Norman Vincent Peale - Confidence

CONFIDENCE
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CONFIDENCE
BIB LICAL TRUTHS FOR DIS COVERING
GODS P OTENTIAL FOR YOU
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Confidence
ISBN-10: 0-8249-3220-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-8249-3220-6
Published by Guideposts
16 East 34th Street
New York, New York 10016
Guideposts.org
Copyright 2013 by Norman Vincent Peale. All rights reserved.
Th is book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.
Distributed by Ideals Publications, a Guideposts company

2630 Elm Hill Pike, Suite 100
Nashville, Tennessee 37214
Guideposts and Ideals are registered trademarks of Guideposts.
Acknowledgments
Every attempt has been made to credit the sources of copyrighted material used in this book. If
any such acknowledgment has been inadvertently omitted or miscredited, receipt of such infor-
mation would be appreciated.
Scripture quotations marked (esv) are taken from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, cop-
yright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All
rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are taken from The King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations marked (ncv) are taken from The Holy Bible, New Century Version.
Copyright 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version.
Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights
reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peale, Norman Vincent, 1898-1993.
Confidence : Biblical truths for discovering Gods potential for you / Norman Vincent Peale.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8249-3220-6 (alk. paper)
1. ConfidenceReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. Christian life. I. Title.
BV4647.C63P43 2013
248.4dc23
2013018253
Cover and interior design by Mllerhaus
Cover photograph by Shutterstock
Typeset by Aptara
Printed and bound in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Pray Big, Think Big, Believe Big . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
How to Be an Asset to Yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Better Ways to Better Days. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Every Problem Contains Its Own Solution . . .29
How to Stand Up to a Tough Situation . . . . . .39
Why the Crowds Love Him . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
Keep BelievingNever Lose Faith. . . . . . . . . . .59
New Heart When Disheartened . . . . . . . . . . . .67
Enthusiasm Makes Life Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
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Life Can Be Full of Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
Why Worry When You Can Pray?. . . . . . . . . . . .97
Your Outlook Determines Your Future . . . . .107
What Is There to Make Life Good? . . . . . . . . . .117
The Power of Hope and Expectation . . . . . . . .127
Go Forward with Confidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137
VI
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FOREWORD
T hank you for your interest in the work of Norman Vincent Peale.
We hope youll find his words as deeply rewarding and potentially
life-changing as we did. Each entry will be framed around one
or more relevant Scripture verses, and discuss several conflicts,
issues, occurrences, etc., that we face in the occasionally troubling
world we live in. And each difficulty is responded to using care-
fully selected thoughts and anecdotes on the meaning and appli-
cability of Scripture in daily life and the practical advice garnered
from Dr. Peales long life spent serving God and preaching His
Word. T he syntax has been slightly modified for our time but has
preserved the true timelessness of Dr. Peales original message of
hope, toughness, and love, as well as his enduringly warm wit,
knowledge, and affectionate presence.
Editors of Guideposts
VII
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INTRODUCTION
Confidence. A word we all use often but many of us barely think

about. I am not a slave to a dictionary, so Ill leave the semantics
of definition to someone more learned than me, perhaps. I will say
that the surest way to live confidently is to have what I call a big
God. Many of us, at different times in our lives, have a very little
God. And make no mistake: it is we who have limited Him. We
believe in God, but as to applying His power, His might, His love,
and His greatness to our lives, we just arent sold on the idea that
it will work. So we have reduced God down to being practically a
nonentity in our day-to-day lives.
If you have a little God, in the very nature of the case, you are
going to get little spiritual results and little any kind of results.
And with this little God, the problems common to all humanity
can be counted on to gang up on you. But, on the contrary, if you
think of a big God, if you pray to a big God, if you act like there
is a big God, you will grow big spiritually and in every other way
IX
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INTRODUCTION
and big results will accrue. You will make a big contribution to the
day and age in which you live. You will be a partner of a big God.
This may seem to you a rather extraordinary way to talk about
God; but we are in good company, I assure you, for this is the way
the Bible talks about Him: The mighty God, The everlasting
Father, The Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6 kjv). Christianity speaks
always in superlatives. St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians
(4:19 kjv) writes, My God shall supply all your need according to
his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Now what is meant by all my
need? Surely, Lord, You mean by this that You will satisfy my spiri-
tual needs . . . You are dealing with me only in spiritual things. But
the statement doesnt say that. It has no parenthesis nor limitation.
It says, My God shall supply all your need. He will supply your
mental needs; He will supply your emotional needs; He will supply
your physical needs; He will supply your material needs. He will
do everything for youso it says in the Scripture. And by doing
everything for you, you will receive, yes, confidence. T he ability to
believe in yourself, in something bigger than yourself, and it will
allow you to do big things, with your big confidence, from your
big God.
And again St. Paul affirms, I can do all things through
Christ which strengtheneth me (Philippians 4:13 kjv). All things?
You mean just some things, a few things. Oh no, it doesnt mean
that at all. It means I can dothink of this! I, just a weak little
human being!can do all things through Christ who gives me
the strength.
So dont sit around and wail and whine and moan and com-
plain that you are weak, inadequate, and inferior, for that is not
true at all, except only insofar as you insist on being that way. You
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INTRODUCTION
say to yourself, I believe in my God. T hen you begin to grow

into power.
What a God He really is! In the first days of every New Year
it might be well to turn right back to the beginning of the Bible
and start from there. How does the Bible begin? Well, everybody
knows. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
(Genesis 1:1 kjv). No little God did that, because this is a tremen-
dous earth and this is a tremendous solar system. And He made
it all. He took His great hands and scooped out the deep valleys
and raised up enormous mountains. T hen He took both hands and
grabbed handfuls of stars and swung them into the blue. All space
is filled with them. And He started rivers singing their way to the
sea. He designed the universe so that there would be sunset and
sunrise and high noon, and spring and summer and fall and winter,
and He brought into being the productivity of the earth.
Men from this planet have now gone to the moon. And what
did they find when they got to the moon? T hey found that the
same laws that are operative on earth are operative on the moon.
T hey could do the same things there that they can do here. And
for the first time in the history of mankind human eyes beheld not
the rising of the moon or the rising of the sun, but the rising of
the earth. T hose men were so enthralled that they repeated these
words from Scripture:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form and void; and darkness
was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
XI
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INTRODUCTION
upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light:
and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good:
and God divided the light from the darkness. And God
called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of
the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And
God made the firmament, and divided the waters which
were under the firmament from the waters which were above
the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the eve-
ning and the morning were the second day. And God said,
Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto
one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering
together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it
was good.
Genesis 1:110 kjv
Mankind affirms the greatness of God. And we affirm the

greatness of God with our confidence. We have a big God and if we
live up to a big God, which means generosity and brotherhood and
kindness and goodwill, this big God will make big and confident
people and a big and confident society of people who know their
God. T hey shall be strong, strengthened through Jesus Christ who
sustains us. Amen.
Norman Vincent Peale
XII
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P R AY B I G , T H I N K
BIG, BELIEVE BIG
Then he touched their eyes, saying, According
to your faith be it done to you.
Matthew 9:29 ESV
There is a three-point formula that can change your life. This for-
mula has power in it, plenty of power. We should never forget that
the possibilities inherent in a human being are limitless. Anything
you can dream of and aspire to, that is in harmony with the will of
God, you can obtain.
The particular formula to which I refer was given to me years
ago by an old man who, to my way of thinking, was one of the
wisest, most acute human beings I ever knew. He was a success-
ful businessman, but he gave away most of the money he made
and thus he blessed the lives of thousands of people. He had pro-
found insight and understanding and I learned a great deal from
him. When I first knew him he was about eighty and I was in my
twenties.
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CONFIDENCE
At the beginning of my ministry I was shy, inordinately shy,

even to the point of shrinking. I had a big inferiority complex and
was trying to preach an enormous, tremendous Gospel, but I was
neither enormous nor tremendous in my faith.
One day I went to see this old man at his farm, tucked away
in the Tully Valley, amidst the hills of upstate New York. He gave
me a lecture that I still recall, although, God help me, I havent
followed too well. In the course of that lecture he asked, How
big is the Gospel you have undertaken to preach? Are you preach-
ing a big Gospel? And then he gave me the three-point formula:
Pray big, think big, believe big. And he continued, If you faith-
fully practice this, you will be given insight, wisdom, courage, and
strength.
Just what is meant by praying big? Well, my old friend said
the trouble with many people is that they pray little, inconsequen-
tial, indifferent prayers. They will never get a big answer from God
unless they pray big to God.
I recall one night years ago I made a speech in Cedar Rapids,
Iowa, and had the great honor of being on the same program with
one of the most illustrious singers of our time, Roland Hayes, a
deeply spiritual man of great erudition and faith. I was charmed by
his singing and by him personally. The next morning he and I rode
into Chicago on the same railroad train, through a blinding snow-
storm. I shall never forget the inspiration of the conversation I had
with him. Among other things, he told me about his grandfather,
who lived in the South way back in slavery days or shortly there-
after. Roland Hayes himself was a cultured, intellectual man. His
grandfather, on the other hand, had practically no book learning
but was well-schooled in the Scriptures. I shall always remember

NOR M A N VINCENT PEALE
the way Roland Hayes described his grandfathers prayers, using

the old mans language, The trouble with most prayers is: they
aint got no suction.
What a picturesque phrase, meaning, I presume, that many
prayers dont go down deep enough, they dont come to grips with
the problem, they have no pull to them, they are weak and inef-
fectual. They aint got no suction. This, when you take and apply
it to your own problem, means that if you cant move the problem,
maybe the trouble is that you havent prayed big enough or with
enough vigor and strength.
Of course, this is quite contrary to the kind of religious teach-
ing now in vogue. A good many church leaders, heaven help us,
are trying to reduce Christianity to a nice little thing from which
they have almost completely erased the supernatural element. The
old greatness of faith that our fathers used to know and practice is
gone. And in its stead there remains a weak, little, allegedly ratio-
nal kind of faith, so insipid that it isnt even rational.
But over against this trend, consider the magazine Guideposts,
which perhaps you read. There are only a few magazines with
larger circulation. Theoretically, Guideposts shouldnt succeed. It
is not sold on newsstands, only by subscription. But it succeeds
anyway. And the reason is that it has faith. It is an interfaith maga-
zine and a magazine of faith. It believes in deep, big prayers, for one
thing. There was a story in Guideposts about a missionarys wife.
The scene: the city of Shenkiu in central ChinaHenan Province.
It was at the time of the Japanese invasion of China during World
War II.
The Japanese were approaching this city; they were very
nearonly two or three days away. The Chinese colonel came

CONFIDENCE
to the mission compound and told the pastors wife that she had
better leave, as he had received orders not to defend the city against
the Japanese. The pastor, a medical missionary, had been taken to
a hospital, himself ill. He was a hundred and fifteen miles away
and would not be back for perhaps a month. His wife was by her-
self, with a baby girl two months old and a son just over one year.
There began an exodus from the city. The elders of the
church came and invited her to go with them to their villages.
They were very kind and gracious people. But she had these
two babies, and she knew that the village homes of these people
were vermin-infested and full of germs. Western babies lacked
the necessary immunity. There had been many deaths among
missionaries children exposed to conditions in the villages.
Therefore, this missionarys wife was afraid to take her babies into
those houses. So she remained in the city, alone, one American
woman with two babies. The gatekeeper, her last protection,
came and said that he too must leave. The poor woman was fi lled
with fear, alone, unprotected, in bitter January weather, with the
enemy approaching.
She went to the kitchen sink to fi x a bottle for the baby. Her
hands were cold. She shook so from fear that the bottle almost
fell from her hands. Then she saw above the sink the Bible-text
calendar. It was January 16, 1941, and beneath the date she read
these words from Psalm 56:3: What time I am afraid, I will trust
in thee. She was astonished, but strangely comforted. All that
night she kept her two little ones huddled close to her to keep
them warm. She lay awake, listening to the wind rattle the paper
windowpanes in the bamboo frames, praying to God who, all the
time she was afraid, would be with her. It was noon before she

remembered to pull the page off the little daily calendar. The tenth
verse of the ninth Psalm read: And they that know thy name will
put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that
seek thee. As she bowed her head over her noonday meal, she
thanked God for those particular words at that moment.
When the following morning came, she realized that she was
without food. All the stores were empty or closed, for there was
no food coming in from the countryside. All she had were the
goats, but she did not know how to milk them. Once again, fear
clutched at her throat. How would she feed these children ? She
pulled off the calendar page for January 17 and, believe it or not,
under the date of January 18 were these words: I will nourish
you, and your little ones. Genesis 50:21. This modernly trained
woman, schooled in the new thinking, asked herself, Is this only
a coincidence?
There was a rap at the door. It was a little Chinese woman,
Mrs. Lee, a longtime neighbor. We knew you would be hungry,
she said, and you didnt know how to milk the goats. So I have
milked your goats. Here is milk for your children.
Presently another little woman came, holding a live chicken
by the legs and also carrying some eggs. Once again the pastors
wife looked at the words, I will nourish you, and your little ones.
That night her heart was full of hope. To the sound of shells burst-
ing in the sky, she prayed that somehow God would spare the city
and the gentle people whom these missionaries loved.
The next morning she rushed to the little square of paper
hanging on the nail and tore off the page. When I cry unto thee,
then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.
Psalm 56:9.

CONFIDENCE
This time it seemed too much to believe! Surely a verse chosen

by chance for an English calendar couldnt be taken literally. And
another fear clutched her. The Japanese armywhat would they
do with one lone, defenseless woman? She went through her hus-
bands papers, destroying any that might be construed to incrim-
inate her. She could hear the sound of gunfire coming closer and
closer. She went to sleep that night fully dressed, prepared at any
moment to meet the Japanese invaders.
She awoke in the early dawn expecting to hear rough shoes
on the gravel, marching troops. But instead there was a deep qui-
etness. She cautiously went to the gate and watched as the streets
began to fill, not with Japanese soldiers, but with townspeople
coming back into the city. The colonel reappeared and said to her,
We dont understand it. The Japanese were headed for this city.
They were going to take it. Suddenly they turned aside. We didnt
defeat them. They just went another way and left us unoccupied.
Will you try to explain this away, handle it on an intellectual
basis? I could do that too. I could rip it all to pieces as just pure
coincidence. But when you come right down to it, what is coinci-
dence? It is an act of God in the midst of time.
Right this minute the supernatural power of the infinite
surrounds our thinking. This generation has actually had the
audacity to dispense with the infinite. They have tried to make God
just a nice little God who cannot act outside our rules. What a pretty
little God they have tried to make of the great God of all eternity.
Some people have erased Him so far in their minds that they say He
is dead. What this country, what this world, needs is a new emphasis
on the power and might of the eternal and everlasting supernatural
God, Who can be reached through big prayer. When your little

prayers do not reach Him, get some suction into your prayers. Dig
down till you find Him or climb till you reach Him.
The second part of the formula is to think big. Now this is
very important. I have a quotation from Lord Chesterfield that we
might well ponder: Think great thoughts. You will never go any
higher than you think.
How high do you want to go? If you can only think to the roof-
top, that is as far as you go. But you can think your way illimitably
to the stars. And what you think will be. If you think little, you
will get a little result, in the very nature of the case. If you think
big, you will get a big result. What you are now is what you have
been thinking for a long time. What you will be ten years from
now depends on what you think from now on. If you want a great
life in the future, think great thoughts.
A preacher friend of mine came to see me and started pacing
the floor, saying, I want to describe the church I hope to have
someday. He pictured very graphically a church surrounded by
fifteen acres of land, made of glistening steel and glass, that would
seat a congregation of three thousand people. He described a soar-
ing ten-story tower, in which there would be carillon bells. He pic-
tured it all meticulously, specifically, to the smallest detail. He got
me so excited that I leaped to my feet, exclaiming, The church is
already built!
What do you mean, The church is already built? he asked.
It is built in your mind, I said. All you need do now is to
finish the job.
Ten years later I dedicated his church. As I drove around it,
looked at it from a distance, heard the carillon bells ringing out, I
saw that this was in precise detail exactly what he had described to

CONFIDENCE
me out of his mind ten years before. Now if he had projected in his
mind a little church seating one hundred and fift y persons, that is
what he would have had. But he is one of those rugged souls who
believe in God and the Lord Jesus Christ, one who prays big and
who thinks big. What do you want to build out of your life? Project
it in your mind.
Pray big. Think big. I would stop at this point, but I referred
to a three-point formula and even made it the title of this sermon.
So I must give you the third point. The first point is pray big. The
second is think big. And the third: believe big.
This is Christianity any way you take it: According to
your faith be it unto you. That is from the Gospel of Matthew,
chapter 9, verse 29. In other words, your life is going to be in pro-
portion to how greatly you believe. Believe little, you get a little
life. Believe soft, you get a soft life. Believe weak, you get a weak
life. Believe fear, you get a fear life. Believe sickness, you get a
sick life. Believe big, and you get a big life. Jesus said, All things
are possible to him that believeth (Mark 9:23 kjv). Which means
what? That the person who believes is going to get everything he
wants? No, it doesnt say that. But it does mean that if you believe
big, you move things out of the realm of the impossible into
the realm of the possible. Christianity is the religion of the incred-
ible, the religion of the astonishing, the religion of the breathless.
You bring to yourself what you believe.
Some people believe that life isnt much good, that they arent
much good, that they cant do much with their lives, that they are
defeatedand they accept the defeat. They believe that that is the
way it is always going to be. They hear about a boundless God,
but they have only little, narrowly circumscribed lives, which is

an astonishing tragedy. You have to gear yourself to believe big.

