We have all been in a situation where we give someone advice and because they know who we are, because they know our story, they look at us directly in the eyes and say, "Practice what you Preach!" Hey, Barry White even wrote a song about it. And although the context of the phrase may change when we or others use it, it all boils down to the same message meaning "Make good on what you say.", "Do what you're telling me to do." and in very plain English, " "Live by your own words."

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And why it's true that we should "practice what we preach", we all fall short of it.

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Parents tell their kids not to fight with each other and to get along. Yet, they haven't spoken to their own siblings in years. Friends give advice to their other friends telling them to be patient with their kids. Yet, they are close to choking their own. Preachers tell their members to put their offering in church and don't worry about if the rent is due because God will provide. They tell their members to trust God to do it. Yet, they turn around and collect an expense offering to help cover the church's mortgage. Your gal pal tells you that you are being stupid for putting up with your mate not being able to find a job. Yet, their mate is having affairs that she is tolerating but she thinks it's okay to give you advice because she does not think you know about her closed doors. Your boys tell you to leave your fiancée because she is too demanding. Yet, they are broke because all of their money goes toward supporting the high-end shopping habits of their own mates. The point here is, we can all give advice, but do we apply the advice that we give to our own lives? Do we reflect on what we tell others to do as a means of acknowledging our own actions and behaviors? Is it truly possible for any of us to "practice what we preach"?   Let's examine this concept.

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Being a Vessel

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From one perspective, the truth of the matter is that God calls each of us to be a vessel at times. God can use each and every one of us. God can speak through us. And at times God may call us to share things with others whether it be for encouragement, to provide strength, to help them with an issue that they may be struggling with, or maybe even to provide them a warning (to steer them from destruction, trouble, or from making a life altering decision). The truth is that when God uses us to help others by delivering the message that He calls us to deliver, the message that we are being used to deliver may not reflect how we live our own lives.

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There is a scripture that states that "gifts come without repentance" (Romans 11:29) meaning that even when we mess up, even when we go astray, even when we may not act in according to the teachings of God, even when we are not living our lives in the ways that God requires,  the gifts that He gives each of us are still within us and He can still use us within the realm of the gifts that He has placed upon us. I say that to highlight the fact that when it is God that is using us to minister to other people, we can all be far away from what He is having us to speak into the lives of others. And when I say, minister I don’t mean as in title but basically just allowing ourselves to share whatever words God has placed on our hearts to share with those whom He has called us to share them with.

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 I am sure there have been times that God told you to encourage someone and in the midst of you encouraging them all you could think about was how your own life was falling apart. Your marriage was shifty, your job was rocky, and your finances were skim.  Yet you are telling someone else not to worry that their lights were about to be turned off.  And not to worry that their car got repossessed. You are saying, "Just hang in there, God will work it out." They don't know what you really wanted to say was "I'll see you under the bridge." Sounds funny, but you know our thoughts can really go there when we are falling apart and God is using us to help somebody else keep it together.  We have seen people across all spectrums spread light and joy to the world, telling us the importance of living a "good clean life" and then become the headline of a major scandal and all you can think is "Weren't they just speaking about being a good role model." Yep, they were. But it highlights the point that sometimes" practicing what you preach" can be a hard thing to do.

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The Hypocrites

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In Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV) Jesus states, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."

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Now there are most definitely those friends and loved ones in our lives that love to share their opinions with us and not because God called them to do so, but because they love to sit in the judge's seat making a verdict on our lives , the things that we go through, the people that we hang around, and the decisions that we make.

