Last week in the Olympics, the Dutch skater, Sven Kramer, was skating in the 10,000 meters for the gold medal. Toward the end of his race his coach screamed for him to change lanes. He did. And the powerful skater came in first. The gold medal was his...or was it?

It seems the coach had told him to change lanes when he should have stayed where he was. The skater listened to the one person he trusted to help him and it cost him a gold medal. Can you imagine the emotions that were displayed? Tears came from the coach. Anger and disgust, along with disappointment from the skater. He had worked hard and had become the best in the world only to have it taken from him.

Do any of us ever take any bad advice? Everyone could probably plead "guilty" to this. And we know that there were people who did so in the Bible.

It started out when Satan coached Eve. "You surely shall not die" (Gen. 3:4). She listened and sin entered the world with all of it’s consequences. Later, the Israelites listened to the ten spies who had gone into Canaan’s land to spy it out. The ten said we cannot take the land. The people listened to them instead of Caleb and Joshua. None of the men twenty and upward entered the land. Most everyone died and forty years later they would possess the land (Numbers 13, 14).

In 2 Samuel 13, Amnon, David’s son, had a friend named Jonadab. He gave Amnon some advice that caused a girl to be raped and his life taken from him.

And, later in 1 Kings 12, Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, became king. When they asked him to lighten the load his father had demanded of them, he sought advice from the elders of Israel and then from his peers. He listened to his peers, not the elders, and as a result the kingdom divided.

Tell me, to whom do you look to for advice? We can go to counselors, preachers, elders, trusted friends and all of them will try to help. But, understand they are fallible people. We need to just let the Word of God be the deciding factor in our lives. What does the Word of God tell us about a problem we may be having? Jesus said, "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the Word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day" (Jn. 12:48 NASB).

Let’s take time to follow God’s counsel when we make our decisions in life.