Google God...read the Bible

So where do you look for advice about things that are happening in your life. Do you read? Do you Google it? Do you call your spouse?...friend?...co-worker? ... the current prayer hotline on TBN? It's smart to get advice from other people. There's an ancient saying by Solomon that goes like this: "A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel."

History says that Solomon was a smart guy, so it's probably a good idea to take his advice. He says we should seek wise counsel. You can get a good piece of advice from some of the places I mentioned above but you won't always get wise counsel. Ask yourself this question the next time you go to one of your information sources: "Is this place going to give me a quick fix or is it going to give me a principle that will work for the rest of my life?"

There's nothing wrong with Googling for an answer to a problem or asking a friend what you should do in a certain situation. Where most of us go wrong is that we scour our resources looking for an answer and end up exhausted and frustrated. Enter the Bible. We ask our friends to tell us their stories. We read the Web and books to see what people think about any given situation. So why not read the book that God wrote and find out what he thinks about life? Why not read the Bible to begin with, and begin our quest for wisdom and information with a completely reliable information source?

If you're just starting back to church, take this moment to commit to picking up a modern translation like the New Living Translation, New International Version, or the Contemporary English Version and read it. Or go to BibleGateway.com and use its incredible search engine and search dozens of translations. If you've been in church a while but you've replaced looking in the Bible for answers to your life situation with other things, use this moment to recommit to using the Bible as your primary source for answers.

Let the Bible encourage you, strengthen you, make you wiser, and challenge you to change. Make it your starting point for information about life's situations. Things will start to look up very soon.