Can You Receive What You Give?

THE DEVOTION

Beloved, on Monday we examined the counsel we give. Good intentions do not make every conclusion accurate. Today the examination turns toward the counsel we receive. When someone identifies a gap in our understanding, can we give that person the patient hearing we expect others to give us?

It is possible to love teaching while resisting being taught. We may welcome correction in principle, then spend the actual conversation defending our experience, explaining our motives, or questioning why this particular person thinks they can instruct us. The issue under discussion quietly disappears beneath the effort to protect our standing.

Acts 18 introduces Apollos as an able, earnest teacher. Luke acknowledges his scriptural competence and accurate teaching about Jesus while identifying a limit in his knowledge. Priscilla and Aquila hear him, take him aside, and offer a fuller explanation. His strengths are real. So is his need to learn.

The Greek expression ἀκριβέστερον (akribesteron) means more accurately or more precisely. It is comparative: an existing understanding can be made more exact. Summary: having something right does not mean we understand everything we need to understand. Further instruction need not erase the value of what has already been learned.

That distinction matters when our identity has become attached to being the knowledgeable one. A parent can have years of experience and still misunderstand a child's concern. A teacher can explain a passage well and still need help with its context. A ministry leader can serve faithfully and still overlook a detail another person notices. Experience gives us something to contribute; it does not close the classroom.

Luke does not describe every feeling Apollos experienced during that conversation. He does show further instruction followed by fruitful service. There is room in this account for a gifted person to keep growing. We can take that encouragement seriously without pretending that receiving correction is always comfortable.

Priscilla and Aquila's approach deserves attention too. They engage him personally. They supply understanding. For those offering correction, that example challenges the temptation to turn another person's gap into a public display of our superiority. The aim is to help someone understand God's way more faithfully. This episode does not establish that every correction, whatever its circumstances, must always be private.

For those receiving correction, the question is whether we will examine what has been said. Someone's confidence does not make a criticism accurate. Neither does our discomfort make it false. Ask for the specific claim, read the relevant passage in context, and distinguish evidence from assumption. A teachable person can disagree with a correction after careful examination. The danger is refusing examination because we dislike being questioned.

Here is Thursday's practice: return to one recent correction that you dismissed too quickly. Write the person's concern in words they would recognize. Separate what they actually said from the insult you may have heard in it. Then identify what supports their concern, what requires clarification, and what should change if they are right. You do not need to manufacture agreement. You do need to give truth a fair hearing.

Where the correction is sound, make the adjustment visible. Revise the explanation. Ask the question you avoided. Tell the person what you now understand more clearly. Let the people affected by your earlier advice receive the clarified version. Receiving instruction becomes formation when it changes the way we speak or act.

We do not earn Christ's love by proving that we are never mistaken. His grace gives us reason to face what needs correction without making our reputation the center of every conversation. The person God uses today still needs the Word today. Let your willingness to learn become part of the help you offer others.