A couple consulted a minister friend of mine in California. His
church is located near the shore and this couple had been coming
each Sunday to hear him. He preaches a big, boundless, gener-
ous Gospel. God wants to pour out blessings on everybody, he
says, but a lot of people fail to get these blessings because they
block themselves off from them. Consequently, they live on a little
trickle of blessings, when they ought to have a river of blessings.
Having listened to this preaching, these people, husband and
wife, went to the minister one day and said, We dont understand
why it is that we are poverty-stricken. We have money trouble all
the time. You talk about the boundless generosity of God, but we
never see anything of it. Were just living from hand to mouth.
And they asked, Will you pray for us?
Well, the minister said, Ill pray for you if youll do some-
thing for me. And he gave them the strangest thing to do. I want
you to take tomorrow off. Youve done so poorly with your jobs
that one day off wont hurt. I want you to go down to the beach and
spend several hours there counting grains of sand. Get yourselves
a big handful of sand and count every grain. Then see if you can
calculate how many grains of sand the Lord has made. When you
get tired of doing that, look out at the ocean and see if you can
figure how many fish God has put in the ocean. Then try to figure
how many gallons of water there are in the Pacific. When you get
tired of considering the sand and the fish and the water, take a
walk through the park and count all the leaves on the trees.
This strange device was to show these two people the prodi-
gality of God. I just want you to realize, the minister told them,
that this God Who has put all the sand on the beach and all the

CONFIDENCE
fish in the sea and water in the ocean and leaves on the trees is
trying to put blessings into your life. But youre closed. Your belief
is too little.
Well, they got the idea. They went and talked it over with God.
And they began to reappraise their lives. They forgot their expec-
tations of impoverishment. They began to see new possibilities;
new ideas came to them. They started an enterprise that brought
new values and new prosperity into their lives. They learned to
believe big, pray big, think big, and accordingly built themselves a
full, rich, satisfying life.
I have preached bigness today. Why not? Christianity comes
from a big God, a big Savior, to make big-minded, big-souled peo-
ple. Remember the incredible fact: All things are possible to him
that believeth. That is truea big, marvelous truth. Pray big,
think big, believe big, live big.
10

HOW TO BE
AN ASSET TO
YO U R S E L F
And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity
thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and
knew that he had been now a long time in that case,
he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The
impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when
the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but
while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.
Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.
John 5:5-8 KJV
Are you an asset or a liability to yourself? Are you helping your-

self to live a creative, good life? Or are you constantly hampering
yourself, getting in your own way?
This is a very serious question, because people often are, to use
the old phrase, their own worst enemies. If you stopped to count
how many times in your life you have frustrated yourself, it would
11

CONFIDENCE
give food for thought. How many times have you defeated your-
self, tripped yourself up? If anybody else did to you what you do
to yourself, you would consider him your worst, most implacable,
most vicious enemy. Our problem isnt anybody else, primarily.
Our problem is ourselves. James M. Barrie said, What really plays
the dickens with us is something in ourselves. And Shakespeare
wrote, The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves,
that we are underlings.
Have you ever asked yourself, Just what in the world is wrong
with me anyway? Well, if you havent, I can tell you that I have.
I have been pastor at the Marble Collegiate Church for a long
time, and I have some long memories. Strange thing about the
human mind, you will forget certain things for a long time and then
they come back to you. Recently I thought of an encounter that, I
tell you, I hadnt thought of for many years. Perhaps what brought
it back was this theme of being an asset or a liability to oneselfI
do not know. But one day years ago I was sitting in my study when
my secretary came in and told me there was a couple outside who
wanted to be married. We have couples who just wander in like that,
with a marriage license, and want the ceremony performed. I asked,
Is the license in proper form, all the questions duly answered?
Yes, she said.
Well, let the sexton go ahead and prepare for the ceremony. Ill
be glad to take care of this, but I would like to see the couple first.
I think before you see them you might examine the license,
she advised.
I looked at the license and saw that the womans name was
that of one of the most famous motion picture actresses of that
day, known to everybody. But the license showed that this would
12

be her fourth marriagethe other three having been ended not by

death, but by divorce.
You know, I cant do this, I said to my secretary.
Why dont you see them, she suggested.
They came in. I do not believe this woman is still livingI have
not heard her name in years. Such is fame that your name can be
splashed across theaters all over the world and then be seen no more.
And you are gone, by death, old age, retirement, or whatever. At any
rate, it has been a long time since I have heard this womans name.
But when she walked into my study that day she was one of the most
beautiful women I ever saw in all my life. Striking, magnificent, with
a commanding presence and at the same time a beguiling sleekness.
She had very keen eyes. She had brains, this woman did.
And I said, It is a pleasure to meet you. Your acting has given
me much pleasure. I think you are one of the greatest. God has
given you an enormous talent, which you have used with great
skill. She graciously acknowledged this. Then I said, I cant do
this for you, though. I looked at the character she had with her.
While I never like to disparage anyone, and may have underesti-
mated this man, he did not appear to me to be in the same league
with her. I thought, Why this man? But then you never know, do
you, why people marry whom they do. I often wonder why my wife
married me, for that matter! She probably wonders herself.
I am not surprised at your decision, the actress said. I came
to you because . . . And she was kind enough to say I had written a
few things that had helped her. I just thought perhaps you might,
she said, but knowing your position as a minister of the Gospel
and knowing the Bible as I do, I can understand. I respect your
honesty in telling me that you cannot perform this ceremony.
13

CONFIDENCE
So we all shook hands and I wished them well. Then she sort of
gave the high sign to her proposed husband to go on out ahead of
her, which he did with alacrity. This may have been one reason she
selected him. At any rate, he departed. Shutting the door, she looked
at me and said, Look, I was brought up as a good Christian girl. I
love the Lord. Will you please tell me what is wrong with me?
Well, I answered, I wouldnt undertake such a thing with
the time we have at our disposal. I do not know what is wrong
with you.
I have been told that I am too beautiful. Then she added an
interesting thought: There are great liabilities to being beautiful.
Maybe there could be a glorious asset in it if to physical
beauty there were added a deeper beauty.
Ah, yes, she said, that has always been my conflict. There is
something wrong in me. I dont know what it is.
Why dont you come and talk sometime?
Oh, it would be no use, she continued. I am caught in this.
Im in a different world than you are. What is it in me? With that
she left me and closed the door. And maybe not only the door. I
never saw her again. Maybe somewhere she did find peace. Could
it be that as her fame passed she found humble peace? I dont
know. But here was a woman who was saying, in effect, How can
I be an asset to myself? Each of us has something inside that plays
the dickens with him. How is it healed, how is it exorcised, how is
it brought under control? How does one cease to be a liability and
become an asset to oneself?
One of the most marvelous passages in all the literature of the
world is the beginning of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John,
the first eight verses. More is said about psychology and psychiatry
14

and therapy in those eight verses than in many five-hundred-

page books. The skill of the writers of the Bible to penetrate to the
essence succinctly is one of the wonders of the ages. That is why
the Bible lasts while other books molder away. The story that is told
in these eight verses is about a man at the Pool of Bethesda. And
what was the Pool of Bethesda? Well, it was a pool in Jerusalem at
the time of Jesus. I myself have actually put my hand in the waters
of the Pool of Bethesda, but today you have to go down thirty feet
to reach the water. The Jerusalem of Jesus time is anywhere from
twenty to sixty feet below the surface of the present city. The first
great destruction of Jerusalem came in AD 70, when the Emperor
Titus leveled it to the ground, changed the name of the city, and
obliterated every religious site, thinking he could blot it out forever.
Even the city that was reared on that one was later destroyed. Over
the centuries, rubble upon rubble, foot after foot, the surface rose
until now the level where Jesus walked is anywhere from twenty to
sixty feet down, depending upon the declivity of the terrain.
Well, here was the Pool of Bethesda. It was by the sheep market,
and poor, miserable people came there to lie around in the porches.
There were no hospitals in those days. There was no Great Society
to take care of these people. There was no one to alleviate their mis-
ery. There were no orphanages, no homes for the incurable. There
was nothing. They just lay around the pool in these porches.
But there was hope because of the tradition that at times an
angel would come along and disturb the water. If you were lucky
enough to be the first to jump into the water after the angel had
disturbed it, you would be immediately healed. We know today
that there are naturalistic causes. And the water is still troubled,
whether by an angel or by naturalistic causes I wouldnt know.
15

CONFIDENCE
There was a man near this pool who had been hanging around for
thirty-eight years, waiting for a chance to get into the water after
it was troubled. You would think, wouldnt you, that sometime in
thirty-eight years he could have contrived to be the first one in? He
could have got right at the edge and lain there and let people feed
him, and the minute the water was troubled he could have rolled
over and flopped in. But you see, the trouble was that he didnt
really want to be cured. He wanted to stay in that same misery that
he had always been in, like an old lady who told me one time shed
been enjoyin poor health. It is a fact that people after a while get
to like the miserable way they are. Human nature is complex.
Well, Jesus walked along and saw this fellow. He knew very
well that the reason why the man did not want to get into that
pool and get healed was that he had been there thirty-eight years,
longer than anyone else, which made him chief man at the pool.
He had status; all the newer ones would say, Look at that old boy.
Hes been here thirty-eight years. He had built himself up; he was
the big shot at the Pool of Bethesda. But he was miserable. Jesus,
with the most astute mind ever to come into this world, knew this
man inside and out, just as He knows you and me inside and out.
You cant fool Him. You can fool other people; you can even fool
yourself, but not Him. So He came to this man and asked, How
long have you been lying around here, old boy?
Why, said the man, Ive been here thirty-eight years. There
is no one who has been here longer than I.
Maybe he expected Jesus to say, Now, isnt that great! We
ought to put you on television. Youve been here all this length of
timeyou ought to be written up in a book or something because
you have been here such a long time.
16

Instead, Jesus said, Look at Me. The man had his eyes down.
Jesus said, Look at Me! Slowly the eyes came up and they looked
into those eyes. (I often wonder what the eyes of Jesus looked like.)
Anyway, those eyes caught the eyes of this man. Jesus looked him
through and through and said, I want to ask you a question. Do
you want to be made whole, really? The man looked at Him and
was about to make more excuses. But Jesus repeated, Im asking
you straight. Do you want to be made whole?
Something was pulled up out of the soul of the man by the
look of the Great Healer and in that minute he reached for it
he grabbed and said, Yes. In that minute he was made whole.
Jesus said, Pick up that bed youve been lying on all this time. You
wont need it anymore. And get going.
This is the most modern story you can read today. There are
people this very day lying impotently on their beds by some Pool
of Bethesda, yet not needing to be the way they are. The question
is, do you really, with all your heart, want to be an asset to your-
self? That is the question. If you do, it can happen to you.
The first thing I would suggest doing is something that will
not be any fun. Youre going to be glad when this sermon is over! It
started out being embarrassing because of my first question; now
it is going to get really tough. The thing to do is sit down and ask
yourself, What is my greatest weakness, my greatest fault? Do you
know what it is? Or has your mind, which always has a tendency
to rationalize, blocked it out so you do not know what your chief
weakness is? I wonder. I imagine when you really start evaluating,
you know what it is. If you know what it is, and if you want this
liability eliminated, it can be eliminated. Years ago I taught on the
subject You Can Be Strongest in Your Weakest Place. That idea is
17

CONFIDENCE
based on an analogy from welding. If you take two pieces of a bro-

ken metal object and weld them together under intense heat and
then take a big sledge and try to break that object, it may break, but
very likely it will not break at the point where it is welded, because
due to the powerful heat applied at that particular point, the metal
has become strongest at its weakest place. That also happens when
an individual comes under the profound heat of Jesus: he becomes
strongest where he was the weakest.
On the Sunday when I preached on this subject, there was
present a man who had a terrific temper. He was a contractor. He
had such a bad temper that he would always avoid getting into
business negotiations personally, for fear he would get angry and
say things that would upset the deal. He would send an assistant to
negotiate for him. When he played golf, he would take along a half-
dozen extra golf clubs, because if he made a poor shot he would
wrap the club around a tree. His was an ungovernable temper.
So this man sat in church that day and heard me preach. After
church he and his wife walked up the streethe told me about it
laterand when they had gone a little way, he asked, Mary, what
is my greatest weakness?
Well, Mary was a smart girl and she had been around a long
time with this character. She answered, Why, sweetie, you have
no weaknesses at all.
Well, Ill tell you something. Youve got one. Youre the big-
gest liar I ever met. You know my temper, dont you?
Yes, she admitted, I know your temper. What a man you
would be if you were under control!
Well, he said, that minister said I could become strongest
in my weakest place. And that is exactly what I am going to do.
18

He came to see me. I sent him to my dear old friend Dr. Smiley
Blanton, the psychiatrist, one of the wisest, kindliest, most under-
standing human beings I ever knew, who has since gone on to
heaven. And with Smileys help, the man began to understand the
deep source of his temper: inferiority feelings, repressed hatred of
a father who had mistreated him as a little boy, and related inner
tensions. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. Smiley
then referred the man to a little book by Dr. Loring Swain, which
stressed the point that to control temper, for example, you have to
want to be through with the luxury of getting angry.
Presently Dr. Blanton pointed out to the man that he could
continue working psychiatrically with his tangle of inferiority and
resentments, but it would be a long process and that there was one
Doctor Who could heal him and do it quickly. That doctor was
named Jesus Christ. The contractor committed himself to Jesus, and
I am not exaggerating one iota when I tell you that he never lost his
temper again. He was still a spirited man, but he was under control
for the rest of his life. The change came in one instant of time, as
soon as he really wanted to change. You are never going to change
unless you really want to. Do you want to be made whole? That is
the question. If you do, then determine what your biggest liability is.
You dont need to tell your minister or your wife or husband. Just tell
yourself. And tell the Lord. Tell Him what you would like to be and
He can make you that. It is a big assertion, but I would not make it
unless I truly believed. You name the kind of person you would like
to be, name what you want to do in the world, and Jesus can lift you
to it. He takes what little we are, or what great we are, and steps it up.
I have had a wonderful time recently reading the book Movin
on Up, by Mahalia Jackson, the great gospel singer. She tells in her
19

CONFIDENCE
book that she was born between the railroad tracks and the levee
in New Orleans. When the railroad trains came by, she says, the
house shook, like it was going to fall down.
The people along the levee used to sing old songs, mostly
hymns, many of which had been derived from popular songs in
London during the development of the Salvation Army. Mahalia
Jackson loved to sing them. She sang at the laundry work she did
to help support her familygetting no schooling after the eighth
grade. On Sundays she would sing at the Baptist church.
At sixteen Mahalia went to Chicago in hopes of earning a bet-
ter living. She was a maid in a big hotel for a while. She sang as she
made beds.
Twenty-five years later, a great banquet was given in the same
hotel, one of the most beautiful in the country, at which Mahalia
Jackson sang gospel songs to the musically elite of Chicago. She
sang in the Sportpalast in Berlin; she sang in the Vienna Opera
House; she sang in Royal Albert Hall in Londonto vast multi-
tudes of people everywhere, singing the songs of the Lord.
A group of musical experts in New England wanted to ana-
lyze her singing. They asked her about her technique. She said, I
have no technique except that I love the Lord.
She herself says that what lifted her out of her lowly beginnings
in New Orleans waswhat? the voice? No, she says, it was the
Man I am singing about. If He could lift me from the washtubs,
He can lift you up too. But you cannot do it yourself. You have to
let Him lift you up.
So, are you going to spend your life being a liability to yourself ?
Or will you let Him lift you up?
20

B E T T E R WAY S T O
B E T T E R DAY S
Whoever would love life and see good days must
keep his tongue from evil and his lips from
deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and
do good; he must seek peace and pursue it.
1 Peter 3:1011 NIV
It would appear that a good many people today are dissatis-

fied with life and profoundly dissatisfied with themselves. Now
there are many proper reasons for being dissatisfied with con-
temporary civilization, but that isnt what I have in mind at this
moment. Of course, unless there were constantly in each suc-
ceeding generation a creative discontent, things would become
static and without progress. But the dissatisfaction of many
people today is underscored by something that has pathologi-
cal overtones to it. T here is widespread exasperation, ranging all
the way from common irritation and annoyance to dramatic life
failures. Untold thousands of people are reaching for better ways
to better days. As an example of the dramatic aspect of all this,
21

CONFIDENCE
and I might add the pathetic aspect as well, I have a typewritten

note found by a congregant of mine on the sidewalk. Here is the
way it reads:
King Heroin is my shepherd, I shall always want, He maketh
me to lie down in the gutters. He leadeth me beside the troubled
waters. He destroyeth my soul. Now whoever wrote that had, I
would say, a fair amount of graphic and tragic genius. And on the
reverse side is handwritten the following postscript: Truly this is
my psalm. I am a young woman, twenty years of age, and for the
past year and one half I have been wandering down the nightmare
of the junkie. I want to quit taking dope and I try but I cant. Jail
didnt cure me. Nor did hospitalization help me for long. T he doc-
tor told my family it would have been better, and indeed kinder, if
the person who first got me hooked on dope had taken a gun and
blown my brains out. And I wish to God she had. My God how I
do wish it.
This is representative of thousands of people today who, never
having heard the clear, authentic word on how to live life and
find it good, have taken the road that leads only to a dead end.
T his, of course, is a superdramatic example. But how many people
are there right around us who long for better days, days of more
peace, more goodness, more happiness, more love, more brother-
hood; and who constantly seek and wistfully wish for better ways
to better days? How can better days be brought about? Do you
want an answer about how to live? T here is one place to find it
in the pages of the Holy Bible. T his is a book that is alive; there
is vitality, there is excitement, there is exultation, there is great-
ness, there is life on every page. And the Bible writers knew how
to tell it like it is. Long before this modern phrase was invented,
22

the Bible writers were telling it like it is. So how do you find good
days? It is very simple. In 1 Peter, the third chapter, you will find
this statement: Whoever would love life and see good days must
keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.
He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and
pursue it.
T here it is, take it or leave it, says the Bible. It is either-or. If you
want to be happy, if you want to have good days, just skip the evil
and go for the good. T he evil is wrong, and when you do wrong
everything goes wrong; but the good is right, and when you do
right things turn out right. It is just that open and shut. T hen the
Bible, which is a straightforward, honest, man-sized book, goes
on to indicate youd better do what it says, but warns that there is
nothing soft about it, nothing evasive. It simply tells what is going
to happen if you go for the evil: T he eyes of the Lord are on the
righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry; the face of the Lord
is against those who do evil (Psalm 34:15 niv).
T hat sounds old-fashioned, doesnt it? Well, that is the way it
is. Remember, the Bible does not guarantee freedom from pain,
sorrow, trouble, difficulty, and heartache, but it does promise
inner happiness and good days. So to have better ways to better
days, keep all this in the background of your mind. Here are one
or two suggestions for accomplishing it. First, live honestly. How
many people do live with absolute honesty? Have you ever been
completely honest with yourself? Have you ever told yourself the
whole truth about yourself? Have you ever faced yourself, not as
you think you are, but as you really are? How long has it been since
you made an appraisal of your strengths and your weaknesses?
Do you know whether you are deteriorating or whether you are
23

CONFIDENCE
growing? Are you a better, more confident, more knowledgeable

person now than you were ten years agoor are you a worse per-
son now than you were ten years ago? Honesty is the first principle
for having better ways to better days.
A very good thing to do is to sit down with yourself and
ask, What is my worst weakness? Dont ask your wife what your
chief weakness is. Shell probably name a half dozen. Dont ask
your husband. He could come up with a few. Just ask yourself,
What is my chief fault? When you find it, then study it. T here
it is. Maybe you have had it for years. Maybe it is the thing that
has been holding you back from better days. But, once having
isolated it, once having faced it honestly, you can decide what
you are going to do about it, with the help of the Lord Jesus
Christ. A person who is really honest with himself and has iso-
lated his faults and taken them to God can do something about
them. And, when a real fault is out of your way, what glorious
better days you can have! T he greatest person in the world is
an absolutely honest person (although sometimes he is not the
most pleasant person in the world!). And when you can help
another human to get honest with himself, he is on the way to
having something happen to him.
For example, I had a little exchange of letters with a doctor
who lives near Nashville, Tennessee. He is an old friend of mine
now. But this is the way our friendship began. He wrote me a letter.
I happened to write a newspaper column that appeared in about
two hundred newspapers throughout the country and apparently
he had been reading my column.
He wrote: Dear Dr. Peale: I have read every article by you that
has appeared in my local paper and I wonder how many people are
24

more unhappy in their lives, more mixed-up, after reading them.

