What to Do When You’ve Been Giving Advice You Aren’t Following

You told a friend to rest while you were burning out. Learn what Paul's repeated verb in Romans 2:21 asks, and the one step that closes the split. You've done it. You told a friend to slow down and rest while you were running yourself into the ground. You told your kid to pray about something while you'd been avoiding God for a month. The counsel was good and you meant every word of it. You just weren't taking any of it. This episode opens with King Solomon, called the wisest man alive, with rulers traveling to hear him and his own life a wreck of choices he would have talked anyone else out of. Researchers found the same split running through almost all of us. Romans 2:21 has a question for people in exactly that position: "Well then, if you teach others, why don't you teach yourself? You tell others not to steal, but do you steal?" Back up four verses to see who Paul is addressing. He describes a man who boasts about his standing with God, a man convinced he's a guide for the blind and qualified to instruct everybody else. Then the questions start, and they land like jabs. Look at the verb in that first question. In the Greek it's the same word both times. You who teach another, do you not teach yourself. Paul is asking whether the teacher has ever been in his own audience. Then read three verses further, to verse 24, and the stakes get bigger than personal tidiness. The Scriptures say the Gentiles blaspheme the name of God because of you. People watching a teacher draw conclusions about God from how the teacher lives, and Paul says they're drawing the wrong ones. A chapter later Paul writes that everyone has sinned and we all fall short, which keeps this from becoming a sermon about somebody else. The counsel you gave was good counsel. It just never earned you anything, and treating it like credit is what let the split sit there for years. Bart shares his own version of it. He tells people they need a Sabbath rest built into their week, and he can make the biblical case for it in about four minutes. Then there are plenty of weeks where he works all seven days. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What Paul's repeated verb in Romans 2:21 asks of the person doing the teaching Why verse 24 raises the stakes past your own tidiness What researchers found about taking your own advice, and why age doesn't fix it Here's the practical step. Pick one piece of counsel you've given somebody recently and write it down in the words you used. Then put your own name at the top of it. Start with the one you'd be embarrassed to have the other person find out about, because that's where the seam is widest. If it's good counsel for them, it's good counsel for you. Then do the first piece of it today. One finding from the research ought to get your attention. Older adults reasoned better than younger ones about somebody else's problem. On their own problems, the older group was no better. This does not sort itself out with time. You have to turn your own advice around and aim it at yourself on purpose, which is exactly what Paul was asking of the man who taught everybody else. **Share This Episode:** https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/357 **Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:** https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail **Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.** https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ **Rate and Review** https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ **Connect with Bart** Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook *Making Time for Jesus*https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.