“I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” —Psalm 16:7-8
In this life, we never outgrow our need for God's counsel. Each day, by His grace, we're hopefully growing deeper in our knowledge and affection for Him, learning to walk by faith and not by our own understanding. How sweet it is to consider that God does not grow weary or impatient with us but continues to lovingly instruct us, even while we sleep.
It's good for us to be reminded that we never graduate from needing the counsel of God and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. At times, our daily work of caring for others can blind us to this reality. In helping others, we lose touch with our own neediness. Seeing their problems hides our own.
Our focus dramatically shapes the scope of how we understand reality. If we focus solely on our clients, we miss the bigger picture of what God is up to. He's not only working on them but also on us. He's not only growing their faith but also ours. To see this, we must first look to Christ before turning our attention to the problems at hand.
May this be a simple reminder for us. We serve at the pleasure of our wonderful Counselor, and we need His counsel as much as our clients. May we, like the psalmist, set our eyes on our Savior and find that when we do, nothing in this world can shake us. As we attend to the difficulties of those in our care, may we ensure that the counsel we offer is the counsel we have first received and continue to receive from the one perfect Counselor.