T he trouble is, you say that whenever anything goes wrong all you
need to do is to pray about it and have faith and everything will turn
out right. Now I dont agree with you. I think in this life you either
get the breaks or you dont get them, and that a lot of people who
dont get them could have done just as much good if not better with
the same breaks as the people who got them. I dont think or believe
that any Supreme Being has a thing in the world to do with any of it.
You and your talks lead a man to think that prayer and faith can do
absolutely anything, and I want to tell you that that is a lot of bunk
and you know it. Sincerely yours.
Now that is what you might call a man-sized letter, and
when I read it I didnt like it too much. But then I got to think-
ing, Here is an honest man. T his letter was written on the 18th
of August and I didnt answer it until August 25. Its sometimes
a good idea not to answer a letter like that right off the bat; just
wait a little while.
So, after praying about it, I wrote him: Dear Doctor: It was
very nice of you to write to me. Even though you take exception to
my articles and in fact are aggressively opposed to them, neverthe-
less I was glad to hear from you. I have never been the type of person
who likes a yes man. In fact, I would almost rather get the kind of
letter you wrote than a complimentary one. I would just like you to
know, Doctor, that I absolutely believe what I write. It is not written
out of theory, but on a basis of facts which I have observed and per-
sonally experienced. You are a scientific man, and I will guarantee
that if you will put these principles into practice with an open mind,
an objective attitude, they will work for you also. With kind regards,
I am, Cordially yours.
25

CONFIDENCE
And we developed a nice correspondence. T hen one night I

went to Nashville and made a speech in a civic auditorium there.
Afterward, back home, I received this letter:
Dear Dr. Peale: I had to drop you a short letter and this is writ-
ten between patients. I was in Nashville last night and had the plea-
sure of hearing your lecture. I wanted to meet you but got there too
late, as I brought some Alcoholics Anonymous down and we just left
too late for me to try to see you. T his thing called power and faith I
have put to work and, believe me, it works. Some of the results you
get are absolutely uncanny. I cant believe some of the things that
have happened; still, they did happen. I just wanted to drop you
this note to tell you that prayer and faith absolutely work. Yours
sincerely.
Well, maybe I had better success with this man than with
some others. But the point I want to make is that, even though
he had a hostile attitude, it was evident that he was honest. He
wasnt satisfied with what he was. He knew his faults. He wanted
to be a different individual. He was reaching for something bet-
ter, and he fought back because he was being challenged. We
recognized this honesty and liked him for itin fact, loved him
for it. As we brought him to Jesus Christ he started forsaking
evil and doing good, with the result that he found better ways
to better days.
So, suggestion number one is: Be absolutely honest. T he next
thing is to be absolutely un-stereotyped. Now what in the world do
we mean by that? Just this: Each human being is born as an indi-
vidual, absolutely free within the great area of Gods love. But as we
grow from infancy to childhood and young manhood or woman-
hood we get rolled together into a mass. We are taught to talk alike,
26

to think alike, to act alike, with little or no variation from the stan-
dard, and the result is that the lilting, growth-seeking personality
is stultified and frustrated. We tend to become what we read in the
newspapers or what we see on television. We pick up the jargon of
the day. We dress according to the styles some character in Paris
happens to think up in order to sell more clothes. One time we had
long skirts scraping the ground. T hen we had miniskirts scraping
the elbow. But they have to keep varying the styles in order to sell
more goods; so next comes the emphasis on the maxi-skirt. T he
same is true in mens clothes; wide ties, narrow trousers, colored
shirts, we all follow along docilely.
What a pity that human beings who were meant by Almighty
God to be free should become victims of this tendency! Actually
it doesnt matter a whole lot what you have around your neck or
on your body, or whether your hair is long or short, so long as its
an expression of your individuality and not subservient clich that
crushes the personality that God meant you to have, to be free. So
if you want better days, a better way to get them is to be firmly and
freely yourself, as a child of God. God is a great individualist. He is
not a dullard. He could have stamped out a lot of faces like Coca-
Cola bottle tops, but He gave each of us an individuality different
from anybody elses. So be your own great wonderful self. You are
an immortal soul.
T his is what we all, deep down, are reaching for: to burst out
from behind our masks and be the released people that God put it
in our hearts to be. You are a free spirit. You must not let anything
hold you downyour weaknesses or disappointments or preju-
dices. You must take wings and live freeand be on your way to
better days.
27

EVERY PROBLEM
C O N TA I N S I T S
OWN SOLUTION
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful
things in your law.
Psalm 119:18 NIV
T he crowds on the streets of an English cathedral town were going

about their ordinary daily activities. Suddenly someone spotted a
woman standing on a narrow ledge high on one of the towers of
the cathedral. A great crowd gathered below, hushed and horrified.
Policemen at once climbed the tower and attempted to bring her
down. A minister came and talked with her, asking that she tell
him whatever was on her mind. But after some thirty minutes of
indecision, she flung herself from the tower down onto the street.
Nobody found out what problems had driven the woman to her
desperate act. But there is one thing she apparently didnt know,
or to which she gave no concern. It is the great, powerful truth that
29

CONFIDENCE
for every problem there is an answer. Or, to put it another way,

every problem contains the elements of its own solution.
One of the wisest statements ever made on this subjectone
I have quoted before, I am quite surewas made by a member of
Marble Collegiate Church. It is a classic. T his statement was made
by Stanley Arnold, one of the top idea men of this country. He
services a number of the great industries of the United States with
sales and merchandising ideas and his services come very high,
because he is a thinker. He thinks up ideas and he knows how
to phrase them. T his one is worth its weight in gold if you could
weigh it. Every problem, he says, contains the seeds of its own
solution. Not the seeds of its dissolution, but the seeds of its solu-
tion. As I say, Ive quoted that before, but perhaps it ought to be
repeated from time to time until at last the truth of it really grabs
usthe truth that right at the heart of any problem, however dif-
ficult it may seem, is buried the solution thereof. Now, when you
are talking about thinking and ideas and truth, church is the right
place to be, because the Bible is at the center and it is quite a book.
Every smartness that has ever existed is in its pages. It is full
of ideas that are as modern as tomorrow mornings newspaper.
In the 119th Psalm, the eighteenth verse (kjv), is this one: Open
thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.
What law? Why, the basic law of the universe. Not the law of aero-
dynamics or the law of mechanics, but the law of God, the law of
the mind, the law of the soul, the law of the spirit. Open thou
mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. One
of these wondrous things, and it is truly a wondrous thing, is that
every problem that you or I can have contains the seeds of its own
solution. So you dont need to feel defeated or overwhelmed by any
30

problem you may have, because the solution is there if you will
open your eyes to find it and see it. T he ancient thinker Epictetus
wrote, When you have shut your doors and darkened your room,
remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone;
but God is within and your genius is within. What a truth! So
what is your problem? Hold it out there in front of you and give
it a good looking over. Rip it apart; break it up. Dissect it; analyze
it. And right at the center of it, buried like a gem, is its solution.
Well, you say, thats great, but how do you do it?
Let us suggest three principles for so doing. First, think! Really
think. Second, believe! Really believe. T hird, pray! Really pray.
T here you have three dynamic principles and with those princi-
ples you can, I do believein fact I knowfind an answer, the
answer, the right answer to any human problem. Let us take that
first one. T hink! Let me ask you something. How long has it been
since you really thought? I might ask that of myself. When did I
last think? I dont like to think. Do you? Its painful. It is one of the
most painful exertions known to man, thinking, deep thinking.
And we shrink from it. We like to be relieved of the necessity of it.
So we think off the top of our heads. And the trouble with those
thoughts off the top of the head is that they do not go down into
the depths. But when one gets over the first hump of really think-
ing, gets into the area where it is creative, actually its a delightful
and exciting experience. John Burroughs, one of the greatest nat-
uralists this country ever produced, probably the greatest, said he
felt that there are just two classes of people in the world. He said
that he didnt mean men and women, or young and old, or rich
and poor. T hey werent the classes to which he referred. T he two
classes in his mind were what he called the quick and the dead. By
31

CONFIDENCE
the quick he meant people who look at the world and see it, people
who listen to the world and hear it, people who get a message from
it. T he quick are people who are sensitized; they send out anten-
nae. T hey get the meaning of the world. In other words, they are
alive, they are alert, they are vibrant. T hose are the quick. As for
the other people, while they arent dead physically, they are dead
from the standpoint of sensitivity. T hey never grapple with ideas.
T hey never try a new way of doing something. T hey are dead in
the spirit. T hey live on the surface. So there are two classes, the
quick and the dead.
Now the quick are the people who can think. I maintain, and
I know it can be demonstrated, that you can think your way, with
the help of God, out of any crisis, out of any situation, out of any
problem, if you get your eyes open and see the wondrous things
that are in His law. Oh, there are so many illustrations of this!
But let me give you one. Recently my wife presented me with a
set of the sermons that I have preached in the Marble Collegiate
Church in the past twenty years. She had them bound in a series
of nice volumesvolume one, volume two, and so on, beginning
in 1950. T hats a lot of sermons. And she put them in my office. I
dont know whether she put them there for enlightenment or for
decorative purposes. T he color of the bindings does fit in with
the dcor, you might say. Well, I was very impressed by these vol-
umes and I thought Id look and see if I could find anything inside
that was impressive also. Now bear in mind I was reading my own
sermonswhich shows to what extremity I was reduced. But I
picked up the volume for 1951 and read one of the sermons there
and, you know, even though I say so myself, it wasnt half bad.
At least I found in it the story of an incident that I had long since
32

forgotten, but which is really a beauty of an example of how to

think in the face of a tough problem.
When I talk this way, I know some of the people sitting out
in front of me are thinking, Look, you dont know how tough my
problem is. Well, that shows that you are thinking, but you are
thinking negatively. T his was the story: It seems that there was a
couple by the name of Husted who lived in a little town in South
Dakota called Wallpopulation, I guess, some five or six hun-
dred. T his was back at the time when there was a great drought all
over that part of the country. T here were days on end without any
rain and the soil was finely pulverized. T he winds would catch it
and sweep it up in great dust clouds, forming what was known as
the great Dust Bowl. T his caused one of the greatest migrations in
American historya migration of people who could no longer get
any value out of a farm. Farm prices fell to nothing. People were
ruined. T here was poverty everywhere, all over that whole region.
Now this Mr. and Mrs. Husted ran a drugstore in their little town
and under such conditions, as you can well imagine, the drugstore
business wasnt going very well. So one day when the temperature
was 100 in the shade, they were sitting there with no customers
coming into their store. T hey were facing financial ruin, although
they never admitted that they were, for they knew that there must
be some way out.
T hey sat at the front window with their chins in their hands,
watching people rolling along on the highway, which wasnt
well paved, so there were great clouds of dust. T here was no car
air-conditioning at that time, so you had to keep the windows
open. And the dust was sweeping into these cars. Mrs. Husted
said, Here is the proposition: We have something for these people
33

CONFIDENCE
in this store. How can we make them know that we have some-
thing for them, so that the two of us will get together? You see,
all the cars just passed rapidly through that little one-horse town.
Now I have developed this at great length in order that you may
see a problem in which you might think there wasnt a ray of hope.
But this woman was a great Christian. She had great faith. She had
her eyes open to see wondrous things in Gods law. So she prayed,
she believed, and she thought. And she asked herself, What would
those people out there at this moment, with one hundred degrees
in the shade and this dust, like to have more than anything else?
And the answer came to her out of her head as she was thinking:
What they would love to have is a big glass of ice water.
So she and her husband made signs. They went 100 miles on
either side of the town and put up signs along the highway, then
at fifty miles, and twenty-five miles, and ten miles. They made big
signs that said, To all passing motorists: There is a free glass of pure,
delicious ice water awaiting you at the Wall Drugstore. Wall, South
Dakota. Hold on until you can get to Wall. Later they even went as
far east as Albany, New York, and put up a sign saying, For a free
glass of ice waterthe Wall Drugstore, Wall, South Dakota, 1,725
miles farther on. Did people flock to the drugstore? Of course they
did. It wasnt long before Mr. and Mrs. Husted had twenty-five clerks,
not only handing out ice water but selling merchandise as well.
T his is the point: what do you mean, you cant find an
answer to your problem? T he trouble is that oftentimes we wont
acknowledge that there is a possibility of a solution. We even
get a little irritated if anybody tells us that our problem is not with-
out solution. T here is a solution to any problem. It doesnt neces-
sarily come easy. Of course not. But if you practice those three
34

principlesthink, really think! believe, really believe! and pray,

really pray!the result will be that your eyes are opened and you
see wondrous things in Gods law. And His law is what? It is the
law of prosperity; it is the law of abundance; it is the law of good-
ness; it is the law of love. And it is just full of creative possibilities
and potentials, just full. T he Lord wants to give you everything.
You wont be able to get it, however, unless you think, unless
you believe, unless you pray. But if you do, then you will find
the solution to any problem. With the second principlebelieve,
really believethe question is: how deeply do we believe? Do we
just believe off the surface of the mind? In the book of Jeremiah
(29:13 kjv), we read, And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye
shall search for me with all your heart.
Nobody ever made anything great out of his life who didnt do
it with all his heart. I remember talking years ago with a motion
picture star whose name would be known to everybody. I knew
that she had had a great deal of trouble in her life. I asked, How
come you keep at it with such enthusiasm?
Why, she answered, because I love it. I give my whole self to
it. And she did. She wasnt any raving beauty, but she threw every-
thing she had into it. If with all your heart you give yourself to
your business, to your children, to your marriage, to your future,
to your hopes, you are going to come out with something that is
lasting and strong. Believe. T hats it. Not long ago I addressed
a luncheon of the National Association of Manufacturers in
the Waldorf-Astoria Grand Ballroom. T here was a huge crowd,
including most of the great businessmen of this country. And I got
into a conversation with someone who said, T here is a man here
you would like.
35

CONFIDENCE
I remarked, I seem to like all the people Im meeting here.

T his man is a special case, he said. Talk about trouble, pov-
erty, difficulty! He had it. But, in spite of all, he won through and
has created a great enterprise. So naturally I sought the man out.
I had only two minutes with him and asked this question, What
is the secret of your success?
He began to disclaim but I persisted, No, give me the facts.
I know youve done a great job. How did you do it?
Well, he replied, there were times when it looked as though
the business might fold, but I never let go of my belief in it. I just
believed it into greatness. And thats another phrase that might
be called a classic. I believed it into greatness. So, whatever your
job, believe it into greatness. If you have a child or a young person
who may be giving you a little bother, just believe him into great-
ness. Believe everything into greatness.
Open thou mine eyes . . . Oh, what a passage that is! Open
thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy
law. Law is the way it works scientifically. T hink, really think.
Believe, really believe. T here is no limit to the power of believing.
T he third principle, pray, really pray, is like the first two. It is effec-
tive, not by surface application, but only as you pray in depth. T he
mumbling of ritual prayers without probing their depth of mean-
ing and applying them to everyday problems will not solve your
difficulties. It is only as belief turns into prayer that the answers
come and Gods power is brought into a situation.
Let me tell you about a little incident that happened a good
many years ago in the Midwest, in a farmhouse of the kind from
which most of America originally came. A boy seventeen years old
was desperately ill. He had pneumonia. In those days pneumonia
36

was a sinister disease. It is nothing to trifle with even today, but

now we have drugs that can fight it successfully. T here were no
such drugs in those days. You survived, if you did survive, because
you had basic good health or because you asked God to give you
life. Medicine in those days could help, but it was not decisive.
Well, it was late at night and this boy was lying there in a coma.
T he doctor said, T his boy is really healthy and strong and his
lungs respond to a certain degree. I see no reason why he should
die. Im baffled.
He sat there in his shirtsleeves, studying the boy. T he clock
on the wall was ticking, the parents were huddled together,
the younger children were frightened, and the neighbors were
concerned. Finally the doctor said, What this boy needs is a
transfusion. T hey all immediately responded, Well give blood.
No, said the doctor, it isnt a blood transfusion that he
needs, but a faith transfusion, a desire to live. In some way he is
near death because the faith isnt there to pull him through.
What a doctor! He said, If something doesnt happen in the
way of a transfusion like that, he will die before morning. Well,
there was an old farmer there who had his Bible in his hand, a great
big hand grown strong from struggling with the earth, cradling
the Bible lovingly. T his farmer was a believer. He had no univer-
sity education in the usual sense, but he had gone to the university
of the Bible. He was a simple man and he took the Bible as it was.
He took the promises of God as they were. He just accepted them;
he didnt doubt them; he believed in them. He had the faith of a
little child. When the doctor said the boy needed a faith transfu-
sion, he drew near to the patient. He put his mouth down close
to the boys ear and started reading him great passages out of the
37

CONFIDENCE
Bible, with the thought that he was driving them into the boys
unconscious mind, trying to reach the center of control. T he
hours passed and he read on. T he clock continued to tick. T he
doctor paced the floor. On and on, hour after hour, the farmer
drove those healing thoughts into the boys unconscious mind
until finally, when the first faint streaks of dawn came, suddenly
the boy gave a sigh, his eyes opened, he looked at the man and at
all the people in the roomgave them a big smile and fell into a
deep, untroubled, normal sleep.
T he doctor felt his pulse, checked the vital signs, and with
tears in his eyes said, T he transfusion has succeeded. T he crisis
has passed. T he boy will live! And he did live. Saved by what?
By faith and prayer and thought. T he problem had its solution
right within itself as all problems do. Open thou mine eyes, that I
may behold wondrous things out of thy law. T hink, really think!
Believe, really believe! Pray, really pray! T hen, no matter what the
problem, you will be capable of finding the solution contained
inside of it, like a diamond in the rough.
38

