Evidence of a humble and sweet spirit is the ability to be teachable, to hear and accept wise instruction and to act upon wise counsel appropriately.
        "True friends will put an edge on your life," said the late Dr. Adrian Rogers. "They will make you a sharper person. (Proverbs 27:17: Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend). Proverbs 27:6 says, 'Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.' What truer words of love can be spoken than from the heart of a friend who is going to spend an eternity with you?"
        Donald Pope suggested that a person who wants to walk with Jesus should do the following. “Find someone who is a godly person, man or woman, that will tell you the truth. Don’t go to someone that is just going to tell you what you want to hear. Go to someone that will tell you the truth. It (the Bible) says, ‘The wounds of a friend are faithful, better than kisses from an enemy.’ If you’ve got somebody that’s just telling you what you want to hear, they care more about what you think about them than they do about you. Go to someone that is a godly person, that will tell you the truth in love, and say, ‘Is there anything that you see in my life that you think that I should remove in order that I can have a closer walk with the Lord?’” He added, “I’m going to do it, and I’m going to ask somebody that will tell me the truth. I probably won’t even want to hear it. But listen, it’s not about me. It’s about Him.”
        That is well spoken advice. A person needs friends who tell him what he needs to hear, who speak the truth but speak the truth in love. A person does not need 'friends' who agree with him if he is wrong.
        But a person needs to be certain that advice is true and wise -- by the standards of Jesus' teachings in the Word of God -- before that advice is heeded.
        Many a person's downfall has resulted from being led astray by a bad influence, and by heeding advice that harms them and others.
        The Bible says, 'Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.' (Psam 1:1). Our counsel, our advice, should reflect wisdom that comes from above.