourselves for our kids so that our kids don’t choose unwise people to watch and follow. All right.

Super important. And you can only tell the fruit over a long period of time. You’ve heard us talk about the vineyard before, but it takes seven years to get to the best fruit. So to really understand a vineyard, it’s a seven year. Process to get to know the how it’s going to be and what kind of fruit it’s going to bear and what kind of wine that actually makes then product and whether, you know, it’s great or just good. And so it takes time walking with people to really know the fruit. That’s why it’s so important. We are in fellowship with people so we can send fruit and we’re careful who we ask. So right here, Matthew, seven starting at 16. So you will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from Thistle’s? Obviously not. Right. OK. Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. It’s kind of simple, isn’t it? A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them.

Mm hmm. That’s right. And so it’s really important that we are honest. We take rose tinted glasses off and we are we’re judging, actually, because obviously we’re not going to go and get biblical wisdom from someone who is not a Christian. Right. And so you have to make a judgment. You make a judgment. You go, oh, yeah, that’s not wise. And then if you are going to go to Christians because you’re a Christian, you’re in good Christian to get advice. What is Bible say? Judge Yeah. It says to judge it and it says, look at the fruit.

Now, let’s just so we have some context here. What are we supposed to do to our neighbor? We’re supposed to love our neighbor as ourself. So this isn’t making judgments. Not in love. This isn’t doing something to someone.

This is being discerning in who we get wisdom from. Can you still see somebody that you’ve made a judgment that maybe you need to learn from? Right. Absolutely. We’re called to.

Yeah. And also to be walking with people and Grace and her sense of like, hey, I could you can relate. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment as best as possible. Have some perspective and go, you know what, they can be a friend, but maybe not somebody that might take advice on.

So that’s the context of what we’re talking about this. Let’s not take us out of context, because we’re teaching you how to really look at who you can get good wisdom from, which is important.

Yeah. So the next thing that we wanted to share with you guys, what that’s important to test and judge. There are three or four good questions. What do they have to gain or lose? Right. So, for example, you go to somebody for advice and that advice for the thing that you’re asking for is going to potentially have impact on them. Do they have something to gain by your decision that you’re asking about or do they have something to lose because of the decision that you could make? Because it’s probably not a good idea to put that on them, to be honest, because most people are self preserving and they would make a decision that’s gonna be self preserving and get either gain them or help them.

It’s hard to trust that is that when somebody could gain or lose by the decisions you make and when you’re asking him for advice, it is really that makes it really difficult, maybe even, you know, not not a good thing on either side.

It’s not wise. And I think that it’s unfair to put friendships in that situation. So that’s an important question that you need a test. What do they have to gain or lose? If I was to go and ask them this, the next one is, are they biblical? Yeah. Right. Do they live biblically? So you’re going to ask that question. You’re going to test that question. Go. Well, you know what? In this situation, they actually they they you know, I mean, they were human. Maybe they weren’t perfect, but they were trying really hard to be biblical. And I really admired the process that they walked through that trial. Right. So you test that, you know. Are they biblical? Yes. Right. Do they go to the scripture and have an answer in scripture for why they believe what they believe? If they do, that’s great. Another thing is, are they biased or are they objective? Are they able to put themselves out of it? Are they able to put their love for you even out of it? Right. Like, I just think of myself as a mom and wanting to protect and love my kids. And if they were to come and say, hey, mom, should I go skydiving. My advice would be no.

Because I don’t want them to get hurt. So if I don’t have the ability to be objective, I’m not the best person to get advice from on that.

For my kid. Right. And so I just think that when we’re making decisions, we have to ask that question. Are they able to be objective and give real wisdom?

And here’s something to that is they have to know you well enough and long enough to not be biased because we all have first impressions and we all have some element of stereotyping other people based on life decisions they’ve made that you can see from a distance when until you really get to know somebody, you don’t really know them and you can’t really give good advice and wisdom to somebody unless you really know them. And it’s hard to receive it unless you know that you’re known.