H O W T O S TA N D
UP TO A TOUGH
S I T UAT I O N
Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also
in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
Psalm 37:5 KJV
How to stand up to a tough situation . . . There you have a subject

that everyone, including the speaker, needs to know about. And an
answer to this may be given in one sentence, or it can be enlarged
into a whole discourse. The one sentence is very simple, but if it is
believed in and used it can help you stand up successfully to any
tough situation, no matter what kind it may be. This may seem
like claiming a great deal, but the claim is a valid one. The sentence
is found in the fifth verse of the thirty-seventh Psalm, one of the
greatest truths ever enunciated. Here it is: Commit thy way unto
the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. Reduced
to modern language, that means: Dont struggle so hard. Dont get
39

CONFIDENCE
yourself worked up. Dont fill your life with tension. Do the best
you can with any situation and then commit itthat means put it
completely in the hands of the Lord, trusting absolutely in Him, and
He will bring it to pass in a right and proper manner. This is an
old truth, but the wisest and most astute of men and women have
believed it, have applied it, and have found it will absolutely, posi-
tively work. It is a strange thing how tough situations seem to get
us all down. But they dont need to if we get a right and creative
attitude toward them. Maybe right now you are thinking, Brother,
you dont now what a tough situation Im facing. Well, that is great.
We have a great answer for you. And this great answer will match
your great need.
A friend of mine, a minister by the name of Charles Boonstra,
was out fishing with his son. I dont know how old the son was,
but, judging from Charless age, I would estimate between nine-
teen and twenty, or maybe seventeen or eighteen. T he two of them
must have been in pretty good communication with each other,
because as the father described rather negatively and at great
length a tough situation that he was facing, the boy listened for
a while and then gave his father an answer, which in my humble
judgment is a classic. T his one statement alone is worth all the
trouble you are taking to hear or read this sermon. He said to his
father, Oh, knock it off, Dad. Remember this day is the first day
of the rest of your life!
Now how in the world he ever thought of that, who knows?
But the father said it penetrated his dark mass of unhappiness and
cleared the air. If, he said to himself, this is the first day of the rest of
my life, Im going to get going and Im going to do it good! I have the
power, with Gods help, to handle this tough situation.
40

Which he proceeded to do. An important part of handling a

tough situation is to personalize it as something you have to deal
with, almost invest it with a personality, and stand up to it. Dont
let yourself be overwhelmed by it. Put it out there by itself. Look
it in the eye and bring up your resources. Do as a man I heard
about who was faced with a very tough situation and felt it was
getting him down. In the middle of the night he did some praying
and he did some Bible reading and he did some thinkingand
those three things taken together will wrap up an answer to any-
thing. It came over him that through the power of the Lord he
could handle this thing. He went out on the lawn of his house and
he visualized his tough situation standing there in front of him
and he personalized it and spoke to it, saying, You stand there. I
want to talk to you. He put his hands on his hips and he spread his
feet wide apart and he said to that tough situation, You have no
power to hurt me at all. Do you get that? And I have what it takes
to handle you! Im going to commit my way unto the Lord; Im
going to trust in Him; and He will bring it to pass.
What youve got to do once in a while, you know, is to stand up
and remember who you are. Youre a man. Youre a woman. Youre
not a weakling. Youre not a worm. Youre a child of God. Dont
be pushed around by a situation. Start pushing situations around
with strength and with power. Well, you say, that sounds
all right, but its rather oratorical and bombastic. How do you
actually do it?
Here are a few suggestions. One: Dont fall into the error of
being influenced by people who gloomily tell you that you must
face the facts. Obviously the facts are important, but dont be
overawed by them, because facts can and do change. So dont have
41

CONFIDENCE
your eyes only on the facts. Get your eye fi xed on something that
doesnt change: the wisdom and the power and the love of God.
Take your eyes off the facts and put your eyes on God. Lets just
explore this business about how youve got to face the facts. Ive
heard that said so many times. Here is a man about fift y-five years
of age who loses his job and doesnt know where to get another
one. A well-meaning friend comes around and says, Jack, lets
face it. When youre fift y-five its pretty tough to get another job.
You might as well face the facts.
Now, if enough people say that to Jack, he is likely to settle
for facing the facts. Or heres a couple who fell in love, got mar-
ried, raised some children, and then began to grow apart. T hey
tell their friends all about the conflicts they are having, and some
well-meaning person says, Well, you might as well break it up.
Youll never get together again. You might as well face the facts.
And so you could go right down the line with a negative treat-
ment of every situation. But in each of these a wise friend would
say, Yes, sure, this is tough and you may have some difficulty and
there may have to be some give-and-take and some struggle. But
be thankful we have a big God, and He will help you to straighten
out that situation and overcome the facts.
T he important question is: How much are you willing to trust
God? I tell you, friends, I honestly believe that if you trust Him
completely, with all your heart, youll never go wrong. And why
should you trust God? Because He is right. He is rightness itself.
He is the truth. T here is no error in Him. And if you stay with
Him there will be no error in you.
So, when trouble comes to you, dont just face the factsface
God. Another thing is to think big, believe big. T he bigger you
42

believe, the bigger the results will be. Do you want a little result? I
can tell you how to get a little result: T hink little, believe little, and
youll get a little result. T hink big, believe big, and youll get a big
result. Even God Himself cant give you or me any more than we
are mentally and spiritually conditioned to receive. He gives to us
in direct proportion to what our thoughts are, what our faith is.
You know, the Bible isnt only a holy book; it is the worlds greatest
gathering of scientific principles on how to live. Sometimes these
principles are set forth in strange ways and you have to dig to find
them, but they are there.
For example, in the second book of Kings there is this story
about a man named Elisha: Elisha had a disciple who died and
left his widow in impoverished circumstances. After a while the
widow got so that she had practically nothing. She came to Elisha
and said, I am really up against it. I have nothing in the house and
I have many debts. My creditors even now are threatening to come
and take my children as satisfaction for my debts. Im desperate.
Elisha asked, What have you? Have you anything at all?
I have a jar of oil, she answered. Now oil was and always
has been a precious commodity. Elisha said, All right. Ill tell you
what you do. Go to all the neighbor women and borrow vessels.
Borrow as many empty vessels as youd like to have fi lled with oil,
and take them to your house. Later Ill tell you what to do.
So she went out and borrowed some vessels, but not very
many. Her faith was small; she was thinking small. T hen Elisha
said, All right now. Take your cruse of oil and start pouring it into
these vessels.
She did and the oil kept on flowing until all the vessels were
full. Only when the last vessel was full did it stop flowing. Maybe
43

CONFIDENCE
there are people who would write this off as some kind of magic.
T hey dont understand that in this is buried a principle. And what
is the principle? Simply this: Our thoughts are vessels, our ideas
are vessels, our prayers are vessels, our faith is a vesseland,
depending upon how big we make the vessels, God pours His
illimitable resources into us. If you come up with only some timid,
little thought, then you get a little poured in and you complain, I
cant live on that!
And of course you cant. But if you develop your thoughts
until they are huge, if you believe that Gods generosity is abso-
lutely unbounded, if you live with Him in your big thoughts, then
He will support you with His marvelous blessings. T hat is the
principle. It has worked for hundreds of years; it is workable now.
And I know people who work it.
One morning last summer I was in Teheran, in the lobby of
the hotel. It was Monday morning. I mention this because it is
important to my narrative. T he night before I had preached to a
wonderful congregation of English-speaking people living in the
city of Teheran. Now it was Monday morning and I saw walking
through the lobby an amiable-looking, friendly gentleman who
smiled as he approached me. His swarthy complexion made me
think he was an Iranian, but I didnt know. We had had no words
up to this point. Presently he asked, Are you an American? Yes,
sir, I replied. He told me hed been living in Illinois for quite
some time. He had left Iran sixty years before to set up business
in the United States, and now he was on a visit to the old country.
He asked, Did you hear Dr. Peale at that church last night? Right
away I could see he didnt know me. Yes, I heard him, I admitted.
How did he do? he said. Well, to tell you the truth, he didnt do
44

too well, I said. T hats strange, he replied. I heard him once

and he did pretty good. I guess he must be slipping.
Well, I finally enlightened him and we became good friends.
I said, What business are you in, sir? I am in the oriental rug
business. Ive been buying rugs in Teheran for years and sell-
ing them in the Midwest. He handed me his card, which said,
Oriental Rug King.
My friend, I said, I have a problem, and maybe you can help
me. My wife says that she is not going to leave Teheran without
buying a small Isfahan rug. Ive tried to talk her out of it, but I
havent succeeded, and I dont know where to go to get a rug.
Oh, he replied, dont you go. You wouldnt know how to do
it. You go with me. Now, friends, never in all my life have I seen
such bargaining genius as this man displayed. It was worth the
price of two rugs to watch him work. On the way back to the hotel
we talked some more and he told me that his being in Iran this
time was not just to buy rugs.
Im here, he said, to build a church in my native village. Im
going to pay for it all myself. Im going to build a church to the
glory of God. I was a poor boy with no opportunities, but, fortu-
nately, in my early years I was taught to believeand the more I
believed, the more God poured blessings on me. So Im going to
help pour out His blessings on more people.
So get out the vessels, all you can find, every thought you can
muster, and open them all and let God pour His oil down in them.
Commit unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to
pass. T hat is the message.
Now the third thing I want to recommend to you is to employ
the power of prayer. T his is hard to get across, because everybody
45

CONFIDENCE
agrees with me. But do you agree enough to join in a recognition

of the kind of prayer we are talking about? It is not just mumbling
a little prayer off the top of your head. Even that is good, but it
doesnt carry much power. T he kind of prayer that gets big results,
big enough to handle tough situations, is continuous, agonizing
prayer in depth. T hat kind of prayer releases forces and powers that
are indescribable. I have seen people pray themselves out of and
pray themselves above the most terrible difficulties, the most dif-
ficult problems, the greatest hardships. But this has been through
deep, sustained prayer that drives down into the consciousness.
Long ago my wife and I were entertained by President and
Madame Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan. We went up to their sum-
mer home at Lishan, which is a distance from Taipei, the capi-
tal, traveling on that marvelous cross-island highway, one of the
greatest road-building achievements I have ever seen anywhere in
the world. And there we spent the late afternoon and evening and
stayed until the next morning with these friends whom we have
known for many years.
I have never seen any change in this man. Time seems to have
no effect on him. T here isnt a wrinkle in his suntanned face. His
eyes are lustrous and soft and clear and he wears no glasses. He
stands lithe and straight. He has an infectious smile and laugh. He
is sharp and keen in his conversation. He seems to have a kind of
eternal youth. I asked him, Mr. President, at eighty-plus, how do
you stay so healthy, so vibrant, so alert? Whats your secret?
Its a simple secret, he answered, but it is also a costly secret.
Just pray three times every day.
Madame Chiang, who was sitting nearby, said, But, Norman,
its the kind of praying you do. Its not for two minutes and not for
46

ten minutes. My husband prays, meditates, thinks, and surrenders

to Christ for thirty minutes three times every day. T hat is an hour
and a half of praying every day. And he has given orders to his
associates that, no matter what the circumstances are, he is never
to be disturbed when he is at prayer and meditation.
T he next morning I awoke at 5:30. From my bed I could look
out the window and see a red-lacquered balcony. (T he place is
built in the old Chinese style.) T here I saw Chiang Kai-shek walk-
ing up and down. He was wearing a long black cape and a cap,
for it was cold, and he was followed by two huge dogs. He had his
hands together and his lips were moving, so I knew he was pray-
ing. It was his first half-hour prayer period, at 5:30 in the morning.
And later, before we departed, we stood in a circle holding hands
with the president and his wife as again prayer was offered. T here
is power in this world, great power, that can be ours if we are will-
ing to pay the disciplinary price of prayer in depth. Commit thy
way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
T hen you can say to any situation, You have no power over me
at all. I can handle you. Even the toughest situation. With Gods
help, it isnt so tough after all. Amen to that.
47

WHY THE CROWDS
LOVE HIM
I, when I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men to myself.
John 12:32 NIV
Its a pastoral clich to say that I want to talk about the most excit-
ing person who ever lived, about the most lovable man who ever
walked the earth, about the greatest brain that ever strayed into
human history, about the most incredible personality who ever
came among usof course, Im talking about Jesus Christ our
Lord. No one can leave a spell over our hearts as can Jesus. No one
can enthrall us like the Nazarene. T heres truth in every clich, as
the saying goes.
I attended a church service some years ago in Lucerne,
Switzerland. It was an Anglican Church, the only English-
speaking Protestant service in that Swiss city. T he congregation,
therefore, consisted not only of Anglicans and Episcopalians, but
of members from all American denominations. T he preacher was
49

CONFIDENCE
an Englishman with a real English accent. He gave the ritual-

istic part of the service beautifully, using the ancient, sonorous
prayers, which he recited impeccably. T hen he crossed from the
reading desk to the pulpit and suddenly he became a different
personality.
T his man was an old army chaplain. He changed at once from
flawless English into the vernacular. I can see him yet, a great raw-
boned fellow, as he leaned over the pulpit and shook his finger at
the congregation and said, Now look, friends, I am going to talk
to you about the best friend you ever had. Im going to talk to you
about the One who understands you better than anybody on this
earth. Im going to talk to you about the One who can bring the
best self out of you. You better listen to me. And you better love
Him. Im going to talk to you about Jesus Christ.
Sitting there where through the window I could see Mount
Pilatus shouldering out the sky, I was aware of a hush that settled
over the congregation as this man talked in direct, simple English
about the One Who is more loved than any personality who ever
entered into human life. Strange, the effect He has on people! Ive
seen strong, tough men grow misty-eyed when you talk about
Him. Ive seen congregations melted down by Him.
T his happens also in other situations. In a certain American
city the Lions Club sponsored a Lenten Season presentation. I
came across it when, walking through the city park, I saw a long
truck from which came religious music. On the side of the truck
was a sign stating that inside T he Last Supper was depicted in wax.
And it went on to say that this was presented by the Lions Club,
admission free, but voluntary offerings would be used for some
charitable purpose.
50

T he idea of seeing T he Last Supper in wax did not particularly

appeal to me. Ive been to Madame Tussauds wax works in Times
Square, and you never quite get the feel of a personality in wax.
But at any rate, since it was free, I thought Id go in.
There were with me the following, standing quietly and behold-
ing The Last Supper: an indescribably dirty little boy, of about six
maybe. His hands hadnt had any affinity with soap and water in a
long time. Even his face was dirty. But he was lovable. Then there was
a couple. They both had long hair and at first it was difficult to deter-
mine which was the boy and which was the girl. They were of the
hippie type. The boy had on a leather jacket with a kerchief around
his neck. The girl had on a mini-mini-skirt. Last, there was a feeble
old man, and myself. We all stood there looking at The Last Supper.
T he figure of Judas was exquisitely done. You could see the
greed, clearly depicted in the wax. And there was Simon Peter,
strong yet weak, both elements showing on his countenance. But
it was the figure of Jesus in the center that caught our attention.
He was portrayed as I like to see Him, not as a delicate man, but
as a very strong man. And there was on His countenance a look of
deep love and compassion. T he background of music was: On a
hill far away stood an old rugged cross. . . .
Suddenly I began looking at my companions. T he little boy
was gazing up with his mouth wide open, a look of wonder on
his face. T he old man, although bent, was looking intently and
long thoughts were revealed in his expression. T he young hippie
couple, holding hands, were lost in contemplation. All of us were
caught and held by Jesus.
As we left we made our offerings. I was just after the little boy.
He grubbed down into his pocket and came up with a nickel, which
51

CONFIDENCE
he placed in the box. My one-dollar contribution seemed insignifi-

cant in comparison and therefore I increased it to two dollars and
even that didnt seem enough. As we walked into the street, into
the bustling crowds of a modern American city, we were all under
the spell of a Man who had lived over 1,900 years ago in the flesh,
but who lives today no less. Let us think back to that first Palm
Sunday long ago when Jesus came into the capital city. He did not
come on some great white horse preceded by troops and guarded
by an FBI. He came in on a donkey. Now the donkeys of the Holy
Land are very small. T hey are not much bigger than large dogs.
One time when in the Holy Land I had a great desire to bring one
of them home with me. Even though I am not too tall, my feet
would almost surely scrape the ground riding on one. Jesus must
have had to tuck His feet up when He rode on that donkey. For
a lesser man it might have looked ludicrous, but when He rode
it was the King of Kings coming, the Son of David, the Savior of
Mankind. He had an inexpressible power and dignity in His per-
sonality. T here has never been anyone like Him.
When He spoke, people asked, Where did this man get these
words? No man ever spoke as He did. And the crowds shouted
acclaim for Him. You can go through those crowds in imagination
and see some of the biblical characters who must have been there,
individuals for whom He had done immense things. Naturally
they loved Him and they shouted for Him. And there have been
people shouting for Him all across the years. We shout for Him
today too.
But we must stop just shouting for Him and do something
for Him. I think one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the
Christian Church is for followers of Jesus to be inactive in these
52

present days. T here are thousands of churches in this land that

have taken what they call His principles and proceeded to pro-
pound them, but have forgotten Jesus Himself. His principles are
the greatest ever to be enunciated. T hey come from the greatest
mind in all of human history. T hey are the blueprint of the future.
But you never reach the masses of people with principles alone.
T he secret of the victory of the Christian Church across the ages is
and has been Jesus Himself.
T he Bible tells us that He said: And I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto me (John 12:32 kjv). Hold Him up
and people cant resist Him; they cant turn away from Him. He
not only has a great intellect; He not only knows the score; He not
only has the truth; but He puts out His arms in love to all man-
kind, no matter what they do. T he Bible relates that one time when
He spoke the multitudes sought to touch Him. T hink of that! T he
whole multitude, listening, reached forward to touch Himnot
touch His idea, but touch Him, . . . for power came forth from him
and healed them all. Why wouldnt the crowds shout for Him?
For another thing, Jesus gives us the power to overcome any
tragedy, any difficulty, any problem in this life. I dont know what
your problem may be today. Willa Cather, the great author, said,
T here are only two or three human stories. . . . Basically, there
are only a few human problems, and they are all represented here
today, I am sure. Turn to Him and He will give you the power to
overcome. T here is unlimited power in Christianity if you really
go for it. Most people are content to take it superficially and get
merely a superficial effect. During the same visit to Lucerne, I
was writing a book, and I was sitting on a terrace, a place where
the mountain slope dropped off sheer for about five hundred feet.
53

