Doing what we're told

“Whoever gives heed to instruction prospers, and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord.” Proverbs 16:20
We often think that ‘doing what you’re told’ only applies to children keeping commands that we give them: don’t run out on the road, tidy your room, eat your vegetables. But it applies to everyone: not just in the sense of keeping rules, but also if we are learning how to do something. When we are being taught something – for example how to drive a car, or how to play a musical instrument, or how to solve partial differential equations, the person teaching us by definition must know more about it than we do. It is wise then to submit to their superior knowledge and do what they tell us, and we will learn the correct way to do something. If we ignore their instruction, and try to do it our own way, we won’t get anywhere. We will eventually come back to what they told us to do, but we will have wasted time in the process.
It’s the same with God’s Word. He has given us much instruction in the Bible as to how we should live: how we should treat others, what our attitude should be towards Him and towards sin, the kinds of things we should think about. We ignore God’s instruction at our peril. But if we submit to Him, things will go well for us. God’s knowledge is infinitely superior to ours. It is foolish to ignore what He is trying to teach us!