APPLY YOURSELF TO THE FIELD MINISTRY: Week of April 17 to 23, 2023, Speech, What to do when a student asks us for advice, Lesson 20, Prepared Assignment.

APPLY YOURSELF TO THE FIELD MINISTRY: April 17-23-2023, Speech, Lesson 20, Assignment Prepared. 

Speech (5 min.): be 69 pars. 4, 5. Title: What to do when a student asks us for advice (th lec. 20).

"Comparisons are hateful" Have we ever heard this saying or even used or thought about it? What does it mean? Well, it means that nobody likes to be compared to someone, in fact, many times this expression is used in a negative context, like... if I were you I wouldn't do this, or someone would do this in your place.

And the truth is that it is an expression that is not at all Christian, nor loving or humble on the part of a servant of God. Why do we start this speech like this? Because we have to be careful when a student or any other person asks us for advice. 

The first thing that one can feel is feeling good about yourself because now a person asks you for help and advice and it is as if you yourself were experiencing the circumstance that your student narrates and you will say: “well, look, you have to do this, and then this and then that." Because? Because you have put yourself in their place and that is what you would do, or because from experience you have gone through something similar and that is what you did... but, is that correct or theocratic advice?

It is not. It does not mean that it is wrong or ill-intentioned, but it certainly is not what the Bible teaches us about advising others or our students... let's remember that we were students too, even though we were born in the truth, we learned and were advised... How they did it?. There are several factors involved here: God gave us free will. Galatians 6:5, if you will accompany me to read, there it says: 

WE ARE GOING TO READ GALATIANS 6:5.

"Because each one will carry their own load of responsibility."

God provided us with a perfect example, his son Jesus who lived through very difficult situations, gave us his inspired word from the Bible with advice for every situation, taught us biblical characters who were good and bad, who were examples of how to do things right, and other examples of how not to do them.

All this throughout thousands of years of history. Currently the life of humans is limited to 60-100 years in the best cases. We can be sure, brothers, that in thousands of years of history, no matter how much social progress there is between the two eras, in the Bible we will find all the situations we are currently experiencing, obviously extrapolated.

The text that we read earlier from Galatians 6:5 says that each person will bear their own burden responsibility. That is, we should advise not saying what the student has to do, and advise through the Bible and theocratic resources that we mentioned in the factors. If we do not do so and we base ourselves on our own conclusions or our earthly experience, we are negatively influencing the decision that our student will make, causing a load of non-Christian responsibility by not basing his act completely on what God wants.

And on the other hand, we are generating another burden of responsibility for ourselves, which is to make the actions of our students subject to making decisions based on what we think or want and not what God completely wants. So we would be doing what we are going to read in Galatians 1:10... there it says: 

WE ARE GOING TO READ GALATIANS 1:10.

"Am I trying to win over men, or over God?" 

Does our student have to please us or God? Am I trying to please men? Will we be confusing our student by inciting him to do what we consider or what God wants?

Every person is different, every situation is different, no matter how similar our experiences are or no matter how much knowledge or wisdom we think we have, we don't. What's more, if we are wise servants we will be aware of our limitations, of the importance, responsibility and obligation of a student asking us for advice, that there are always factors that escape us and that, therefore, the best advice we can give is not It is not the one that comes out of our mouth, but the one that we read in the Bible.

On many occasions it is not even teaching him a specific text, since we would be telling him in a certain way what he has to do. On most occasions, our best advice is to guide the student on where he should look for the text that touches his heart and in case he does not know how to interpret it well, help him research it until he himself reaches the conclusion of the essence of the text.

In this way we will be guiding and advising the student well, as God wants, because he himself is finding the answers he was looking for and we have only oriented the research on what we consider best for the student, but the solid food is being ingested directly him, without third parties involved as Hebrews 5:14 says that we read to conclude:

LET'S READ HEBREW 5:14.

"On the other hand, solid food is for mature people, for those who have trained their ability to discern with practice to distinguish what is right from what is wrong."

Advising is not saying this is right or this is wrong, it is training the student so that he himself responds and the solid food he needed when he asked for advice reaches his heart, in this way, in turn, he strengthens his faith by seeing the active hand of God caring for him in all areas of his life.