CONFIDENCE
I liked working there because the view was magnificent from that
point. T he man who owned the hotel where I was staying came
along and asked me what I was doing, and I told him that I was
writing a book about faith. Id like to tell you about my father. You
know, this whole hotel complex was built by him. His father was
Fritz Frey, one of the greatest hotel men Europe ever produced.
His son went on, When my father was a young man fortunately
he had an accident and had to spend a year in the hospital.
Why do you say, fortunately, Mr. Frey?
Because, he replied, up to that time my father was a careless
believer, but during that year he read the Bible through several
times from the beginning to the end. And as he read he became
acquainted with Jesus. Jesus became the great obsession of his life.
My father had such faith that he could walk on the very edge of
this precipice and not be afraid. He was never afraid of anything,
from then until the day he died, because he lived with Jesus.
One of the greatest Americans who ever lived died recently.
Some commentator at the time of his passing compared him, as
a military man and political statesman, to George Washington.
But of all that has been written about Dwight Eisenhower, I like
the statement made by Lyndon Johnson the best. He said, A giant
of our age is gone. Eisenhower was also one of the most lovable
men I have ever known. He was great, but he was humblewhich
is partly why he was really great. One day I well remember I was
offering prayer at a big meeting in North Carolina and President
Eisenhower was on the platform. I had to go way out ten or twelve
feet to the edge of the rostrum to give the prayer. I felt somebody
come up beside me and I opened my eyes for a moment. It was the
president. He didnt want to stand in back. He came up and prayed
54

right along with the preacher. It was touching; it was real. He was
a man of God.
Once I had the esteemed privilege of a little visit with him, in
the course of which I asked him who was the greatest person he
had ever known. It was perhaps a curious question, but I thought
it was a good one. Besides, I wanted to know. He replied, T he
greatest person I ever knew? Oh, thats easy, very easy. It was my
mother.
Now, he continued, my mother was a devout Christian.
She believed in Jesus. All my family did. My mother never had
more than a few years of formal schooling, but she was very wise.
She went to school to a great Book, the Holy Bible, which gave her
perception, understanding, insight, and wisdom.
And oftentimes, said he, since Ive been in this job as pres-
ident I have wished that I could go to my mother. When Ive been
lost in problems, or over what to do about certain men, I have
thought, If only I could go to my mother! She understood men; she
understood problems. But she has been gone these many years and
I miss her.
One cold winter night, he continued, my mother and we
boys were playing cards together in our Kansas farmhouse. Now
dont get me wrong. My mother was very straight-laced. She
didnt play with the kind of cards that have kings and jacks and
queens on them. She wouldnt have them in the house. T his was
an old-fashioned card game called Flinch, but, like all card games,
it started with the dealing of a hand.
Well, my mother dealt me the worst possible hand and I
began to complain. Finally she said, Boys, put your cards down.
Now you, Dwight, especially, since youre complaining so much,
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CONFIDENCE
I want to tell you something. Look, that hand was dealt to you in
love. Its just a game and your mother dealt the hand. But when
you get out into the world youre going to be dealt many a bad
hand with no love in it.
Now, she said, I dont want you to complain. Remember
that you are an American and you are a Christianand that, no
matter how hard your adversity, God and the Lord Jesus will help
you. So you just play out the bad hands you get, confident that the
Lord will see you through. And He has, he concluded. Dwight
Eisenhower was a lover of this great figure who gives you the
power to handle all the difficulties and tragedies of life.
Another reason why millions love Him is that He loves us.
Do you think anybody loves you as He does? Your husband loves
you. Your wife loves you. Your children love you. Your mother
loves you. Your father loves you. But nobody loves you like Jesus.
He is your everlasting friend. He will see you through this life and
receive you to glory. He is a faithful friend. He will never fail you.
He will never let you down. T he greatest thing Jesus offers is love.
If our society would finally get smart and turn to Him, we
would solve our problems. But we still are so stupid, despite our
sophistication, that we believe the world can be changed by force.
Anybody and everybody who ever tried to change the world by
force failed. Even if you win a war, you dont win the peace.
Youve got the same problems on your hands. You really move
humanity by just one thing, love. And Jesus is the one great figure
of all time who has that most. He teaches love. He is love itself. So
we love Him because He loves us. Let me conclude with this: I had
a letter recently from Luther B. Bridgers Jr., of Atlanta, Georgia,
who asked me if I remembered his father, Luther Bridgers. And
56

indeed I do, for meeting him and hearing him tell of the tragedy
that struck him early in his life was an unforgettable experience.
I was in Georgia to give a talk and was entertained for din-
ner at the home of Luther Bridgers. He was a Methodist preacher
down in South Georgia. As a young man he had a beautiful voice.
T hey say he was a singer who could move you to tears. And he
married a beautiful girl and they had three children. Now, he was
an evangelist and went around to various towns to lead revival
meetings. He was a great preacher. And one day when he was leav-
ing home on his way to conduct a two-week meeting somewhere,
he looked back before he went around the corner and there was his
sweet wife, with a baby in her arms and by her side two little boys.
And they waved, Good-bye, Daddy. And he went off.
Well, on the last night of that two-week meeting, at one oclock
in the morning, he was called to the telephone and a friend at
the other end of the wire said, We are sorry to tell you, but your
house caught fire tonight and burned, and your wife and children
have been burned to death.
Bridgers dropped to his knees beside the telephone, crying to
God, Lord, I have preached this Gospel to other people, and have
told them it would comfort them in every hour of sorrow. Grant
that this same Gospel may comfort me.
Almost instantly, he said, he felt great strong arms around
him. He told me, T he feel of those arms was as real as your
presence here this evening. He carried the agony of that terrible
bereavement for months and years, but the love of Christ gave him
victory. He continued preaching. Eventually he remarried.
As he finished telling this story there in his parsonage in a
Georgia town, he went to the piano, saying, Let me sing you a
57

CONFIDENCE
song I wrote sometime after. And he sang an old gospel hymn

that Ive heard many times and maybe you have too. I hadnt
known it was he who wrote it, but there was his name at the top
of the piece. Now quite near the piano there happened to be a
canary in a cagea beautiful yellow canary. And as Luther sang
this bird sang. Im not attuned much to the intricacies of music,
but it seemed to me that the bird and the man were absolutely in
harmony. T he bird was singing at the top of its voice, and so was
the man. And the look on the mans facewell, it was wonderful
to behold. And this is what the man sang:
T heres within my heart a melody
Jesus whispers sweet and low,
Fear not, I am with thee, peace be still.
In all of lifes ebb and flow.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
Sweetest name I know,
Fills my heart with longing,
Keeps me singing as I go.
It is for this reason that human beings in the hard pathways
of life have loved Him and shout acclaim for Him, for they know
that at long last it is He Who will give them peace and victory. So
lets really stand by Him. It is an honor to be a part of that crowd.
58

KEEP BELIEVING
N E V E R L O S E FA I T H
I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the
goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Psalm 27:13 KJV
Some time ago I was talking with a gentleman who seemed to be

on top of the world, as the saying goes. He was filled with vibrancy.
He gave the impression of being 100 percent alivewhich cant be
said of everybody, thats for sure.
His attitude astonished me somewhat, because through the
years I knew how much trouble he had been through. Youve heard
it said, It never rains, but it pours. Well, it really poured upon
this man. But despite everything, he endured it all and, more than
that, he surmounted all of it victoriously. T here was happiness,
vitality, even excitement in him. You are a remarkable, undefeat-
able, indefatigable human being, I told him. You really are some-
thing special. How come?
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CONFIDENCE
He grinned and said, T he answer is: Years ago I bought

the message preached in Marble Collegiate Church, and with it
evolved a philosophy that will stand up under anything. Nothing
can break itand I mean nothing. And it can be stated in five
words: Keep believingnever lose faith.
T hat man is only one of the hundreds, even thousands, of
people for whom Marble Collegiate Church, with its message of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, has made all the difference between
victory and defeat, joy and despondency, hope and despair.
While reading in the twenty-seventh Psalm I came across these
words: I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of
the Lord in the land of the living. What a picture that sentence gives
of a man who was really up against it and would have fainted and
folded had he not been able to see that, despite how bad everything
was, the goodness of the Lord prevails in the land of the living!
Now, when you talk about a church, what do you mean? A
building? We may love the church buildings; they have associa-
tions and memories. But the church is decidedly not a building.
T he building just serves the convenience of the church. If our
building were demolished, we could go to Central Park, into the
meadow, and talk and think about Jesus Christand we would be
the Church. It is not a building.
Nor is the church an institution, rigid and dogmatic, laying
down certain rules. There may be some narrow-minded churches
that do that, but not the real Church. This Church, at least, is not
an institution, nor is it an ecclesiastical hierarchy. All churches have
officers, boards, committees and the like, but there is great danger
in the Church becoming a big machine. This Church is no machine.
The real Christian Church is a group of people dedicated to Jesus
60

Christ, who said, And ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free (John 8:32 kjv). We are a fellowship of peo-
ple, excited people, released people, people who have been set free.
We are common pilgrims together on the way that leads to truth
people committed to going out into society to do away with injus-
tices and evils and build a better world in the name of Christ. We
are a marching army, a group banded together, an alive fellowship.
I read an article based on interviews with college students
around the country who said they were abandoning the Church.
T heir reasons: they were tired of dogmatism; they were tired of
bombast; they were tired of institutionalism. Could it be that this
is all there is to be found in some churches? God forgive us if that
should be the case. T his Church is a fellowship that is full of joy
and happiness and ecstasy.
Some years ago a girl came here from the theatrical world and
she was rather cynical and down on life, but she was hungry for
something. She found it here in a group of people who had really
had an experience of Jesus Christ. Her whole outlook changed
and her face, good-looking before, became radiantly beautiful. A
young man from her old sophisticated crowd asked, What has
happened to you? T heres something about you . . .
She tried as best she could to explain it to him, I have Jesus
Christ deep within me.
I dont understand, but I know I want to marry you. Will you
take me the way I am? he asked.
But that wouldnt be a very good marriage, would it? Lets
just put it in Gods hands and see.
They spent every possible moment together. He would bring her
here to church, but would not come in, for he had the notion that
61

CONFIDENCE
Christianity and the church were for women and old folk. He waited
outside Sunday after Sunday. But he began to notice the people who
came out of the church. More than half of them were men, and many
were young men. They all seemed to be walking on air. He finally
decided to go in, as he put it, to see what goes on in this place.
She was a wise girl. She let him sit in a back pew until his
resistance changed to interest. T hen she brought him into the
group that had made such a difference in her own life. (Ah, its
wonderful what a woman can do with a man when she has the
touch of genius!) And his experience of Christ was even deeper.
Today they live in a western state and their minister tells me they
are one of the most powerful team influences in the whole area.
What a change in their lives!
A long while ago I was pastor of a church upstate where I met
a most remarkable human being, Harlowe B. Andrews. Everybody
called him Brother Andrews. He was very religious, but he was very
astute too. He is supposed to be the man who invented the first dish-
washer. He also ran the first supermarket in the United States way
back around 1890. He put perishable goods for sale on his shelves
five days out of California by fast freight. He was a genius; never had
much education, but he was a thinker. A banker in Syracuse told
me he never knew a man who had such a gift for making money as
Brother Andrews. He said, All he has to do is put out his hand and
money springs to him. I hung around him a long time trying to get
the gift but never succeeded.
Well, the church there had a big debt. T he Board had a meet-
ing one night and decided they couldnt raise the whole debtit
was too muchbut they would raise half the debt. I asked, Where
are we going to get it?
62

Why dont you go see Brother Andrews? they suggested.

You go! I said.
No, they insisted, you go.
So I drove out to where Brother Andrews lived. I approached
him very timorously, saying, Brother Andrews, I just thought
Id come to see you.
He said, I know that; youre here. But what do you want to
see me about?
Well, I hesitated, we must raise some money to try to clear
off the church debt, Brother Andrews.
How much are you going to raise? he asked. I told him. He
said, T hats only half the debt.
Yes, I replied, we didnt think we could raise more than half
the debt.
Well, he demanded, what are you standing there looking at
me for? What do you want me to do?
Are you going to give anything? I asked.
No, he said. T he answer is: not one nickel.
T hat didnt fill me with any burning enthusiasm, but I asked,
Why arent you going to give?
Because you are only going to try raise half the debt for a
great church of God. What is the matter with you? T hen he con-
tinued, Lets get down on our knees and pray. It has been many
years, but I still remember his prayer vividly. It went something
like this: Lord, this young fellow has been through a couple of
schools and is supposed to be educated; but, You know, Lord, he
just doesnt know anything. He hasnt got any nerve, and he is
the poorest kind of religious leader You ever saw. He hasnt got the
courage to ask anybody for money or to raise the whole debt. He
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CONFIDENCE
paused and let a silence fall. T hen he said, Lord, if he will buck
up and be a Christian and a real man and raise the whole debt, Ill
give him five thousand dollars. Amen.
I stood up. Are you actually going to give us five thousand
dollars? I asked with excitement.
You heard what I told the Lord, he replied. Five thousand
dollars, if you raise the whole debt.
But where are we going to get the rest of it?
Where you just got the first five thousand, he said. You
prayed for it and you got it.
What do you know about that! I exclaimed.
Now you want to know where to go to get the rest of it, do
you?
Yes.
Well, get down on your knees again. T his time he prayed,
Lord, please give us the name of a man who will give another five
thousand dollars. Oh, thank You, Lord. I got the name. T hank
You very much.
Who is he? I asked.
Its Dr. So-and-So.
Now look, Brother Andrews, I protested, Dr. So-and-So is
a sour, crabby man. Hes a cynic. He hardly ever comes to church.
And he is as tight as the bark on a tree. Hed never give us a nickel.
Brother Andrews reminded me, I talked to the Lord, and the
Lord told me you should go and ask him for five thousand dol-
lars. And he added, If he gives you five thousand dollars youll
be doing him the greatest favor anybody ever did him in his whole
life. It will set him free from himself and give him happiness. Now
go on down there and get that five thousand dollars.
64

As you can imagine, I drove very slowly. When I neared the

medical building where the doctor had his office, I sort of hoped
I wouldnt find a place to park. But right in front of the build-
ing I found one. T here were three or four elderly ladies sitting in
the waiting room. I told the nurse that I wanted to see the doctor,
but since there were some people ahead of me, I would come back
another day. No, she said, you can go on in.
I gulped. T he doctor was sitting at his desk, a glum look on his
face. He made a few discouraging remarks about life in general.
I thought, Oh, the time isnt right.
All right, all right, Norman, he said, whats the trouble with
you? Youre not sick, are you? Come on, come on. What is it you
want?
I began, Well, were raising some money . . .
Yes, he said, I heard you were. All right. What do you want
me to do? How much do you want me to give? Come on. Make it
plain.
I looked at him and thought, I wonder if he is good for a thousand
dollars. Then I got a vision of Brother Andrewss face. He is the kind
of man upon whom you build nations and empires and kingdoms of
God. His was a great face, like a granite cliff but a cliff against which
the sun was shining. I shall never forget that wonderful man. I said
to the doctor, Look here, Im your friend. I love you. Im going to
give you the greatest opportunity you ever had. Im going to do you
a tremendous favor. Im going to let you give five thousand dollars.
Whats that?! Five thousand dollars! And he mumbled in his
beard. Finally he said, All right. Something impels me to agree.
And no sooner had he said it than he turned to his checkbook and
wrote me a check for five thousand dollars.
65

CONFIDENCE
Now that check proved to be a key that opened up to that man

a whole new life. He got into the whole problem of the church
debt with me. He became very enthusiastic. His entire person-
ality changed. He lost his frustrations and fears. He became one
of the most dynamic, released human beings I have ever known,
and remained so until finally the Lord took him home one night
into the heavenly Kingdom. He hit upon one of the greatest prin-
ciples in mans experience: the release of life into joy and ecstasy
by letting yourself go and giving your prayers, your money, and
yourself.
So keep believingnever lose faithand give as youve never
given before; not just your money, but your heart. T hat is how to
fill your life with abiding happiness.
66

NEW HEART WHEN
DISHEARTENED
For God, who commanded the light to shine out
of darkness, hath shined in our hearts,
to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6 KJV
Recently I had the privilege of addressing 1,500 students, candi-

dates to be fliers in the United States Naval Air Force. T his was
at the United States Naval Air Training School at Pensacola,
Florida. Following my talk, I met with the chaplains attached to
that post. One of these chaplains had just returned from a year
in Vietnam, and I asked him about his experience there. He said
that he wouldnt have missed it for anything, but that it was a very
harrowing time. He told of one particularly tough ordeal during
a battle that raged across a small area for six hours or more. T he
shellfire was intense and went on for so long that it destroyed all
vegetation between the opposing forces. A heavy rain had turned
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CONFIDENCE
the ground into a sea of mud. T he sky was dark and threatening.
It was the chaplains duty, or as he put it, privilege to go out and
bring back the wounded men. T his was done at great personal
jeopardy, for the shellfire was heavy.
In this instance, crawling through the mud toward one man
who was farther out than the rest, his strength suddenly left him.
He was hit, superficially. He had already completed two or three
errands of mercy, and now, flat on his stomach in the mud, his
hands in the slime, the heart went completely out of him. He felt
he could not go any farther.
But just at that instant, he said, there was a break in the
clouds and a long shaft of sunlight came down to that muddy,
bloody earth and moved across the end of carnage to a spot just
in front of me and rested upon one beautiful lonely little flower
growing up out of the muck. It was the only sign of vegetation
left, a flower in the mud, surrounded by the dead and the dying,
illuminated by a shaft of light. T here came to me in that instant,
he continued, that passage of Scripture in 2 Corinthians where it
says, For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,
hath shined in our hearts. New heart came to me, an infusion of
new strength filled my body, and a new determination made me
know I could bring back that wounded man.
Now under less dramatic circumstances every one of us
faces times and conditions in which our strength is depleted,
our energy sapped, and we experience that deep trouble of the
human spirit known as disheartenment. But just then, if you
will look for it, God will repeat His miracle. He will cause light
to shine out of darkness and you will have new heart when
disheartened.
68

