The Best Advice I’ve Ever Received

As a mom of four teenage boys, I often feel like an advice-dispensing machine. Mom, how do I do this? Where do I find that? How should I respond to this? My oldest knows he won’t leave the house each day for work without hearing me say “Make good choices!” 

You don’t have to be a mom to be in the full-time business of giving advice to others. As Christians, we’re made to live in community with one another, speaking into one another’s lives and receiving counsel into our own. 

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. (Prov. 12:15) 

We are one another’s keepers. We proclaim Christ to each other, “warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28).

I’ve received a lot of advice over the years. But one statement stands out above the others, repeating like an echo in my mind. The best advice I’ve ever received came from a godly man who spent years suffering from an autoimmune disease. He was almost completely homebound, and his days were marked by physical agony. But this suffering servant lived each painful day for the glory of God, and every time I visited him, I saw a faith giant, not a frail man. 

On our last visit before he died, he uttered these words that have stayed with me, continuing to guide me in my own journey: “Keep saying yes to Jesus. Yes, Lord, yes.” This man who, at this point in his life, seemed to have very little to say “yes” to given his poor health, told me to keep saying “yes” to Jesus. Perhaps he said “yes” to rejoicing in his sufferings (Rom. 5:3) or remaining steadfast in trials (James 5:11). I’ll never fully know all the ways he said “yes” to Jesus, but his challenge to give Jesus all my “yeses” changed me.

Saying “Yes” Is Loving Obedience

We say “yes” to the ones we love. When my boys come inside after playing basketball and ask me to whip up some salsa and guacamole, my answer is always “yes.” Why? Because I love my always-hungry guys (also, salsa and guacamole!). When my friend can’t pick up her daughter from school because of a scheduling conflict and asks me to go instead, I say “yes.” I say “yes” because I love my friend. 

Likewise, we say “yes” to Jesus because we love Him. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). When the Bible teaches,

learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause (Isa. 1:17), 

we say, “Yes, Lord.” When God commands us not to be anxious about anything, but to seek first His kingdom and righteousness (Matt. 6:25–33), we say, “Yes, Lord.” As the One most worthy of our wholehearted devotion, we say “yes,” to Him again and again. 

Saying “Yes” Is Costly Obedience

Saying “yes” can be costly. It certainly cost Jesus dearly. And our “yes” to Jesus is in response to His great “yes” for us. When He prayed to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done,” He said “yes” for us. He said “yes” to His Father when He took our place on the cross. As His followers, we should expect no less in our own obedience. 

Saying “yes” may cost us friends, family, social status, resources, and maybe even our lives. But as Jesus promised, “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (Matt. 19:29). Likewise, the late Helen Roseveare, English missionary to the Congo, once said, “God never uses a person greatly until He has wounded him deeply. The privilege He offers you is greater than the price you have to pay. The privilege is greater than the price.” 

Saying “Yes” Is Ongoing Obedience

Of all the advice this man could have given me as he neared the end of his earthly life, he told me to do what was most important. He told me to persevere in what should be instinctual for Christians: obey Christ, and keep doing so. There's longevity to this charge. Obedience is not a one-and-done scenario. 

There’s no riding off the triumph of yesterday’s acts of obedience. We don’t bask in the glory of that big, courageous thing we once did for God. Our obedience is a daily surrendering—a joyful participation in the privilege of being adopted sons and daughters of the living God. We say “yes” to God today. And if He gives us tomorrow, we rejoice to say “yes” to Him then, too. 

Swift Obedience

What “yeses” are you withholding from Jesus? Let’s not leave room for our enemy to tempt us into disobedience through our own hesitancy. Each time we say “yes” to Jesus, Satan receives a defeating blow. He delights in our doubt. He relishes our resistance to immediate obedience. He champions our occasional and half-hearted “yeses” to our Creator.

But when we eagerly say “yes” to Jesus, and when we keep on saying “yes” to Him, the devil is surely defeated. He has no power over us; Christ died to secure our victory over sin (Rom. 6:1–6). It is to this great Savior that we gladly keep saying, “Yes, Lord.”

Sisters, consider your own advice to others. One of the best ways we exhibit love is by giving wise counsel. Let us first be sure we’re being guided by God’s Word so we may wisely guide others. True wisdom is not an echo of the culture’s current whims. True wisdom comes from the Bible. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). 

So let us be givers of good advice. Our friends and neighbors need to know that Christ is worthy of their “yeses,” too. Let us be ladies who keep saying “yes” to Jesus. Let’s inspire others with our own joyful obedience. May we be “yes women” for Christ and His kingdom and the great glory of our God.