I mean, this actually brings something else up to mine a lot of times, human nature. And this is just because we study human behavior, right. Human behavior is self preserving. We’ve said this multiple times in podcasts, yes, but one way it’s self, preserving Isaac is that sometimes people will give advice. There is an alignment with the decision they made maybe five or 10 years ago to readjusts, to reinforce, to justify, to make them feel better, that they made this decision. And in reality, it might not be the best decision for that person. It might not have even been the best decision for them. And so we have to be able to go, hey, have they stereotyped me? Have I stereotyped them? We have to be objective about that before we even we have to test it. It’s just something we have to test. Okay. And then the last thing you need a test is do they want what’s best for me or or do they want what’s best for them.

Is a competitive spirit. And this is where age, I believe, is important in comparison to your age. Because the longer someone has walked through life, the better there is. At least I don’t know if this is a male female thing or not. You’d be the judge of this. But I have found that a lot of us are striving in our younger years and have a little more competitive nature. It’s a little bit harder to curb that subconscious competitive nature or the ability to separate ourselves from from our situation and totally listen to somebody and give that people can for sure.

But I find that the further along someone is, the more experienced they are in life, the more they’ve kind of like they’ve been punched in the face a few times with things in life and they’re not trying to puff themselves up and then are trying to puff themselves up anymore. Yeah, and they’re not concerned about how they look to you because they’ve already kind of won and lost and lot things and times to where they like kind of over it. They’re kind of like, OK, I don’t need to like, prove who I am anymore. I am who God made me. And you can take it or leave it. But here I’m going to give you this objective advice, right.

Exactly.

The other thing that’s really good about that, too, is that oftentimes people who are older have been humbled enough to where they’re they they don’t really care about trying to protect their pride to the point where they’re willing to actually share the mistakes they’ve made. That’s really the best way to learn.

I mean, my the my favorite mentors are my favorite times with people that I was being mentored by was those people that were actually sharing their mistakes with me. Yeah, that is the best wisdom. And I would hope that you guys would hear that find that with us, as were virtual mentors. Have you here through the podcast. But the reality is we know that we make mistakes at times and we’re totally willing to share those with you guys. And we do often share about our failings. Right. But, you know, sometimes when you go to speak who’s younger, they don’t want to share that. They want to come across as they’ve done it. All right. Because I think that validates them as being more qualified to give advice.

It reminds me of when we were moving from Portland, central Oregon, six years ago. And you reminded me this went recently. Six years ago, we moved from Portland, central Oregon.

And I did go and I didn’t want to ask anybody to help us move. Oh, yeah. And we were moving from the big vinyard property.

It was three hours over a mountain range to central Oregon.

And here I am. And our kids were quite a bit younger. I mean, the muscles on the boys was less.

Yeah. I mean, Austin was like. Yeah.

He was eleven years old and I just remember it. And you really worked to me to ask somebody and then I got three friends to come and help. And it really wasn’t enough, but it was very nice of them.

It was so much better than a what if they had someone. But it just it just reminded me that my resistance to getting help from my peers.

You hadn’t really been humbled very much in that yet at that point.

Yeah, it was. Now it was, it was harder for me because I really needed help. Yeah. I really needed help because you were coming over here.

So you guys in a few months from now we’ll have our six year anniversary to having moved.

But at this point, we literally you should have just doing a little side story here. We literally would put all the kids in the RV and we would drive here to Central Oregon. We would drive for hours and we’d stay in RV Park in to getting our suburban we’d go looking for a house to rent. Then we go back and we’d have to work super hard on the vineyard. We had her house on the market, so it had to be show ready. And we started with a startup company with quite a few employees and with six kids. Isaac would stay here. I would work on the vineyard with the kids at home and try to keep the house perfect.

Talk about testing our marriage.

Took us six months to move here. Yeah. Took us a really long time anyway.

So back to it. We can all learn from mistakes. It’s just that you doesn’t your trust go up when you’re talking to somebody that is mentoring you. You want wisdom from and they teach you from their mistakes. That is a good sign. So I’m glad about that. Yeah.

Okay, you guys. So we have a few more little points. Who to take advice from the next one is take all advice. With a grain of salt and what we mean by that is that somebody might give advice that has worked for them. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to work for you. And so you have to take it and then still pray about it, still take it to the Lord, still communicate with your spouse about it, still like don’t do anything unless you guys are in alignment. I know this is stuff that we didn’t write down, but these are just like tips for making decisions. Right. But but please take all advice with a grain of salt because your family’s different, your different. Your marriage is gone.