All over the world there are disheartened people. If you are
not disheartened at this particular moment, by the law of averages
you probably have been at some time, or you will be in the future.
So it is very proper and wise and advantageous to know how to get
new heart when you are disheartened.
One thing you can do is to deliberately and consciously build
a backfire against disheartenment. When youre discouraged and
gloomy, it is very hard to do anything constructive about it. T he
tendency is to wallow in gloom and get a kind of masochistic sat-
isfaction. But if you do that, you are likely to remain in a gloomy,
disheartened state. T he person who really employs the principle
of the backfire will find that he has great resources within him-
self and can rebuild his heart into happiness and optimism. I was
reading the other day about the editor of a prominent American
magazine who had been living a very tense, hectic life and finally,
as a result, began feeling physically ill. T he doctors did what they
could to help him, prescribing medicine they thought would help.
One doctor, however, told him that his trouble was depressiveness
brought on by a hectic life.
Well, this editor, being a bright fellow, asked himself, If Ive
been made ill by depressiveness, how can I make myself well? And
the answer was to start acting in the opposite way. If depressive-
ness had made him sick, then the opposite of depressiveness, he
reasoned, would make him well. And he figured that the opposite
of depressiveness was joy.
Now obviously he didnt feel joyful, but he decided that
he would practice being joyful. He went out and bought every
book he could find with an upbeat, satisfying, happy theme. He
hunted up some TV presentations that were really funny, like T he
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CONFIDENCE
Honeymooners (with Jackie Gleason). He invited to his home only

friends who were good storytellers or good conversationalists. He
didnt want anyone around saying, Im so sorry youre feeling
depressed. He wanted those near him who had a real answer for
their lives. T hen, of course, he began to go deeper, turning to the
One Who said, T hese things have I spoken unto you . . . that your
joy might be full (John 15:11 kjv). Gradually, he began to build up
against his depressiveness, deliberately, consciously, mentally, the
great antidote of joy. T his requires discipline. But he built a back-
fire against disheartenment.
And there is the case of a girl I knew in Youngstown, Ohio. She
was a beautiful girl. She had a rich father. She had everything
good health, money, education. T hen all of a sudden her father lost
all his money. T he family was reduced practically to poverty. And
on top of that, her eyesight began to fail and presently she became
totally blind. She went to every doctor she could find, and they all
gave her the same diagnosis: there was no hope for her eye condi-
tion. Now here was a situation where a person had had everything
and now she had nothing.
But that girl became one of the most radiant, creative human
beings I have ever known. And how did she do it? She built a back-
fire against her trouble. She decided that if she couldnt see light,
she would think light. So at frequent intervals each day she would
stop and remember how light looked: how golden sunshine in the
morning appeared, how light looked falling through the trees onto
the grass or sparkling on a body of water. She thought constantly
of light. Now this did not change the condition in the retina of
her eyes, but it did change the attitude of her mind behind the
eyes, so that it became full of light and she became one of the
70

most dynamic personalities I ever met. She found new heart in

her disheartenment.
T he Bible just bubbles over with spiritual food for getting a
new heart when disheartened. Dig in to the New Testament, and
you come up with light and music and singing and health and
hopefulness and faith and love. Your heart will begin to sing as
you build a backfire against disheartenment. T he shadows will flee
away. So the next time you get disheartened say to yourself, Okay,
lets sit down and see how we can build a backfire. T his is for every-
body, right from the Holy Scriptures. So think light, think health,
think victory. T hink good, not bad; think riches, not poverty.
T hink a backfire and build it. Light will shine in your darkness
and give you a new heart when you are disheartened.
An important thing to realize about this is that it doesnt
make any difference how much difficulty there is. Pile it as high
as you want, make it just as big as you can, see it just as dark as
possiblestill there are always great possibilities in any situa-
tion. Generally, when people are disheartened, they cant see the
possibilities. T hey have shackles on their eyes. T hey see only the
difficulties that are involved, not the solutions. T he strange thing
about human nature is . . . that we have a tendency to magnify
the difficulties, to blow them up, to make them bigger than they
actually are. T he thing to do when you are disheartened is the
very opposite: go hunting around in your situation for the bright
possibilities that are surely there.
Oh, you may glare at me and say, Now, look. I know! Dont
give me any of that positive business. My situation is absolutely
hopeless. Ive had it. Im up against a dead end. But I dont believe
it at all. Ive felt that way myself sometimes and then discovered
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CONFIDENCE
that there were still possibilities. A man from Elmira, New York,
called me on the telephone one afternoon and said, Im in an
awful situation. Im really at the end of my rope, and I am going to
blow my brains out.
Oh, I said to him, Im sorry you are going to blow your
brains out. Why did you call me to tell me about it?
Well, he replied, I thought you might have something to
say to me before I do it.
When are you going to blow your brains out? I asked. Do
you have to do it today?
No, he answered, I dont have to do it today. Why?
Well, I suggested, could you get on a plane and come down
to New York City? Lets have a talk before you do it. You can do it
just as well down here as you can in Elmira.
I wasnt being flippant; I took it seriously. I didnt think he was
going to blow his brains out, but you never can tell, you know. So
I made an appointment, and the next day he came at the agreed
time and sat down with me in my office. He put his head in his
hands, and he said, Everything is lost. Its hopeless. Im walking
in deep darkness.
I felt very sorry for the poor fellow. We had a prayer about it.
T hen I asked him, Did you say everything was lost? Everything?
Yes, sir, he answered, everything!
You mean to tell me there isnt one good thing you still have?
Not one, he asserted. Its nothing but darkness. My troubles
are piled as high as the sky, and there isnt one good thing left.
Well, my friend, I said, I would hate to disagree with you,
but Id like to explore this a little. I got out a big sheet of paper,
72

drew a line down the middle, and headed one column, T hings I
Have Lost, and the other, T hings I Still Have.
T he man remarked, You wont need that second column,
because I have nothing left.
Well, I persisted, let me ask you a few questions. Your wife
has left you, of course?
What do you mean, my wife has left me? he retorted. She
wouldnt leave me. My wife loves me. Shed stick with me if every-
body else turned against me. Of course she hasnt left me.
T hats great! I said. Well put it in this second column.
Item 1: Wife hasnt left me. T hen I said, No doubt your children
are all in jail?
What are you driving at, he expostulated, with such silly
talk? My kids are good kids. Of course theyre not in jail.
Well, I reminded him, you told me everything was lost. Yet
your children arent in jail. So lets put it down: Item 2: Children
are not in jail. And I continued, Most likely you cant eat. No
appetite.
You know, he replied, its a funny thing. As gloomy as I feel,
I have a whale of an appetite. I can eat anything.
And you dont get indigestion?
No, I have a cast-iron stomach.
So I wrote down: Item 3: A cast-iron stomach.
And we went on through a few more things like that. T hen I
said, Look at the things youve got left! Lets add them up. I drew
a line under them and I said, Plus God. Brother, youre in! What
do you mean, you want to blow your brains out? All you need to
do is blow your faith up.
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CONFIDENCE
Well, he sat there and stared at me. He said, I wouldnt have

believed it possible. Why did I have to spend all the time and
money to come here from Elmira just to have you tell me what I
should have known myself? I think I can handle things from here.
T hank you a lot.
Just be sure you realize, I said, that I havent even started
the list of the blessings you have left.
Its a matter of your attitude of mind. What are you going to look
for? The shadows? Or that bright sunlight that God commanded
to shine out of darkness? If you are disheartened about anything
today, forget it. Blow your faith up. Look to the bright and shining
face of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let Him get into you and change your
thinking. Start looking for all the marvelous possibilities you have.
In other words, get new heart. T here is a verse in Psalm 51 that
says, Create in me a clean heart, O God (verse 10 kjv). Can you
get a new heart when you are old and tired and worn and weak
and sick and discouraged? Of course you can. Im not referring
to the physical organ known as the heart. When we pray, Create
a new heart within me, what we are asking is for a new inner
motivation, a new depth of feeling, new basic attitudes. We read
continually these days about heart transplants, some of which
succeed, some of which fail. But I can tell you of a heart trans-
plant that never fails. It is when you come to the point where you
commit your life to Jesus Christ and stop trying to run it yourself,
many times making a mess of it, and ask Him to take it over. I have
seen the most amazing, dramatic, fascinating, exciting changes in
people who knew that they needed new heart, but couldnt get it
themselves and who turned to the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior
and He saved them from themselves.
74

Recently at a place where I made a speech, a woman fairly

bounded up to me as soon as I was through and grabbed me by
the hand. I hadnt seen anybody with so much zip and energy in
a very long while. She walked with a bounce; her most attractive
face was alight; she was a beautiful woman. Yet Im sure she wasnt
a day under sixty according to the calendar. But in the quality of
her actions she wasnt a day over twenty. She was vibrantly alive.
She tried to tell me about herselfand I liked the way she did it.
She had a good, clear, organized mind. She mentioned a series of
heavy blows she had had, culminating in the death of her hus-
band. She and her husband were devoted, she saidstill in love
after many years. When he was gone, she said, it was as though
the whole world caved in on me. I wandered around in my gloom
and self-pity for weeks on end, dragging myself around like an
aged woman. All the life had gone out of me.
T hen one day, she continued, I was reading about that
transplant operation in South Africa where they took the heart
of a young person and put it into an older person. And I thought
to myself how great it would be if I could get a young heartif I
could have a heart like I had when I was sixteen, when I was so
happy. But then I began to think; and the thought came to me
that there was a Doctor who could give me the heart transplant
I wanted, One who could renew the youth of any individual and
enable him to mount up with wings as eagles. So I just went to my
knees, and went back to the Scriptures. I joined a small group in
this city. And I found Him and He found me. He gave me a spiri-
tual and mental heart transplant.
Whereupon she bounced out of the room like a dynamo. A
man standing near me who had known the woman for some time
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CONFIDENCE
shook his head, saying, I would never have believed it possible

that a person could be so transformed.
Now as this writing concludes, your same old problems are
waiting for you. T hey are there, all rightyou can count on that!
But they are in for a surprise. T hey will hardly recognize you when
you take them up again. T hey are going to say, You are not the
same person!
And you can say, No, I certainly am not, because now Im
building a backfire against disheartenment. I know there are
possibilities for good in you, old problems, and Ive had a heart
transplant. Whats more, the light has been commanded to shine
out of darkness and I now walk in the light.
T his can happen to you and to me and to all of us if we go
forward with the Lord Jesus Christ.
76

ENTHUSIASM
MAKES LIFE GOOD
The thief comes only to steal and kill
and destroy; I have come that they may
have life, and have it to the full.
John 10:10 NIV
One of the greatest words in the English language is enthusiasm. It

describes a spirit that adds zest to life. In fact, enthusiasm makes
life good. It is a gift of God. T he very word enthusiasm relates to
God. It is derived from two Greek words, en and theos; en mean-
ing in and theos being the Greek word for God. So enthusiasm
means in God or God-in-you; it means full of God.
Of course, the idea of enthusiasm isnt in with a certain seg-
ment of the American population today. For them enthusiasm is
out; glumness is in. Enthusiasm is out; cynicism is in. But many
of these bewildered souls will eventually discover to their sorrow
that they are out by being in, for enthusiasm does make life
good.
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CONFIDENCE
How is your enthusiasm? Life with its buffetings may have

knocked enthusiasm out of you. Or you may have become so
sophisticated that you think enthusiasm is something that belongs
to a bygone generation. Dont delude yourself. Get enthusiasm
back. Without it life is poor; with it life is good. It makes you feel
strong. It gives you a sense of mastery. It gives you a consciousness
of your own value and worth. You take hold of the world when
enthusiasm takes hold of you.
Enthusiasm, however, is a quality that must be affirmed and
reaffirmed. My friend Donald Curtis, pastor of a church in Los
Angeles, has a devotion that he suggests for daily use, and I think
its very good. He suggests you affirm to yourself each morning
this or something equivalent to it: I move serenely forward into the
adventure of life today. I am filled with inspiration and enthusiasm.
I am guided and protected by the Infinite in everything I say and
do. I project confidence and authority. I am sure of myself in every
situation. With Gods help I am filled with the strength and energy
to be what I am and to do what I have to do. . .
T hat is the deep, rejuvenated consciousness you get when you
let enthusiasm take over. Dont resist it. Dont reject it. Dont cast it
out. Dont say youre too old for it. Dont say it isnt the in thing.
Get in with this and you are really in.
The Christian religion is full of this. In the thirty-sixth Psalm,
the ninth verse (kjv), are the words, For with thee is the fountain of
life. What a picturethe fountain of life! It brings to mind one
glorious Sunday at the Palace of Versailles when all of a sudden
they turned on the fountains and the water burst forth with a
gush and a roar and an upthrust as though reaching for the sun,
dancing and singing. For with thee (God) is the fountain of life.
78

When you get God in your life, you get so excited that you can
hardly endure it. It makes life good.
I am come that they might have life, says that marvelous
passage in the 10th chapter of John, and that they might have
it more abundantly (verse 10 kjv). Or, as the New Century
Version has it: I came to give lifelife in all its fullness. You
see, Christianity is designed to produce not glum, sour, growling,
griping people, but happy people, lilting people, victorious people,
enthusiastic people. All this takes into account the pain and
problems in the world. Despite problems, and even out of them,
God brings to people a consciousness and plan of victory.
Enthusiasm makes life good. T he enthusiast has enormous
resources, so great that they will equate with any problems he
ever has to face. T his doesnt mean that the enthusiast wont fail.
He will fail. Everybody will fail at times. Failure is a common
experience of all mankind. Youre going to fail sometimes. So
am I. Many times. But that is not the crux of the story. It is how
you fail. T he enthusiast fails, but he fails forward, and that is
a great way to fail. In fact, its a good thing to fail if you fail for-
ward. T hat phrase fail forward isnt my own. I got it from a man
whom I used to know, whom I consider one of the wisest born
philosophers this country ever hadCharles F. Kettering. He
was for many years the chief research scientist of General Motors
Corporation. He developed the self-starter, the Duco paint pro-
cess, high-octane gasoline, and many other refinements in the
automotive field. Next to Edison, he was perhaps the finest inven-
tive mind weve had in modern times. He was a natural thinker.
He thought great thoughts. And one of his thoughts was this idea
of failing forward.
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CONFIDENCE
He used to say that as a research scientist, he had failed many

times, but from each failure he had learned somethingalways
failing forward toward the day when some later experiment
would be successful. It may take many failures to prepare you for a
success, so you should never fail and stop, but fail forward.
Years ago I heard Julius Rosenwald, who at that time was
president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., quote this saying: If life
hands you a lemon, make lemonade of it. In other words, fail
forward with it. Dont let your problems overwhelm you.
T here are always people saying that the times are against
them and that this is no time to imagine you can live a satisfying
life, with conditions in the world as they are today. Isnt it strange
that there are always people running down the time in which we
live as if every other time were perfect? Well, the enthusiast rises
above all such miserable thinking. T here have always been some
people who took the time they lived in just the way it was and with
enthusiasm made something of it. T he best time is really right this
minute. How do you know how many more minutes you are going
to have, anyway? T his is it. Emerson said, Everyone is criticizing
and belittling the times. Yet I think that our times, like all times,
are very good times, if only we know what to do with them.
It really is pathetic that so many people today, especially
young people, are so sad because they feel that there is something
terribly wrong with the world now. T here is plenty wrong with
the world, and there is plenty wrong with what the present gen-
eration of radical intellectuals call the establishment, and there is
also plenty wrong with those who dont like the establishment
so there you have it: theres something wrong with everybody
and everything. But we still can keep in mind what is right with
80

things. A few years ago on California Street in San Francisco, a

sour-looking intellectual whom I had never met walked up and
spoke to me. How did I know that he was an intellectual? He told
me he was. Well, he looked at me sourly and said, Im glad to
meet you. Youre the bright Pollyanna-ish, sweetness-and-light
individual who runs around the country talking about positive
thinking, arent you?
I do go around talking about positive thinking, I replied,
which is neither Pollyanna-ish nor sweetness and light. Ill tell
you what a positive thinker is, son, if youre interested to know.
A positive thinker is a man who is tough enough mentally so that
he sees all the difficulties in this life, but sees them straight, and
having a knowledge of Almighty God, knows what he himself is
and knows that he is equal to any problem he will ever have to
face.
T he man countered, But dont you know that the world is full
of problems?
You dont say? I said. You think I was born yesterday? Of
course the world is full of problems. But then I thought of a come-
back and Ive been proud of myself ever since. Most of my come-
backs come back about six hours after I actually need them! I said,
Certainly the world is full of problems, but thanks be to God, it is
also full of the overcoming of problems.
T hat really got him. He went off down the street shaking his
head, and I could hear it rattle all the way down the block.
Of course the world is full of problems. It always has been; it
always will be; it is now. But those who know God, who know the
Lord Jesus Christ, can affirm, For with thee (despite these prob-
lems) is the fountain of life. And they are the kind of people who
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CONFIDENCE
get the problems solved. Last September my wife decided that she
and I should go to the Mayo Clinic for a checkup. I dont know
where she got this idea. It didnt appeal to me. I said, T heres
nothing wrong with me, except maybe my mind is weak. To
which she readily agreed. I said, Forget it. Im not going. So
what do you think happened? We went! We went through three
days of examinations and we both came out 100 percent: they
gave us a wonderful bill of healthand of course we were very
happy about it.
As we were leaving, we encountered in an elevator a couple
who recognized me and spoke to us. I asked the man, Have you
been through the clinic?
Yes, I have.
I hope you had good news, I said.
No, he replied, I didnt. Ive got to stay over for more biop-
sies. And, with an expression on his face that was pathetic, he
added, Dr. Peale, Im afraid.
His wife, putting her arm around him, said, Honey, you dont
need to be afraid; youre going to be all right.
I know, he said, but Im afraid.
Well, I was so touched I couldnt help loving the man, and I
put my hand on his shoulder. I could actually feel him tremble.
Now, what would you say to a person under those circumstances?
I didnt know what to say. But I asked God what to say, and He
helped me. Look, let me tell you something. God loves you. He
really does. You just put yourself in His hands. Rest yourself in
His love.
With that, the tears came to his eyes, and he grabbed me by
the hand and said, Youll never know what that does to me.
82

