Good advice, when taken into consideration, can be a huge life saver. On the other hand, bad advice, when taken into consideration as well, can be deadly. I love this story from the Bible. There is so much to be learned from it. "In the course of time, the king of the Ammonites died, and his son Hanun succeeded him as king. David thought, “I will show kindness to Hanun son of Nahash, just as his father showed kindness to me.” So David sent a delegation to express his sympathy to Hanun concerning his father.
When David’s men came to the land of the Ammonites, the Ammonite commanders said to Hanun their Lord, “Do you think David is honoring your father by sending envoys to you to express sympathy? Hasn’t David sent them to you only to explore the city and spy it out and overthrow it?”." 2 Samuel 10:1-3 Now, as we can see from the story, David had good thoughts and good intentions for the Ammonites. Their king had been kind to him and he just wanted to sympathize with the son in this time of great loss, and return the kindness his father had shown him. So he sends an envoy to go to the Ammonites to sympathize with them. But as soon as the envoy enter Ammon, the commander gives the king wrong advice. He just assumes that there's no way David's men were coming to sympathize with them (which they were) and that they probably just came to spy on them (which they did not).
The new king foolishly listens to this advice rather than giving the envoy a chance to speak the purpose of their visit. He blindly takes action into his own hand and decides to humiliate David's men.
"So Hanun seized David’s envoys, shaved off half of each man’s beard, cut off their garments at the buttocks, and sent them away." 2 Samuel 10:4 David finds out what happened and wages war on them and is defeating them. (And of course he is). David was a fearless Warrior. His enemies and allies knew he was not one to mess with. Yet somehow, this naive king allowed himself to be influenced by bad friends with bad advice into thinking he could mess with the warrior king of Israel.
So anyway, the Ammonites are loosing terribly and decide to drag some of their allies into this mess to help them fix their screw up.
"When the Ammonites realized that they had become obnoxious to David, they hired twenty thousand Aramean foot soldiers from Beth Rehob and Zobah, as well as the king of Maakah with a thousand men, and also twelve thousand men from Tob." 2 Samuel 10:6 And of course, all the extra "help" was no help because they ALL got destroyed in the process and they ALL (Ammon plus all their Allies that joined the war) became subject (Slaves) to Israel. "David took the crown from their king’s head, and it was placed on his own head. It weighed a talent of gold, and it was set with precious stones. David took a great quantity of plunder from the city and brought out the people who were there, consigning them to labor with saws and with iron picks and axes, and he made them work at brickmaking. David did this to all the Ammonite towns. Then he and his entire army returned to Jerusalem." 2 Samuel 12:30-31 He acted on bad advice, which in turn caused him and his people, plus his allies to become slaves to Israel. "The Arameans formed their battle lines to meet David and fought against him. But they fled before Israel, and David killed seven hundred of their charioteers and forty thousand of their foot soldiers. He also struck down Shobak the commander of their army, and he died there. When all the kings who were vassals of Hadadezer saw that they had been routed by Israel, they made peace with the Israelites and became subject to them. So the Arameans were afraid to help the Ammonites anymore." 2 Samuel 10:17-19
Not only did they become slaves to Israel but they broke off their alliance with Ammon.
On that day, Ammon lost thousands of lives, their dignity, their friends, and their freedom, all because of one bad advice.
So let me ask you: Who are you listening to? Who is influencing you? And what will it cause you and those around you?
What will your listening to wrong counsel, making assumptions, and jumping to conclusions, cause you and those around you? Don't just assume then act based on that assumptions. Acting on a wrong assumption can be quite costly. Sometimes, you just have to give people the benefit of the doubt and let things play out first before you form your opinion. (And many times, you will find out that you were overreacting over nothing. We've all had those moments).
Stop letting wrong people, wrong thoughts and ideas, play you because they will put you in a mess that will cause you years to clean up. Take control of your mind. Sometimes you just have to shut down certain thoughts. But most importantly, Be Careful Who You Listen To. Close your ears to bad advice. Ask the Holy Spirit to lead and guide you, and pay attention to what your spirit is telling you.