The circumstances are different than for your family. And it’s not going to look just like somebody else’s family and family size. And what you’re doing and all these things, we can all be biblical and be on some different journeys.

The next point is to listen to the Holy Spirit. And this is so, so important, because if you don’t, you’re going to be potentially listening to your flesh.

Oh, yeah. Here’s a scripture on Isaiah Isaiah 11 two, which is The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of council and Mike, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. That is that good kind of fear where you respect God in your life and understand his authority in your life and the power God truly has.

And we want his help. Don’t we want his protection, his hope, his wisdom, all these things. Well, guess what? One of the ways he imparts wisdom is through other believers.

So another thing that is really important in this kind of goes along with taking all advice with a grain of salt. But we wanted to make it a separate point because there’s a certain type of person out there that is like this way, my way or the highway or this their advice. They think their advice is the only way and it is the best advice. And if you don’t do it, it’s a big deal. Right. And can I just say to B, you have to test that. You have to judge it because. Not all advice is cookie cutter. It doesn’t. Not all advice works across the board with families, with parenting, with marriage, with circumstances, with consequences, with situations. There are so many factors when it comes to these things. And so finding someone who is truly going to they are actually going to listen to the Holy Spirit. They’re going to be slow to speak, quick to listen when you come to them and they’re going to be slow to become angry. Hopefully they don’t becoming if you’re going to them. Yeah. Wisdom. But but truly, those principles of like when you’re going to somebody, are they slow to give advice? Are they safe or are they quick to listen? Are they biblical? Are they going to go you know what? Let me pray about this. Or maybe they already know and they go well off the top of my head. I would say this and this. But let me pray about it and get back to you. Or I could also see this working. I’ll be praying for you. How about we pray together? Like. That’s the type of person you take advice from, right. Where they’re actually exhibiting all of these things that we’ve been talking about. And they’re not just giving cookie cutter advice to all the same, like to all people. Right. As going, oh, I learned this. And everybody should do it this way. Like, that’s the cookie cutter advice. That is not it should be a go to.

But here’s the advice I think works. But you should be praying and asking God if that’s the right thing for you to do. Right. There should be some of that in the advice. And because it definitely isn’t all cookie cutter.

That’s right. And then test the advice. So once you have gone and found someone to get advice from and you get advice, you have to test that advice then. So here we’ve just been talking about testing, discerning, judging who you get advice from.

But now that you get advice, you also have to test it again against the Bible. Is it look in prayer with your spouse and making a decision together and going to them for wisdom.

And another thing, too, sometimes we don’t like the advice we get. And sometimes that’s good, because sometimes getting advice from somebody is exposing weaknesses in our own paradigm, the way we view things. That’s true. And then we go to the Bible and say, is this biblical in the Bible? Validates it. Then we have to change.

Right. And you’re actually going into the next point. Some point to in this podcast is mistakes people make. Yeah. And a lot of mistakes people make is not going to people that are going to challenge that.

Oh, yeah. Subconsciously, we tend to do this. We want just that perfect person that is has wisdom but will never expose things that break us out of our comfort zone and cause us to do things we don’t want to do, even if they’re biblical, because it’s rubs against our flesh the wrong way. So that’s a danger is that you see this in businesses? A lot of times, no. Sometimes leaders will put people around them. They call them Yes-men, and they’re people that will always say yes to their ideas and their initiatives and what they want to do. And that’s the most dangerous situation in the world. If you have a pilot, there’s a reason there’s a pilot and a co-pilot. And the reason is, is is the co-pilot supposed to disagree, not be a yes man if the pilot is making an error?

If the pilots make an error in unity, usually a unity. But that is wrong.

And one of the reasons. And whenever there’s wrecks and things like that, usually the co-pilot was a yes man. And so you don’t want that. You want it kind of. You want it. You want to navigate through life in it, in land, in your journey. Well. And so superimportant to have people around you that are willing to, you know, tell you the hard truth sometimes. And you know what? You need to ask them to give you the truth.

That’s right. To start to ask the hard questions of people that, you know, love you.

So if you see anything, if you see this, this one, this, whatever your challenges are, you need to go. These are my challenges. And I want you to hold me accountable, too. And I want you to ask me hard questions around.

All of a sudden, people are like, I don’t know why I matter. It actually reminds me of the scripture. I’m not sure where it is in Proverbs, but it says a kiss from the enemy is worse than rebuke from a friend. Yeah. And it’s important that we recognize that rebuke from a friend is actually going to make us better.

