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Jacob Ninan

“Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding” (Prov.2:2 NASB)

When we truly recognise that there are many things in our lives that need to be changed in order to be pleasing to the Lord, then what we need is wisdom and understanding to accomplish this change. As we read God’s word or listen to it preached, we get to know different details we need to pay attention to and change. The Spirit of God convicts us in our heart about where we have been wrong. Perhaps till then we were totally unaware that what we have been thinking, speaking or doing were wrong at all. Now we can do something about them and change our ways.

When we ask God to change us to become more and more like Him, we may not realise that one means He uses is to let other people point out our faults! Even when we are prepared to receive correction from the Lord, many times our reaction when people point out our faults is to defend ourselves. But what they tell us is their feedback! They can see some things we do wrong, even when we are unaware we are wrong. It would be foolish for us to ignore or reject this feedback. On the contrary, if we pay attention to it, it can make us wiser.

Someone has said that many times our enemies tell us more truth about ourselves than our friends, because our friends try to be polite and avoid hurting us. But whether it is our friends or enemies who are providing this feedback for us, we should welcome it because we want to become better people.

Of course, sometimes what others tell us about us may not be right. But we would be wise if we would receive everything without rejecting them outright, think about it, ask God to confirm to us whether it is right, and then use this feedback to better ourselves.

So we see how humility and honesty help us to see ourselves clearly.

Lord, teach me to receive feedback in the right way, so that You can mould me well.

Published in Management Devotional - Biblical insights for daily work life 2016, Christian Institute of Management.