Help or Hindrance?

If you want to make fool of yourself just go around telling everyone what you think. You presume to be a counselor without knowing all the facts and assume you know what’s right for someone else without having all the information about their situation. It’s ignorant to attempt to advise someone when you are not willing to take the time to communicate and understand their true condition. It’s like trying to solve a math problem without factoring in all the factors. When you to try to reason and resolve from your own perspective you become a counselor of confusion. Before you try and get someone to understand the way you see it you first must understand the way that they see it. “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” (Steven Covey) because if you don’t understand you’ll offer advice based on ignorance. It may bolster your ego to revel in your own “revelation” but it will never help anyone unless you can help them apply it from their perspective of their situation.

If you really want to help people you have to pray and ask God to help you know what to say and what not to say. What you don’t say may be more important that what you do. And sometimes there’s not much to say but plenty to do to actually help the person get through. Most people just want to stand on the side of the pit and offer advice for ascension and then go on their merry little way. But I say that it may be time to just shut up and go get a rope and get our hands dirty in helping.

Prov 18:13
13 He who answers a matter before he hears it,
It is folly and shame to him.
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Prov 18:2
2 A fool has no delight in understanding,
But in expressing his own heart.
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James 3:1-2
My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.
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Prov 17:28
28 Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace;
When he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive.
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Matt 23:1-4
23 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2 "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. 3 So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4 They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
NIV

James 2:15-17
15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, "Depart in peace, be warmed and filled," but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
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