And God loves you too. Rest on that love and you wont need
to be afraid of anything.
Now a lot of people think of enthusiasm as something volatile
and hot. T he enthusiast according to caricature is a noisy, superfi-
cial, hotheaded individual. Well, there is fire in the enthusiast, all
right, but in the true enthusiast it is fire under control. T he English
writer William McFee said, T he world belongs to the enthusiast
who keeps cool. Keep your enthusiasms, but keep them under
control. Dont let them freeze, keep the motivation under them,
but keep them controlled. T hen there isnt any knot that you cant
disentangle.
I know a man who fits this description perfectly. He is a suc-
cessful individual who has had many hard blows and difficulties
in his life. Hes had success, hes had failure. And hes a thinker.
He knows the resources of life and where they are to be found. He
is an enthusiast and he has cool, collected control. I asked him
one time to tell me why nothing ever seems to upset him. He said
it was due to using five words to keep himself under control. Here
is what he said (I wrote it down): I work enthusiastically. I take
success gratefully. I receive failure dynamically. (T hat means tak-
ing it without getting all distressed and excited about it. It means
that when you fail, you take it in your stride and keep proceed-
ing forward.) I deal with people and situations philosophically. I
keep an attitude toward life positively. So there are the five good
words: enthusiastically, gratefully, dynamically, philosophically,
positively.
Did it ever occur to you that life is not some thing that you just
muddle through without following any rules? T he kind of living
that makes life good is a science. Life responds to certain definite
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CONFIDENCE
methods and procedures. Your life can either be a miss or be a

hit, can either be empty or be full, depending on how you pro-
ceed with it. And the enthusiast, first, knows and draws upon the
resources. Second, he plays it cool and straight. Finally, he believes
there is nothing in life so difficult that it cant be overcome. And
with faith in God and in the Lord Jesus Christ, that is a fact. T his
faith can move mountains. It can change people. It can change
situations. It can change the world. If you get it in you, you can
overcome all the great storms in your life.
Life is full of storms. You may be living in halcyon days right
now. Dont let that fool you; it cant always be that way. It was
never designed to be that way. Man is born unto trouble, as the
sparks fly upward, says the fifth chapter of Job (verse 7 kjv). You
will encounter storms. Do you feel equipped? Can you handle
them, or will they beat you down? Storms of life come when least
expected. Sunshine, rain, fog, mist, storms; sunshine, rain, fog,
mist, stormsso it goes. Well, the enthusiast knows that he has,
by the gift of God and through the Lord Jesus Christ, the power
to ride out the storms. Let me tell you of one incident. Recently
my wife and I were sitting on a plane when the stewardess came
and asked my name. When I told her she said, T he pilot says he
knows you, and he wants you to come up to the cockpit and have
a visit with him. T his was an interesting invitation, so I went
up to the cockpit. T he pilot told the copilot he could go out for a
while, and I sat in the copilots seat. Very informal kind of plane
there werent as many regulations governing commuter routes in
those days.
T his pilot was a long, lanky Texan. He said, I heard you were
aboard, and I want to talk with you about religion. T hat was his
84

beginning. I was surprised, but pleased and interested. I want

to thank you, he continued. You helped me find Jesus Christ,
and ever since then my life has been altogether different. And
we talked of spiritual things.
T hen I got interested in the plane and in all the gadgets he had
there. I asked, Are these planes hard to run?
No, he said, any fool can do it. Want to try?
Well, I responded, what do I do?
You take hold of this stick, he said, and keep your eye on
that level. You must keep the plane on that level. And he showed
me how. And I sat there flying this plane through the big, expan-
sive sky. However, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the pilot
had his hand on the other stick.
Presently I saw two great big cumulus clouds sitting out there
ahead, with a path of blue between them. I asked, Do you want
me to go around those clouds or through them?
Go through, he replied.
So we went straight through, with the clouds reaching for
us on either side. It was so thrilling that I exclaimed, Boy, that
was great! Lets go around and come through again, what do you
say?
Better just keep on going, he said. Well be on the Tokyo
radar in a minute and theyd be wondering whats going on out
here.
T hen he took it away from me. I had read in the paper that the
typhoon season was approaching, and I asked, What would you
do if we suddenly ran into a typhoon?
He answered, I wouldnt run into one if I had my wits about
me. You dont want to fool around with a typhoon. What I try to
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CONFIDENCE
do when theres a typhoon around is get on the edge of it, the way
its traveling. Usually it measures from three to five hundred miles
across. T he thing to do is find out which way it is moving and get on
the edge of it so that it blows you ahead. T hen he cast off a phrase
that I thought was a classic. You turn typhoons into tailwinds.
A person who lives with the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore
has enthusiasm and calm control, does the same with the storms
of life. He lets them take him to higher ground. He turns typhoons
into tailwinds. Enthusiasm makes life good.
86

LIFE CAN BE FULL
OF MEANING
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will
find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
Matthew 7:7 NIV
For many years I have emphasized one repetitive theme. It is that

life can be absolutely wonderful, that anybody can gain victory
over himself and all the circumstances of this life, that a person
can live with joy and zest and enthusiasm, that he can put himself
up against this troubled world and infuse it with new life, and that
all of this can be done not by a persons own strength, but through
the power of Jesus Christ in his heart.
So often today we hear people moaning that life has no mean-
ing. How any enlightened, intelligent, perceptive individual could
decry this marvelous thing called life and say that it has no mean-
ing is to me beyond all comprehension! Yet today we hear thou-
sands of young people growling and grumbling that there is no
meaning in life.
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CONFIDENCE
What is the matter with them? Cant they see? Cant they
receive? Cant they feel? Have they no depth of understanding?
You can have a life full of meaning if you fill it full of meaning.
Your life can be wonderful if you see the wonder in it. Your life can
be full of interest if you take an interest in it. Your life can be excit-
ing if you live and think excitedly. You can do anything you want
with your life if you will do it. You can take hold of it and shape it
and make it meaningful.
Im going to say something here that might seem counterin-
tuitive at first: the thing that makes life is its problems. If a person
doesnt like what goes on, why doesnt he take hold of it, do some-
thing about it, make it the way it ought to be? Life is a tremendous
thing if you get a creative attitude toward it. A friend of mine,
for example, began to fall on gloomy days. His mind was full of
darkness. He had made a few mistakes, he had messed things up,
and he was deeply unhappy. T he zest for life had left him. One
day he met another friend of mine, an older man, for dinner in
a restaurant on East 61st Street in Manhattan. T he older man
was Smiley Blanton, the psychiatrist, my dear friend and asso-
ciate for over thirty years and one of the wisest human beings I
ever knew. Smiley was a character. He wore a sloppy hat jammed
down on his head. I could never understand how a man could
wear such an awful-looking hat. But that hat was really a part of
Smiley. He also wore an old, beat-up raincoat, which he used to
pull up around his ears. He was a genius in understanding human
beings.
Well, Smiley met my unhappy younger friend and, being
quick to feel the mental condition of another individual, he asked,
Whats wrong, young man?
88

So the younger man began to pour out his misery, frequently

interjecting, If only I hadnt done that! If only I had handled
this thing better! If only I had foreseen the way it was going to
turn out! For fifteen minutes this gloomy if only recital went
on. T he poor man had lost all sense of the meaning of life.
Finally the doctor said, Come over to my office. I want
you to listen to a tape recording of three unidentified people
talking to me about themselves. For maybe a half an hour he
listened to three miserable human beings declaring how bleak
life was. T hen Dr. Blanton asked him, What two words did you
find embedded in the talk of all three of these people?
T he young man answered, T hey seemed to keep saying, If
only I hadnt done this . . . If only I had done that . . . If only it
hadnt turned out that way . . . If only . . .
T he old psychiatrist said, You have spoken the saddest two
words in the English language. If only! If only.
Well, asked the young man, what do I do?
And the wise old man replied, You must substitute for those
two sad words two creative words. I tell you what: Eject those two
wordsif onlyout of your mind and put instead the two words:
Next time.
My younger friend told me later, I tried those two words: next
time. I liked them. I slid them into my mind and could almost hear
them click fast. And my life was changed. It was really remarkable.
When any discouragement came, I found myself saying, With the
help of Jesus Christ, next time!
Everyone has his times of failure, of defeat, of frustration; but
no defeat or failure or frustration is permanent. T here is always
a next time! Life is good. I wonder why the Lord brings the dawn
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CONFIDENCE
around every twenty-four hours. It should remind us that though

the night is black, there can still be a new day. So live with the
attitude of next time.
T hat is one secret of making life meaningful. And a second is
to practice the great principle that you can if you think you can.
T here isnt any good thing you cannot do if you will think you
can. T here is my esteemed friend W. Clement Stone. He is a very
successful businessman. T hrough extraordinary intelligence, hard
work, and the application of the basic laws of successful achieve-
ment, he has made huge sums of money. But he gives it away under
the equally important laws of benevolent motivation and always
for creatively human purposes and values. He has given over a
million dollars to various charities. I never knew a man who gave
so much money so generously as does Mr. Stone. It appears that
his chief reason for making money is to help people. For example,
he has helped more prisoners to find new lifeand more boys to
find a futurethan anybody I know. He started life with nothing.
He was utterly poverty-stricken. He said that the Lord just gave
him the gift of making money.
But Ive noticed that a lot of people who make money hang on
to it. Some of the tightest people Ive ever known are people who
have made moneytheyve got the idea that it is for them alone. If
you have the ability to acquire wealth, you should learn the equally
important art of how to give it for mankind. You are a steward of
God, Who made everything and owns all values of this world.
Mr. Stone is a philosopher who says you should read the Bible
with the idea that God wants to do wonderful things for you. You
get exactly what you are looking for, he says. If you seek inspi-
ration, you become inspired. If you seek knowledge, you become
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informed. If you seek wisdom, you become wise. If you seek health,
sickness disappears. Seek good, and it comes to you. Seek success,
and it will come to you. Know specifically what you want and then
keep your mind on that which you want and off the things you
dont want. If you keep thinking about what you dont want, youll
get what you dont want. But if you think about what you want, it
is likely to come to you.
Mr. Stone declares that the greatest, most creative text is
Matthew 7:7 (kjv): Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye
shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. And he para-
phrases it: Ask for the specific thing that you desire. Believe, put it
in Gods hands, and if it is His will, you will receive it.
T hen look for it. Get into action. T hink creatively. What do
you want out of life? You can if you think you can! T here are so
many depressed people in the world today talking about how
American society is going to pieces and saying that the younger
generation doesnt amount to anything. T he younger generation
is all right; it is just the way they have been handled that is the
problem, or the way they are handling themselves, some of them.
I was reading about Archie Moore. Well, Archie Moore is a for-
mer champion prize fighter, a big, husky man. Not long ago he
was given an award as Mr. San Diegothe leading citizen of San
Diego. He is a great Christian. T hree or four years ago, he became
worried about the vandalism at the hands of boys in the lowest-
income section of a smaller California town. So he thought he
would try to help these boys, and he began pondering how to do it.
He put up a punching bag outdoors in the street and stood
there punching this bag. A little boy came up wide-eyed and
looked at him and said, Gee, mister, you sure do know how to
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CONFIDENCE
punch that bag! He added, You know something? I can do it the

same as you.
You can, eh? said Archie. Tell you what you do. You bring
ten more kids here tomorrow. I want to see how good you all do it.
Next day the little boy showed up not with ten other kidsbut
with thirty kids. Archie asked them, You boys want to learn to
fight?
Yeah, we want to learn to fight.
Well, he said, then youve got to learn the ABCs of fighting.
Remember that the A comes before the B and the B comes before
the C. T he first thing youve got to do is to learn defense. Youve
got to learn to shadowbox. And you never want to learn to fight
in order to hurt anybody; you want to learn to fight so that when
a bully attacks, you know you are strong and can walk away from
him in dignity.
He was giving them instruction in right living, you see, while
he taught them to use the punching bag. And pretty soon he was
teaching not thirty kids but sixty kids. One day he said, Boys,
what do you say we start a club? T hey all wanted to join. And
Archie Moore called it the ABC ClubABC for Any Boy Can.
One of the rules was that each day when the program started every
boy had to show his school report card or graded test. If a boys
grades werent good enough, he got thrown out until he got them
up to snuff. T he local schoolteachers were astonished at the new
high grades made by kids who previously had been scraping the
bottom. And this led to Moores developing a similar program on
a larger scale in San Diego, where he lives.
A meeting of ABCs comes to order when Archie calls
out, Students! T he boys fall into line and recite the Pledge of
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Allegiance, smartly placing their saluting arms across their hearts:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
T hen Archie Moore calls out the question, What does ABC
mean?
T he boys shout with one voice: Any Boy Canif he wants to.
If he wants to what?
Wants to improve himself, they shout, and be a better stu-
dent and a better American.
What can a good student become?
Doctor! Preacher! Actor! Governor! President!
And Archie Moore asks, What does a good student not do?
And the answers are: He doesnt steal. He doesnt drink. He
doesnt do drugs.
Boys out of the ghetto, black and white, rise to higher ways
of living because of the influence of a godly prize fighter who
teaches them a basic principle: Any Boy Can If He T hinks He Can.
T his country is not going down the drain, friends. Not while it
has Archie Moores who love their fellow men and who teach so
astutely the great principle: You Can If You T hink You Can. Life
can be full of meaning if you know what to do about the hard
things, because it is the hard things that knock the life out of you.
T hese hard things arent very pleasant, but they are awfully good
for us. We arent supposed to go through life on flowery beds of
ease. Whoever masters the tough becomes tough, and when he
becomes tough he finds meaning.
A couple, members of Marble Collegiate Church, was recently
robbed. Someone broke the lock on their door, messed up their
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CONFIDENCE
apartment, and took all the valuables they most highly prized. They
have illness in the family too. It must have been quite a shock to
them that in the supposedly protected apartment house where they
live, such a thing could happen. But it doesnt seem to have shaken
their serenity. I asked them, Why are you so calm about it?
T he man answered, Well, you know, it just proves that God
must like us and knows we can handle problems. He has given us
such a mess of them at one time.
Now that is what I call spiritual maturity. T hey dont expect
life to be easy; they just take it as it comes and relate it to God,
happy that He likes them so much that He trusts them with many
problems.
All around us in this world there are people who are in trou-
ble, in need, in sorrow, in poverty, in sickness, in unhappiness, in
misery. If you want to make life meaningful for yourself, get out
and do something about it. Get into it. Get out of your comfortable
ways. People who find meaning in life are people who give them-
selves for other people and get into hard things in the world. Like
a Mexican migrant worker I heard about. I suppose when you get
right down to it, one of the most underprivileged groups of people
in this country is the migrant farm laborer. Many of them dont
speak English. T hey follow the crops and live in a very unfortunate,
economically depressed manner. T hey just dont belong anywhere.
It is one of the groups in this country that is really neglected. Some
of the churches have been trying to do something for the migrants,
but it is not enough. For too many people they are still just statistics
migrant workers. Well, one of these workers is named Manuel
Corral. And he did a heroic thing. Afterward at the Adolphus
Hotel in Dallas they gave a big banquet in his honor. T he hall was
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filled with people paying tribute to a little Mexican worker who

cant speak English. And as he sat there at the head table a little boy
named Randy McKinley, three years old, came running to him and
climbed up on Manuels knee and put his arms around Manuels
neck, put his head down on Manuels shoulderand went to sleep.
When Manuel rose to receive his award, the little boy still clung to
his neck, his blond curls against the Mexicans dark hair.
The story is this: One day Randy, age three and very slight, was
running around in the yard of his grandparents Texas farmhouse.
Somebody had removed a barrel that had been placed over the top
of an old abandoned well cased with a sixteen-inch pipe. Happy little
Randy stepped into this open space and disappeared into the pipe
which went down three hundred feet, with the water level sixty-eight
feet below the ground! The other children cried out in terror and ran
to Randys mother, and she ran to the well and put her arm down
into the pipebut her hand encountered nothing and she could hear
displaced pebbles bouncing off down into the deep, dark distance.
She screamed again and again: Randy! Randy! Faintly from below
she heard a little voice that told her that he was alive.
She began screaming for help. Manuel Corral happened to be
working in a field nearby, with three other men. The four came run-
ning. Manuel, though he couldnt understand a word of English,
knew at once what had happened. He told the others to make a long,
strong line from pieces of rope and baling wire. Then he had them
tie it around his ankles and lower him headfirst into the pipe.
The pipe was sixteen inches in diameter, and Manuel, although
he weighed only 125 pounds, was seventeen inches across the shoul-
ders. But by hunching his shoulders he was able to get through
the opening. And down he went into the darkness. The air in the
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CONFIDENCE
long-unused well was foul-smelling. Noxious gases made him feel

deathly sick. But he pushed on down the pipe for twenty feet until he
came to an inverted Y, where the shaft branched and went two ways.
Which way should he go? He sent up a prayer asking, Dios (God),
tell me which! He took one of the shafts and went on down, down
into the blackness, getting stuck every few feet, forcing his way on,
realizing he could not stay conscious much longer in his head-down
position. He could feel his skin scraping off against the pipe.
But finally his groping hand felt a tousled, wet head of hair, and
he could hear the sound of a child gasping and choking. The boy was
clinging to a narrow ledge just below the waterline. Manuel locked
his arms under the childs armpits and cried out to the men to pull
up fast. They started to pull. But the way he was holding the child
had wedged Manuels shoulders against the pipe so that they stuck.
For a moment he had the awful, terrorized feeling that he was going
to die there head downward in a pipe so many feet below the ground.
But gradually they pulled them up. Manuel could feel his
shoulder sockets being dislocated. He was bloody and sick, and his
head was injured. Once out of the well, he just lay on the grass while
the mother hugged her little child, murmuring, Oh, thank God,
thank God! T he people standing around took up a collection and
offered the brave Mexican one hundred dollars in gratitude, but
he refused it. He shook his head, pointing up, and just said, Dios.
For God.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock,
and it shall be opened unto you (kjv). Believe that you can and
you can . . . Give yourself to the hard, tough problems in this world.
And life will be full of meaning.
96