The sharpening of iron sharpening iron, which is also in Proverbs 27. But it’s important that we choose the path of growth vs. the path of least resistance, which you’ve talked about many times. So the next point under mistakes people make. That was the first one is not choosing people that are gonna challenge you. The second one is defensiveness.

Well, we have a mechanism in us to tell somebody that has wisdom, what is okay to talk to us about and what is not okay to talk about it with us. And our mechanism that we use is when they say something that’s truthful in an area we don’t want them to enter into. We get defensive about it in our conversation. We argue for reasons why they’re wrong when they’re. Might be some truth there. And then what is that wise person do? Oh, that’s a place that I don’t have permission to go. Right. Well, how are you going to get better?

One way people do this is to be like, oh, but you don’t understand.

Like, they’ll use their circumstance to be like you were never, like, married to someone in this profession.

Right. Or an entrepreneur that’s never at home. Your husband’s always worked at home. So you can’t talk to me about that with my marriage. Right. So or you know that those are just many there, those examples where you never had five kids and there’s a sign of something wrong there.

One you have the wrong mentor because they maybe they aren’t giving you good advice or they’re not listening and don’t really know you. Or two, you don’t actually trust the Holy Spirit’s working through them in the Holy Spirit is. Yes. And that would be detrimental. And a lot of times that is the case actually is because they don’t have to have all the same circumstances. You have the Holy Spirit working through through them. They’re going to tell you things that even if their situation has been different, it might only isn’t here always based aligned situations.

Right. I think that in my younger years, I made that mistake of thinking, oh, one day I’ll have a real, true friend who has my identical life. Like, I laugh now that I. I would have never said that out loud. But I, I think that my feelings towards the friends that I had, I actually believe that subconsciously like how they can understand because Isaac work so much in their husbands. Right. I remember that. I remember I have kids or they don’t get sick when they’re pregnant like I do. And like I had I had a lot of those things that were made it really hard for me to go deeper and trust my friends and be exhorted by them because I had a lot of hard things in my life and I viewed them and was like, you have anything in your life this isn’t fair. And so, like, as far as them being like, Angie, toughen up or let me help you, I was not willing to hear that actually for a while. And then God really humbled me when I was on bed rest.

And so, you know, you can either learn things that easy way or the hard way as it goes.

Absolutely. So there are six points in this episode, but it’s really a two part episode. And we’re gonna give you the last one. And next week you’ll get the other three. So differentiate between advice and having a mentor.

This is a really important one. But before we jump into it, we should share with people about the Courageous Parenting Mentor program. You want to hear about it? Well, you guys, it’s been really fun because I don’t know if you knew this, but when you joined the Courageous Parenting Mentor program, it’s a six week program that Isaac and I do together. And you get a weekly video with a parenting packet download and it has a one hour teaching on different topics that are literally in the order they need to be in for teaching the biblical parenting model that we’ve been using for 20 years. But we also have this awesome Facebook community where people are actually encouraging one another and answering each other’s questions. And we do these Facebook lives that are 90 minutes long, 60 Minutes Q&A and 30 minutes of or 60 Minutes teaching 30 minutes Q&A. And so it’s just been a really great time to be able to connect with other people. If you’re interested in that, you can find out more about it at CourageousParenting.com

I think you should share about every time they it.

I just really love it.

It’s been awesome to hear the testimonials. This week I’ve actually gotten a lot more through the texting. Women have just been sharing with me the stories of fruit that they’re seeing in their kids. And it’s really God’s just doing something.

It’s God. It’s amazing. I remember the Holy Spirit just prompting us with us as we tirelessly built that thing.

It’s been exciting. So let’s get back into this. So differentiating between a getting advice and having a mentor. So I think that this is an important thing because some people don’t realize that you can go and get advice from people who are not your mentors. Mm hmm. Right. Like, you have a perfect example of that.

Oh, I mean, there was a time I’ve talked about this many times, but anybody dealing with financial challenges right now, is anybody listening have a business failure? Unfortunately, maybe a business fire. Yeah, there’s a lot of that going on right now. I had a 43 employees, nine thousand square feet of space and everything on the line with the company. Well, I had a young, large family and went out of business. And so before work right before went out of business, he was facing imminent danger. And I was leveraged to the hilt. And a couple of guys that were 10 years younger me pulled me aside and spent three hours with me and really challenged me.

