Experience Can Make Us Harder to Reach

Then Asa was wroth with the seer, and put him in a prison house.

2 Chronicles 16:10

Read 2 Chronicles 16. Focus on verses 7 through 12. Earlier, Asa had heard Azariah's message and taken courage to reform Judah. Now another prophet brings a word, and the king responds by imprisoning him. The difference is not simply that Asa has become older. His willingness to be addressed has changed. Hanani confronts the king's reliance on Syria and recalls God's earlier deliverance. Asa has a history of help from the Lord. Yet that history does not make him receptive now. He rages against the seer and oppresses some of the people as well. The chapter later records a severe illness and says Asa seeks physicians without seeking the Lord. This is not a prohibition on medical treatment. The account continues its portrait of a king who will not turn to God. Appropriate care and prayer need not compete with each other. What is especially sobering is the contrast between the two prophetic encounters across Asa's reign. The man who once received encouragement has become dangerous to the person who confronts him. A good response in one season has not guaranteed a good response in the next. Experience can quietly change how we hear. At first, we ask questions because we know we need help. Later, people know our accomplishments and look to us for answers. Being advised begins to feel inconsistent with the place we have earned. We may never imprison anyone. We can still make correction costly. We become cold toward the person who raises a concern. We list how many years we have been doing the work. We tell others that the person does not understand us. Soon, people learn to edit what they bring. That silence can be mistaken for respect. In reality, someone may have stopped speaking because the relationship cannot safely carry a difficult observation. We appear to need less advice precisely because we have made advice harder to give. Ask what it is like to bring you an unwelcome concern now compared with five years ago. Have your knowledge and experience made you more patient with a thoughtful question, or more offended by the need to answer it? There is no disgrace in remaining reachable. Wisdom should give us better judgment about counsel, not immunity from hearing it. Asa's earlier openness is worth remembering because it shows something he has lost. We can ask God to preserve that openness before people around us conclude that honest speech is no longer welcome. Put It into Practice Invite a specific observation from someone who knows your work or habits. When they answer, ask one clarifying question before offering any explanation of yourself.

Who used to speak honestly to you but now seems careful to offer only agreement?

Lord, do not let experience make me unreachable. Show me the reactions that teach people to keep silent around me. Give me mature judgment that can weigh a concern without punishing the person who brings it. Amen.