It serves us well to have advisors that we can trust. Scripture tells us that victory is won through many advisors and doing life alongside others.
Tribe, A Jesus Revival
S4 E6: Trusted Advisors.
Hey everyone, it's Britt Vega, host of the Tribe podcast. Here at Tribe, we believe that we are all called to live, love, and pursue our God-given purpose within the context of a tribe. Not only were we created by a God that is community, love is our identity and calling. It's literally in our DNA. If you want to hear real stories of God's great love and faithfulness, you're in the right place. Let's get into our message for today. Hey y'all, welcome back to the Tribe podcast. Okay, so last week we talked about Solomon, who is said to be one of the wisest men in scripture. And today I want to elaborate on biblical wisdom and what it looks like to have many advisors. I want to start by saying how cool God is. Our oldest son Noah went to a Christian camp called NTS with our church last month. And as God was just continuing to impress the book of Proverbs on my heart, just within my quiet time with him, I literally got an email from the camp while he was gone and listened to what it said. This year's theme is defined. The world attempts to define truth and love and that results in blurred lines and unclear boundaries. These blurred lines and unclear boundaries leave students confused and searching. But God has defined truth and love in the Bible for us. His definitions bring clarity and peace. The book of Proverbs in the Bible is filled with wise principles that can help us walk through life. Your child will be encouraged to go forward reading a chapter of Proverbs a day to continue to let those words seep into their hearts as they grow in their walk with Jesus. Yeah, I am just blown away by how God is putting this message of wisdom and just goodness and truth on the hearts of everyone in our house. And the coolest part about it honestly is that it's not all happening at different times, but it's all at once. So that when we're sitting around the dinner table, we can rejoice and talk about it and just learn and dig into scripture together. Okay. So on our trip to Florida last month, I was deep into different things. And the first was the book of Proverbs and the second was Joel Moudomale's book on humility called the Hidden Peace. I was completely saturated and just reading about wisdom and humility. And I pulled out a few key verses that I just want to encourage you guys with today. And these four verses that really stood out to me when I was reading about wisdom and what's cool is that they all had the same thing. So you can find these verses in the book of Proverbs. It's from chapters 11 through 15 and here they are for lack of guidance and nation falls, but victory is one through many advisors. The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice. The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray. Plans fail for a lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed. Okay. So the wise words that we read from scripture is that it would serve us well to have many advisors. In fact, nowhere in the Bible does it say that we should do life alone or not let other people in or just choose this day like on the surface and have superficial relationships. We don't read anything in the Bible about avoiding vulnerability or just, you know, tuffing it out on our own, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. But what we do read in scripture is that victory is one through many advisors that the wise listen to advice that we are to choose our friends wisely and that with many advisors, we will succeed. One of the foundations of this ministry is that we were created by a communal God, father son and Holy spirit to do life with many advisors or in my words, a tribe. In fact, in preparation for this message, I looked up the definition of advisors just to try to like understand it a little bit better. And what I found that was even more intriguing than the definition was the list of synonyms. It was words like committee, ministry, directors, cabinet, council, inner circle and authorities. And to me, these words form a picture of what it looks like to live our lives for Jesus. We have to have a committee of friends and a personal board of directors. It's important to have that inner circle of our trusted friends. And then Jesus is the ultimate authority. Scripture tells us that with God, we will gain the victory and having a group of trusted advisors plays a huge, huge role in this. Okay, so here's what I really love about this whole concept of tribe. A lot of times in our daily lives, what wisdom looks like is having people that we can trust that are on the same path as us. Scripture calls it having many advisors, and I would add to that concept by saying that it's living our lives a certain way, right? It's living our lives within the context of a tribe and cultivating that environment. The wisest people that I know have a tribe of people next to them, lifting them up and pointing them back to Scripture. In fact, the people on my personal board of directors, which you've heard me talk about before, like my friend Kathy and Serena, my counselor, Barb, they are authentically living their lives this way. And I've learned this gift of many advisors just from watching and from learning from the way that they live their lives. Okay, so what I don't want you to hear me saying in this episode is that I am wise in my own way because absent from a relationship with Jesus, I am not wise at all. So I'm not putting myself in the category of Solomon or