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They love to pretend that their skeletons have skin. And why you don't call them out for their hypocritical ways, you learn not to share certain things with them. There are most definitely people who want to condemn everyone around them . We all know the "super saint" and the "Phony Perfect Patty". And it is the "super saint" and the "Phony Perfect Patty" who have the most drama, they just don’t share it with us. We are referring to those who love to highlight the mistakes and the past of others as if they are without blemish. Why is it that people with glass houses love to throw stones? Apparently, they never think that the same stone that they throw will come back and break the glass that they live in, exposing all the things that they told you that you were wrong, crazy, or stupid for doing. So yes, there are some people who definitely need to take a good look at themselves. If we are to be honest it is these types of judgmental individuals that need to learn how to mind their business more than they need to learn to "practice what they preach." They need to get their own selves together and manage their own households. We have to be extremely mindful of what we share with "these" individuals. Especially, when we are trying to work on ourselves because these types of individuals can at times provoke us when we begin to feel the need to let them "have it" or when they make us feel like we "have to" defend our character.

 

The Real One's-We Are All A Mess

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We've all probably had those moments when we've given someone advice and say "Hey, I'm going to be real, I probably would have done  what you did but one of us has to start making better choices." There are some of us who will be blatantly honest when giving advice to others. I am sure that you have all had moments where you were real enough to say "Girl you good. You slashed the tires, but I would have keyed the car but don't listen to me because we both need to try to do better."  Or maybe you have been the one to say "Dude, if I were you, I wouldn't answer the phone if she calls but I'm going to advise you to answer because if you don't it'll make things worse, just fess up to what you did."

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There are some of us who won't hide behind who we are, what we truly think or why we may agree or disagree with the person we are giving our advice to. We make it clear to them that we would be petty but urge them to make the right choice while highlighting that we probably would not do the same. These are the people whose honesty we can respect and who might just bring enough of a smile to our faces to make us take a step back from the situation and reflect before we act. (We are referring to the ones who will try to keep us out of trouble although they themselves always wind up in trouble.)

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Let's all Reflect on Our Own Specks

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While we may not always be able to act in the same manner that we tell others to act in or to make the choices that we tell others to make, it would not hurt for all of us to reflect more on the advice that we give and analyze if we ourselves are carrying out that same advice or  encouragement in our own lives.  There are times in which the encouragement that we give to others sounds so profound that we wish someone would say it to us. Well truth is sometimes we have to take  David's example and encourage ourselves (1 Samuel 30:6). David was distressed because the people were thinking of stoning him. He had no one to turn to and therefore, he had to find a way to encourage himself. He had to place his trust in God. And we too can become better at "practicing what we preach" if in those moments that we are "preaching" to someone else about something that we know we need help with, we take the time to find our quiet place and ask God to help us to act upon our own advice when we are speaking positive things into the lives of others. When we are telling other people to be more patient, more loving, more trusting, to not lose their faith, to not doubt that they or God can do it, when we are telling them that the storm is temporary, we just need to look up and  ask God to help us to believe those very things that we are telling others. We need to tap ourselves on the shoulder and say, "You got this." We don't realize that sometimes God may lead us to speak things into the life of others that we too are struggling with just so that it can cause us to take a step back and hear the words that we are ministering to someone else and take them to heart.

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When the Advice does not Apply

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We are all different  and sometimes we won't "practice what we preach". Not due to the fact that we're imperfect, but simply because everything does not apply to everybody. You may find yourself telling a friend not to quit their job, meanwhile, you turn around and quit yours and the friend gets upset because they feel like you did not 'practice what you preach". The truth is that  your financial situation is different. Whether because you have a healthy 401k, a mate with a steady job that can support you, a side hustle, or another income stream, you can afford to go without working. You did not want to tell them to quit their job because they don't have another means of income or a support system to help them financially.  

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Or maybe you encouraged a close friend to take the big leap into marriage because they were hesitant and then they find out that you called off your own wedding. They think you did not "practice what you preach" because how can you tell them to settle down and now, you're free. Well, situations are different.  What they don’t know is maybe you called off your wedding because there was infidelity or maybe you found out something alarming about the individual therefore, you had to make a decision different from the one you told your friend to make.

