Earlier this year, when I get on the treadmill at the gym on the college campus where I work, I’m walking about three miles an hour—you know, just trying to get the blood flowing.
While I’m walking, I notice one of my former students on the treadmill to my right running about nine miles an hour.
Then I send my sister a text-message, saying, “I’m on the treadmill next to one of my girl students, and she’s flying. I’m just walking, because I don’t want to be embarrassed.”
In her reply, Erika tries to psych me up, saying, “Go ’head and run so she can see you still got it!”
Initially, I’m thinking to myself, “If I thought I still had it, I wouldn’t have been walking in the first place!”
But the more I reflect on my sister’s bad advice, I say to myself, “Yeah! That’s right! I still got it!”
So I increase the speed from three miles per hour to eight miles per hour. I begin running like Forest Gump—kind of! About two minutes later, my breath is, gasp, out there somewhere, but I can’t catch it!
Listening to Erika, I almost had a heart attack! And I said that to say this: You can’t listen to everybody!
Although Erika was just having fun, on a more serious note, it’s important to realize that there are times when people will lead you astray. When you listen to the wrong people, you could make a fool of yourself.
Here, the advice found in Proverbs 13:20 is helpful: “Walk with the wise and you will become wise.”