And I was I felt so loved. That’s right. Because they really I could tell Cared they weren’t my mentors.

obviously still 10 years younger, but they were wise people. And there were people I knew were reading the Bible and that I could trust. And I wanted what was best.

And they wanted to nothing. They had nothing to gain from it. They just saw the harm on the family. How many hours is working? How much weight I was gaining. All the challenges. Yeah. And they told me I really need to stop. And I did. And to the pain of a half million dollars in debt following me. But God is so good. Sometimes you have to make hard decisions. And you just need those wise people, counselors around you. Maybe not even mentors that just impart that wisdom to tell you to stop.

I hope that this testimony that Isaac was sharing is an encouragement and maybe even a challenge for you if you are having a hard time right now, because the reality is that sometimes we can’t see ourselves. And in that time, you are in CEO denial. Yeah. And you couldn’t see your situation in the reality of what it was. Absolutely. And you needed outside people to look objectively, which is one of the things we talked about testing, who loved you, who didn’t have a competitive spirit in them because they weren’t in the same kind of business, you know, that were truly for you, that wanted what was best for you. And we’re willing to speak the hard truth in the hardest time. And stand by. You know, faithfully they do. And you know what, guys? They like Isaac said they were a decade younger than him. And I say that because God can use anybody, we can learn from anybody of any age. I learned from my kids for crying out loud. And so I think that it’s really important now what I call them, my mentors. No, there’s a difference. Right. Like, I’m not good at call my kids my mentor. But I think that it’s an important thing. So when you’re in a tight situation, if there’s a younger brother in Christ who seems to just really get business well and you’re struggling, go seek them out. You know, it’s not going to hurt anything. But now let’s talk about having a mentor. What the different? Because we’re talking about differentiating between our two. So we talked about going and getting advice because we’re talking about getting wisdom, seeking counsel.

I like what you’ve always said, and I’ve always believed this, too, which is at minimum, it’s they’ve got to be a decade ahead of you in a season of life, not necessarily an age, because age doesn’t equate to spiritual maturity, meaning their kids are even 10 years old.

Exactly. And for us, I say when I I’ve taught on this for years, you guys, when I would teach at moms groups, I taught on Titus, too, in the importance of seeking someone out. And I was representing the younger generation actually when we first started teaching on this, I was 25 and I would go into the moms group. But okay, I’m the young mom like you. You need to go find an older woman that’s 10 to 15 to 20 years older than you are or even more if you can. And you need to seek them out. It’s your responsibility as the young person, right? Don’t be waiting for them. How awkward is it for an older person to go, hey, I want to mentor you.

It’s all wrong. That seems pride. You have to pray about it. You have to seek them out and you have to ask them and be willing to be rejected several times, frankly. I mean, that’s happened to me before.

Let’s be honest. When we were 25, we had two small kids. So people that were 10 years older and or 10, not just 10 years older, but because sometimes people have kids late in life, but a 10 years down the road in a season of life. Their kids would have been 15. Right. Teenagers, they’re super busy.

Well, Jim and Annie yet were our mentors early on. And he mentored me for twelve hours. And I would say he’s still a mentor of mine, even though we live different places now and so forth. Yeah, but he was you had to. Well, it was me in his fifties when. Well yeah. His youngest son was always meant to call. I was in my mid had when I had kids. I was in my mid 20s and he was in his fifties and yeah.

Because he’s in his 70s now and his wife Annie had mentored me as a young mom. And that was how you guys met. That’s how God works, you guys. And she had mentored me. And I mean, sadly, Annie passed away last year. That was really sad for me. She always hold that dear spot in my heart. But, you know, that’s why Titus, two relationships are so, so important. So, yeah, they were actually mean. There were 30 years older than us and and invested in us for a long time in our young parenthood years. And you guys, for us, we saw fruit in their marriage and they were humble and willing to share the mistakes they had made in the fruit of the spirit was in them to the whole.

They loved those says so much. The relationships were all rock solid all around them. Everybody loved them.

Yeah. And so at that, you know, at the time we were judging those things, I was like, oh yeah, obviously.