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We won't always be able to" practice what we preach" when it comes to certain scenarios because we all have different dynamics that surround those scenarios. You can tell a friend or family member to lay off the sugar and then you hang up the phone and eat a dozen cookies and a pint of ice cream. Well maybe you don’t have the health issues that the other person has so you can indulge in sugar a little bit more (and for the sake of argument and trying to make a point we'll pretend that's okay).

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Sometimes when people give us advice, even when we know that they would not do the same, the advice may still be beneficial depending on the circumstance. So, there is still need for us to maybe look past who is giving the advice and listen to the message. Being hypocritical to the advice you give does not make it bad advice. It just means that you are not a reflection of the advice that you give.

 

"Don't Hide the Word"

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Sometimes many of us hesitate to give advice because we know we are a mess. We have all had those "Girl, don’t ask me." moments or those "Dude, I'm the wrong one to ask." moments. That does not mean that there isn't any substance in what you may have to say.  If you know in your heart that God is leading you to give someone advice or to speak something into the life of someone else, you can't hold it back  just because you know that you yourself are a work in progress. You need to realize that we are all a work in progress. In these moments ask God for discernment and ask Him to lead you as to how to approach the individual. Tell Him to give you exactly what He wants you to say. Don't add your own spin on it. Let Him guide you. Most importantly, if God is the one leading you to say it, don't focus on their reaction as it will only discourage you if you do not get the response that you want. God does not lead us to give His messages to people for our own satisfaction. It is for His plan and His purposes whether it be for their calling or ours.

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God Can Use a Donkey

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There is a saying that "real recognize real" and if truth be told we can sometimes tell the difference between the people who won't take their own advice but loves to give us advice because they are just being judgmental, high and mighty versus those who  won't act upon their own advice but they give their opinion because they care about us and want to see us make the right decisions. They don't want us to bring bad consequences upon ourselves like they did.

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We sometimes have to look at the intent of the person that is giving advice more than the life that the person lives or the actions that they personally take. If God can use a donkey (Numbers 22:22-37) then He most definitely can use any one of us at any given time not based on where we are in our own lives but depending on where the person is that He is calling us to minister to. If you read Numbers 22:22-37,  God used a donkey to get the attention of a man who was close to causing his own destruction. He had the donkey to speak to the man in order to get the man's attention and make him reflect on his wicked ways. God uses a willing heart, and the plain truth is that it is not always the" blameless" ones who are willing to be used. Look at Paul, one of the greatest Apostles of the bible. He once persecuted the saints. He wanted to bring harm against the disciples. But God used him far different than what he probably could have imagined. If we read Acts 9, in a vision God instructs  a disciple by the name of Ananias to go to the house where Saul was. However, Ananias was hesitant because of what he knew of Saul.

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Acts 9:13-16 reads:

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13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem.

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14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

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15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.

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16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

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This goes to show us that God does not use the perfect. We are never going to be perfect.

We are not going to make the best choices. We may have moments when we do the complete opposite of what God commands us to do whether we are aware of it or not. But that does not stop our usefulness when God has a plan. Saul went from a man who persecuted the saints to becoming Paul, the Apostle.

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Don't let your skeletons keep you hidden behind the word that God has given you.

 

What Our Parents Said

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While our parents were busy singing Barry White, they knew that not even they were going to "practice" what they preach which is why we have all probably heard our parents or an adult figure whether a teacher, an elder family member, maybe even our Sunday school teacher say ,"Do what I say, not as I do." Because they knew that at some point, they were going to do something that went against everything that they ever taught us.

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So back to our original question, is it possible to "practice what we preach"? The answer: Not always. But while we can't always "practice what we preach", we can all ask God to help us to be more discerning, to make wiser choices, to spend more time building each other up and less time pointing the finger at others as a means of pulling them down.  We can all ask God to help us to be less judgmental and more forgiving, and to be better examples not just as Christians but as human beings because regardless of what we believe in or who we believe in, our thoughts, our actions, our words, and our behaviors affect someone else.

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Remember that the things that we say and the actions that we take at some point may reflect right back on us so choose your words and actions wisely and let God lead.