the wisest people that I know. In fact, that couldn't even be like further from the truth, but here's what's so cool about that. When I am struggling, I have wise people that I can reach out to. And honestly, it's people that are a lot smarter than me, whether it's that they're further along in their journey or they are, they've just really gone through the trenches. Like, for me, them being committed to our friendship and living their lives for Jesus, like those things are so important. I seek out friends who are going to pray for me and my family without ceasing and friends that have already raised their kids and now have adult children. There is so much beauty that waits on the other side of reaching out and being vulnerable. And I can say this with absolute certainty because I've seen God do it. And I've seen him bring it to fruition time and time again. I have this friend, Serena, who y'all have heard speak on this podcast before. She is married to the senior pastor at our church and really has just played a huge role in pouring into and equipping the women of the church in motherhood and ministry and marriage. She has played a special role in pouring into me and encouraging me over the years. And so when I was writing this episode and I was thinking about advisors and people that I trust that I can go to in my own life, I wanted to ask her what it meant to have many advisors and specifically what it has meant to her over these last 24-ish years of not only being at papers church but also raising three boys and then watching a couple of them grow up and get married and listen to what she said. There's a lot of power in this. First of all, she mentions the verse that I mentioned above when we were talking. It's Proverbs 15 verse 22 and she said, "Whenever she thinks about having many advisors, she always thinks of this verse," which says, "without counsel, plans fail, but with many advisors that they succeed." She said, "There is general wisdom in seeking a wide range of advice from others versus just relying solely on your own knowledge and it's good for us to consider other points of view and to draw on the experiences of others." She went on to say that having many advisors is good but having the right advisors is so much better. There's also the component of discernment as you're navigating challenging relationships. Most importantly, finding the right advisors takes time and she mentioned two points that I think are really important and they're kind of counterculture but they're very biblically based and rooted in Scripture. The first is that you have to build a loving and trusting relationship with your advisor. You have to find friends that have high integrity and character in all areas of their life and then the second thing is that we have to recognize that it's okay to pay for an advisor like a counselor or a coach when we really just need godly expert advice. Serena also said that in her season of raising her boys that she sought out other moms who had children that were older than his and are older than hers and then from the outside she was able to kind of see like okay those kids are on the right track and not that those kids were perfect by any means but she saw characteristics that she liked in those kids so she went to those moms and she asked questions and asked for advice on different situations that they were facing in their house. Y'all that is a tribe. Having advisors that we can go to on the mountaintop moments and in the valleys of life is how we make it through. We were created to crave relationships and while we have to be wise about choosing our friends I believe that if we are actively praying that god will lovingly reveal to us who it is that he wants us to do life with. I read something recently that said that the level of connectedness that we experience in our relationships impacts the way that our brains develop and perform. So to me that means that our relationships impact everything including who we are and who we become and if it's true that we are who we hang out with then there are a lot of you listening to this message that need to start reevaluating your friendships and I'm not talking about completely walking away from people unless god has made it abundantly clear that that's your next step. What I'm talking about is choosing your friends wisely and then deciding how much time and power and influence you give to those friends to speak any of your life. I want to leave you with one more thing that my sweet friend Serena said about advisor. She said that there was a study that was done and there's many studies that have been done on this but this particular one there were 237 Christian leaders that experienced a moral failure and when they went back and they asked those leaders like you know what was missing or what was happening they reported only one thing and it was that none of them had accountability in their relationships. Y'all that's the epitome of doing life with other people and why it matters. My encouragement for everyone today is to think about who you have in your life that would be considered a wise advisor. It might be someone in your church or in your family reach out to that person and thank them for the role that they've played in your life. I've learned that by reaching out and going first we have the opportunity to meet and encourage the other person or the other people right where they are. Remember we all struggle and there is no perfect friend or advisor but y'all there are a lot of great ones out there. Let's make heaven crowded and praying for y'all and I'll see you next week.