Yeah. So that that’s a really, really important thing. So there’s a difference. There might be people that give you wisdom that you trust. And then there’s a mentor that stays with you for should be a good long period of time and that you purposely give permission to speak into your life and you build that long term trusting relationship.

Now, sometimes you do outgrow mentor relationship as well, especially if you have a good mentor, because the whole point of it is that they, as it I think of this as myself, that people that I would be mentoring, you would stand on my shoulders and go farther than I. Right. Because then I have to make the mistakes that I’m sharing with them. And that is that that is what we would hope for. Right. But we need to be. Careful in choosing our mentor. And I think that that there’s a process, right. And so we have this like four step process in choosing a mentor, which is first same thing as choosing someone who you’re going to get advice from. You’re going to pray and you’re a fast about it. You’re going to look around you and see who has God put in my life is the second thing you’re going to do. And you’re going to judge their fruit. Once you identify someone, you’re going to judge their fruit and then you have to go ask them.

I remember being insecure asking Jim. I mean, he was a ministry leader. He seemed to have so many relationships, almost feel like you were gonna be a burden asking.

Well, almost seemed like he had already enough of that going on. And I hadn’t known him that long. And, you know, we’ve had some good conversations, but definitely not. We weren’t super, super close. And then I prayed and I got the gumption up to ask him and he taught me a powerful lesson.

He goes, you know what? God has been pressing upon my heart to mentor you, but I want you to know I was never going to let you know that. So it sounds good you’re willing to pay. If you wouldn’t have asked, I wouldn’t have said yes.

Yeah. So I think that it’s important to just go out on a limb and ask the other two things. I just want to reiterate, it’s super important that you at least have someone that is a decade ahead in your season of life. And, you know, when you’re we’re taking a courageous parenting here. So everybody has parents who’s listening to this podcast. And that’s why I’m insisting on this season of life versus age. Because the reality is this is not for you. It’s not wise to choose a mentor that has kids younger than you. If you’re gonna be getting parenting advice right and that and you’re not gonna choose a mentor that is never had kids. Yeah. Right. If you’re going to want parenting advice. Right. Just like you wouldn’t choose a mentor for marriage, you wouldn’t choose someone that’s never been married. Right. And so there are some basics there that would like for us. We think that they’re very obvious. I hope that that’s an encouragement to you. Maybe it’s a confirmation to you on things. Yeah. Another little tip that we would like to share with you guys is that you don’t necessarily want to choose someone as a mentor who has kids that are younger than your own kids. So because there are people out there who do have kids, but you want someone who is a decade ahead of you right now.

Next time we’re gonna go into the last three of these six points in who to be a mentor basically on this episode. Take your opinions, but do you take the right view? How do you take the right view? It’s all going to go more into how to choose a mentor. When you go into foolishness, disguises wisdom in virtual mentors and talk a lot about that in the next episode. But any final thoughts, Angie?

Well, I just wanted to share with you guys one little resource before we end today. And that’s from tiny theologians. Not so good. OK. They have these awesome flashcards we’re going to be taking with them, taking them on our RV trip with us, which we’re so pumped about.

They even have one. And there is in a little box so that they don’t fly around there so that, you know, really quality.

Yeah. So, like this one is the ABC is of Gods attributes.

There’s another one. That’s the Lord’s Prayer cards. And if you use the code theology 20, you can get 20 percent off your entire order.

We really believe in this company. We really believe in this. These tools, they make it easier to be spiritual leaders in your home, which the wife is the spiritual leader. So is the husband.

Yeah. They’re just really handy for using with you. Fell for wall. Hey, until next time, next week is going to be a lot of fun. We look forward to it.

Ok. See you next time. Bye.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. We wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program.

Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, Isaac and I release a video with a downloadable parenting package to make it easy for you and your spouse to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

It’s an incredible program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes. Most Christians are making more than that. It’s an incredible community. You’ll have access to a private online group live Webcast and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragement straight to your phone.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentorship program, secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com.

That’s CourageousParenting.com

Written By Angie Tolpin
Angie has been married to Isaac for 19 years and together they have eight children, whom she homeschools. She is the Founder of CourageousMom.com, a doula, the author of the best-selling book Redeeming Childbirth, and the creator of the first ever Christian Postpartum Course. Angie loves ministering to Women and has created a few online Bible Studies on Biblical Friendship and Motherhood.

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