WHY WORRY WHEN
YO U C A N P R AY ?
I sought the Lord, and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.
Psalm 34:4 NIV
T he title of this piece was suggested by a circus clown who hap-

pens to be a friend of mine. Being a clown is a serious business,
and this particular clown is said to be one of the best men in his
profession. His name is Happy Kellems.
Happy often writes to me, and I like his letters. He usually
encloses a check for the work of the church. But more important
than that, he gives witness to his faith. Now and then he will tele-
phone me from some city where he is entertaining, and not long
ago we had a conversation that ran something like this:
How are you, Happy?
Oh, Im getting along all right, with the Lords help.
Are things going well? I asked.
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CONFIDENCE
Well, you know how it is. We all have our ups and downs, the
bitter with the sweet.
I hope youre not worrying about things.
Of course not, he replied. Why worry when you can pray?
T his struck me! It is a very sound philosophy toward this tragic
tendency known as worry or anxiety.
In fact, the best way to handle worry is to subject it to prayer.
It cannot continue to exist in the mind of an individual who prays
in depth. Prayer-in-depth cancels out worry. Somebody said to me
this morning, You have a good title for your sermon. I replied
that I hoped the sermon would be as good as the title. But if the
sermon does not measure up, I tell you what you do: You just say to
yourself every day, Why worry when you can pray? And in due
course you will get your worry under control.
Sometimes when you lift a subject like worry into the pulpit,
people wonder a bit. T he reaction might be that the pulpit is a place
for the discussion of more profound problems than that of worry;
instead, some great philosophical, sociological, theological matter
ought to be the subject of the sermon. Ill agree to the importance
of preaching on such themes. But I will also insist that the func-
tion and purpose of the pulpit is to help people. Jesus Christ went
about doing good. He loved people. He put His hand of healing
upon them. He always helped people. You can take the great truths
He spoke and apply them to the very complex problems of the day.
But when you come right down to it, what could possibly be more
complex in its effect both upon individuals and upon people in the
mass than this insidious thing called worry?
Let me illustrate the importance of this problem by telling of
an incident that occurred recently. I went to Wisconsin to give a
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talk at a United Fund affair. My host, who is the head of a large

firm, sent his company plane to take me to his city. I have never
had such a ride, though I have been on small planes a good many
times. T his one was a Learjet. On this model only four people can
be accommodated, beside the pilots. On takeoff it fairly shoots
into the sky. T he nearest analogy in describing it is to say it is like
a bullet. It races for the high places. I was delighted. I remarked
to the pilot that I thought I ought to have one of them myself. He
asked, Why dont you buy oneon some easy monthly payment
basis?
What is the price? I asked.
A million dollars, he replied. I decided I wouldnt get one.
We cruised at 45,000 feet. I said to the pilot, T his is the near-
est to heaven Ive ever been in my life. And then it occurred to
me that that is no kind of discussion to have at 45,000 feet. You
could see the curvature of the earth. It was an exalted, uplifting
experiencequite smooth, like a leaf wafting through infinite
space. T he next day the gentleman who owns the plane took us on
to Des Moines. T his time we only got up to 41,000 feet.
Well, on this trip I fell to talking with our hosta remarkable
man, highly educated, a deeply dedicated Christian, a man of pro-
found thoughtfulness, a scholar in business, you might say, who
has helped many people and who understands, too, how to help
them. He is a very composed kind of man, and in the course of
our conversation, I asked, Do you ever have trouble with worry?
No, said he, not anymore.
What do you mean, not anymore? I asked.
I would not worry for anything in this world, he replied,
because I once experienced the devastating damage worry can do
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CONFIDENCE
to a human being. I wouldnt trifle with it at all. He then told me

that some years ago he loaned some men a large sum of money for
an enterprise that he thought they would manage successfully. He
expected to have a part in the guidance of it, as well as a share of
the profits. However, he soon became aware that these men werent
capable of good management. But they took control of the enter-
prise and in effect forced him out, as far as exercising any jurisdic-
tion was concerned. Presently he developed a bad case of bronchitis,
so bad that he had to sit up at night, unable to sleep, racked by deep
coughs, and feeling that his throat was being strangled. He con-
sulted a doctor, he took medication, but with little effect. Finally,
he said, I came to the conclusion that it must be worry plus resent-
ment that was causing this terrible bronchitis and choking.
When he had twice mentioned choking, I reminded him that
the original meaning of the word worry is to choke or strangle.
He looked at me in surprise and said, You dont say! Well, I came
to that independently. And I knew I had to do something about
it. I prayed until I was able to forgive everybody. T hen I prayed
until I got to the point where I was willing to put the whole matter,
together with the people, in the hands of God and let it go.
T he final outcome, he told me, was not what he had hoped,
but it was satisfactory. T he big thing was that the minute he ceased
worrying and resenting, his physical condition began to improve,
until finally the bronchitis cleared up entirely and he choked no
more. He repeated, I would be afraid to worry.
T he damaging effect of worry does not always manifest so
radically as in this case. But if you are inhibited in your life, if
things dont go right, if you dont feel right, if you havent got a
grasp on things, just maybe it would be a good idea to examine
100

the extent and depth of worry and anxiety in your mental and
emotional condition.
How, then, is worry dispelled by prayer? T here is a passage
in the thirty-fourth Psalm that is a wonderful one. I suggest you
commit it to memory and use it often. It goes like this: I sought
the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears
(verse 4 kjv). What a statement! You seek the Lord, He hears you,
and He delivers you. From a few of your fears? No, from all your
fears. So, why worry when you can pray? It is either, or. You can
worry, or you can pray and have no worry.
Now just what does the process of praying do to you that
relieves you of worry? One thing it does is release and activate
your built-in strength. Every one of us has more strength by far
than he ever dreamed of. Have you ever used all your strength?
All of it? No, you have never used one-half of your strength, nor
have I. Ill go further and say that I doubt that any of us has ever
used one-tenth of his strength. We have tremendous reservoirs of
power that we could call into action if we would. You can prove
that to yourself by considering things that people do under crisis.
Most astonishing things are done in crisis.
Like what happened once when a truck fell over onto a young
boy. We had an article about it in Guideposts. T he crowd was try-
ing to lift the truck off of him. For some reason their combined
efforts could not do it. Along came a fair-sized mannot a big
mana fair-sized man. He saw the situation. He never said a
word. He crouched down, put his shoulders under the truck, and
lifted it with just enough force for the boy to be pulled free. Later,
they asked him to lift it again, to show how he had done it. He
couldnt budge it.
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CONFIDENCE
Why could he do it the first time and not the second? Because
the second time there was no crisis to activate the necessary
strength. And what strength had been activated the first time? Was
it strength outside of him? Of course not. It was inside of himand
it came out when it was needed. I wouldnt know but the greatest
achievement in life is to know how to break out from yourself con-
tinually the strength that is there. You pray the strength out, you
believe it out, you practice it out. And then the worry fades away.
It is amazing the strength that people havethat you have and I
have. Why, then, should we go crawling through our days afraid of
life? Worrying about it?
I clipped an article out of the Des Moines Register the other day.
If you read newspapers all the way through, you will sometimes
find great human stories. T his one was about a twenty-eight-year-
old pilot who was flying a little pontoon plane up in northwestern
Ontario. He was scouting an isolated little lake, far from civilization
nobody around anywhere for miles. And he set this little plane
down on pontoons. He stepped out of the cockpit onto one of the
pontoons to go about his business. T he propeller was still turn-
ing. He slipped, hitting his head, and toppled unconscious into the
water. Apparently the cold water revived him, and he came to, got
hold of a pontoon, and tried to haul himself onto it. T hen he dis-
covered to his horror that the propeller had cut his right arm off
slightly below the shoulder and he was bleeding profusely.
So there he is: far from civilization, in a lake, arm cut off,
his lifeblood coursing out. What would you do? Worry? T hat
sure would help you a great deal, wouldnt it! What did he do?
He prayed. And he got an answer. He managed to pull himself up
onto the pontoon and into the cockpit. He succeeded in fastening
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a tourniquet around the bleeding stump. He did what was neces-

sary to lift the plane off the water into a beautiful takeoff. Praying
all the while that he would not black out, he flew it fifteen miles
and landed on another lake, where another pilot took over and
flew him to Port Arthur and got him to the hospital. His life was
saved, even though his arm was gone.
T he newspaper commented that everyone was astonished
by the incredible power that this man had over himself. He is a
man of prayer, and he found that prayer gave him power; whereas
worry, in that crisis, would have destroyed him. God spare us
from ever undergoing an ordeal like that one! But in one degree or
another, every last one of us has faced situations that, because of
their importance to us individually, needed all the power we could
summon. Dont you ever say to yourself, I cant handle it. You
can handle anything. With God you are greater than you think.
Believe it. Its the truth. I sought the Lord, and he heard me . . .
He always will. . . . and (He) delivered me from all my fears. Not
a few of them, all of them. So why worry when you can pray? A
second thing that prayer teaches is to thinkand that, too, elim-
inates worry. One of the greatest things a human being can do is
to think. So many of us dont. You ought to try it sometime. Really
amazing things happen. God gave us this tremendous power, the
ability to think, and when you think Gods thoughts after Him,
you are operating on Gods wavelength. Praying activates the
mind, so that you understand, you perceive, you get increased
know-how, you become more alert, more in tune with ultimate
wisdom and therefore ultimate power.
When a person worries, he has a nice little accompanying
disease. T hese two go together, like Siamese twins. When you
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CONFIDENCE
see one of them, look for the other and you will see it. T hey are
inseparable. When you have worry, you have tension; when you
have tension, you have worry. I cant remember anybody who was
a worrier who wasnt also a victim of tension. Worry is like a shiv-
ering; it agitates the mind so that deeper knowledge cannot come
up from the unconscious depths, because the surface of the mind
is disturbed by this tension. When you pray, you become calm and
serene and confident. You have tranquility and therefore tension
dies. T his leaves worry alone and it withers on the vine. Pray ten-
sion away and in the same process you pray worry away. When
you are free from tension and your mind is operative, there isnt
anything you cant handle.
In the 1968 World Series there was a great demonstration of
this. A pitcher by the name of Mickey Lolich was pitching for the
Detroit Tigers in the seventh game. Now this man had wanted
to pitch in the World Series for years. The Tigers hadnt won the
championship since 1945. They wanted to win this World Series. So
they fought along until they and the St. Louis Cardinals had each
won three games and they got into this seventh game. When the
Cardinals came to bat in the last half of the ninth inning, the Tigers
were ahead, 40. Mickey Lolich, pitching his third game in this
Series, had the prize in his view.
He got the first man out. He got the second man out. He only
had one out now between himself and athletic immortality. But
along came a problem. T he third man at bat didnt act right. He
didnt cooperate. He hit one right over the barriera home run.
So Lolichs shut-out went out the window. But he still had a three-
run lead. In that moment, the manager of his team walked out to
the mound for one of those mysterious conversations.
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In the stands, 55,000 people sat spellbound. Were they going

to take him out, just when he had this victory in his grasp? But
they didnt take him out.
I happened to see a television interview with Mickey Lolich
that night. T he interviewer asked, Mickey, when the manager
came out to the mound, what did he say? Well, as Mickey then
related it, the mysterious conversation had gone something like
this:
Mickey, you are a little tense, arent you, boy?
Yes, sir, I feel a little steamed up.
You are worrying that maybe theyll get to you, theyll start
hitting you, and well lose this game and lose this prize? Isnt that
it?
Yes, sir.
Look, boy, that worry is making you tense, and that ten-
sion can throw off your timing. I tell you what I want you to do.
Remember when you first started playing baseball and you used
to pitch on vacant lots? Remember you had the time of your
life? Remember all those afternoons this past summer when you
werent pitching in the World Seriesyou were pitching in regular
baseball games and you loved it?
Yes, sir, Lolich answered.
All right, said the manager, just forget the prize of the
World Series and pitch because you love it.
So Mickey took a long look at the next batter. He wound up
and pitched the ball not over the corner of the plate, but right
down the middle with a little hook curve. T he batter connected
with it, but on the edge, and the ball went into the air in a pop-fly.
T he catcher caught it, and the game and the series were over.
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CONFIDENCE
Now, I wish I could tell you the manager had said to him to
pray about it. T hat would have made my illustration perfect. But
he didnt say that. However, the point is that praying is the surest
of all ways to get back to calmness and tranquility of mind. And
when you remain so, worry abates and your natural skills will be
operating. So why worry when you can pray? Remember the text
from Psalm 34: I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered
me from all my fears. And so He will.
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YO U R O U T L O O K
DETERMINES
YO U R F U T U R E
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended:
but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which
are behind, and reaching forth unto those things
which are before, I press toward the mark for the
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:1314 KJV
Your outlook determines your future. T his is a definite, provable

fact. Your future is not determined by circumstances over which
you have no control, but is conditioned by the attitude you have
toward yourself, toward other people, toward the world, and
toward God, to determine your future. It need not be merely the
result of undisciplined circumstances.
Let me tell you about a friend of mine. He was standing one day
on a street corner in a city, very disconsolate and indecisive. He had
lost just about everything: his business, his home, and now he had
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CONFIDENCE
lost even his car. He had just surrendered the keys to an official of
the bankruptcy court. He was standing there hesitant, for he real-
ized he must summon every dollar and was reluctant even to spend
money for a taxi to take him to the home he no longer owned.
He was a man of some faith, although he had never exercised
it to the fullest. But something prompted him to send up a little
prayer for guidance. God acted, as He always does. A big truck
came along, went past him a bit, then stopped. T he driver leaned
out and called, Want a ride?
My friend had never hitchhiked before, but he liked the
looks of the truck driver, a big, burly, honest-looking fellow. So he
climbed into the cab with him. He just had to talk to somebody,
and the personality of this truck driver inspired confidence, so as
they drove along he told him the whole story, down to the least
detail. T hen he added, I have no future. All my future is in the
past. T he past is all Ive got. T here is nothing out ahead.
T he truck driver said, Sure, its tough. T hen he reached
over with a big fist and poked my friend in the chest. But listen,
brother: You are tougher than it is, arent you? And dont forget
that God will help you. T hen he added a very wise statement:
What happens to you in the future really depends on how you
think of things from here on in.
In other words he was saying, Your outlook determines your
future. Parenthetically, my friends case had a good outcome, for
he took that truthful thought and built a new and a creative life
with it.
Circumstances for any of us may at times become very diffi-
cult. Troubles may pile as high as the moon. T hey can either over-
whelm you, or they can become an open door to a greater and
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more wonderful life. Everybody has essentially the same facts to

deal with. One person takes those facts and makes something
great of them. Another person takes the same factsor rather
they take himand is destroyed in the process.
A gentleman who is very close to me, a relative in fact, and
another young man of about the same age were caught in an
intra-company political situation, and both were suddenly out of
a job. T hey had counted on their jobs, for this company seemed to
have every prospect of great advancement for them. But here they
were, out, both of them.
What did the two men do? My relative sat down and said to
the Lord, I dont understand why this developed, but I know that
You have an answer for me. So Im going to have the attitude that
there is something better in store for me; and the only way You
could give it to me was to get me out of the situation I was in.
Perhaps I was going to seed.
T hen he took the directory of directors and other business ref-
erence books and made a list of one hundred of the top executives
of great American business organizations. To these men he wrote
a letter and enclosed his picture. (Some of us would do better not
to put in a picture! But he is handsome enough for the picture to
be an asset.) He told these presidents exactly what his record was.
He showed me his letter, and I thought it was a masterpiece and
absolutely honest. He summed up his case something like this:
Maybe you could use a man like me. Here are my qualifica-
tions. As you will see, I have a few weaknesses. He had frankly
enumerated them. But I think the strong points outweigh the
weaknesses. If you have a place for someone of my abilities, I hope
you will let me hear from you while I am still available.
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CONFIDENCE
He had seven offers, one of which led him to the very thing in
life that he could do best.
T he other fellow had a nervous breakdown. He went all to
pieces. And he hasnt made anything of his life even yet, I am
sorry to say. But he couldit is never too late if he would get the
proper outlook.
When you face a mess of difficulties, it can be plenty tough
there is no denying it. But if you take the attitude and adopt the
outlook that something great can be done with your trouble, you
can do something great. If, on the other hand, you take the atti-
tude that in this unhappy situation you have been discriminated
against and everything is against you and it is all unfair, etcet-
era, then you just make yourself the victim of the adverse circum-
stances. Your outlook determines your future.
How, then, do you get the proper outlook? There are two things,
I think, to do. First, let God guide you. Let Him put rightness into
you. There is a lot of error in all of us. There is a great deal of error
in you. Maybe there is even more in me. This problem is in every-
bodys life. Your possibilities of success and happiness depend in
the long run on whether you have more of truth or more of error in
you. Error in you will result in ineptitudes, mistakes, wrong talking,
wrong thinking, and wrong doing. And when you are wrong, things
naturally go wrong. This is part of why you should go to church,
why you should read the Bible, why you should live with Christ. All
these things help get more rightness into you. I dont mean moral
rightness only, but perceptiveness, astuteness, understanding, pen-
etration, insight, wisdom. The person who has rightness develops a
good future. But if you are wrong, then things are bound to turn out
wrong. Years ago, there was a fellow by the name of Louie who used
110

to come to Marble Collegiate Church. Louie wouldnt mind my

mentioning his name because he had a great experience. He got the
notion that I was a skilled psychological counselorwhich I never
claim to be. But he kept coming around to see me. He was, by all
odds, the most complex and mixed-up human being I had ever dealt
with. He wasnt a bad man; he was just wrong, that was all. I would
give him a suggestion and ask him to try. This he would do to the
best of his ability and understanding, but he never got a satisfactory
result. I tried everything I knew. It almost got so that when I saw
Louie coming, I wanted to go the other way. He was a real problem,
and I couldnt get anywhere with him.
One evening on my way to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to make
a speech, I ran into Louie as I came out of the church. Id like to
talk with you, he said.
Well, I cant stop now, Louie. I have to go to Allentown right
away.
Howre you going? he asked.
In this car.
Well, he said, thats great. I havent anything else to do. Ill
ride down there with you.
T his certainly was the last thing that I wanted, but I sat back
and listened as he talked, telling me the same old story, all the way
to Allentown. T hen, when I had made my speech and we started
back, he began telling me the same story all over again.
About 11:00 pm, we came to one of those famous food empo-
riums that line the highways of America, and I suggested, Louie,
how about a hamburger?
He said hed like that. We went in and got two nice hamburg-
ers all fancied up with relish and onions and everything. We were
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CONFIDENCE
drinking coffee, and on our second hamburger, all of a sudden, to

my embarrassment, Louie hit the counter with an enormous blow
of his fist, making the silver rattle and the coffee swish out of the
coffee cups as he exclaimed, Ive got it! Ive got it! Ive got it!
Youve got what? I demanded.
Ive got the answer to myself!
Well, brother, I said, never in all my life did I know there
was so much power in a hamburger!
We went outside, and there in the moonlight, leaning against
the car, Louie said, At last I realize why everything goes wrong with
me. Its because I am wrong myself. What else could you expect?
I looked at him in amazement. It was one of the most dra-
matic flashes of insight I had ever seen a human being experience.
And what did Louie do then? He knew he had to get the wrongness
out of him. So, standing there by that automobile in the moonlight
beside a great highway, he dedicated his life to Jesus Christ and
asked Christ to come into him and change his thought processes.
And Jesus Christ did. It wasnt easy to make the turn, but the turn
was made. He had a new outlook, and as a result of the new out-
look, he had a new future.
I dont want to oversimplify it. T here are many factors and
complexities in the human mind that determine the way we go
and where we get. But one thing is sure: If you forget those things
that are behind, as the Bible teaches, and reach forward toward
those things that are ahead, pressing toward the mark for the
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, you have a future
that is full of strength and hope and joy.
T he second thing, second only to letting God put rightness
into you, is to let God put strength into you too. Nobody who isnt
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strongstrong in his faith, strong in his spirit, strong in his moral-

ity, strong in his whole beingcan ever hope to have a future.
I sometimes get concerned about the day and age in which
we live, wondering whether we are still developing strong peo-
ple like those who made this country great in days gone by. Are
we developing a generation of permissive, weak people whose
weakness could destroy the very fabric of the United States? Our
national future is tied in with whether or not we have strong peo-
ple. I thank the Lord that I shall never be a mother, because being
a mother is the toughest job in the world, and I wouldnt be equal
to it. What has a mother got to be? She has to be sweet, she has to
be patient, she has to be gentle, she has to be understanding and
long-suffering with her husband and with her children; she just
has to be all these things. And at the same time there is another
quality she ought to have: namely, strength. Many mothers do
have it. But in this country today, we need more mothers with
steel in them, because it is the duty of a mother to rear strong men
and strong women.
A thought-provoking article appeared some months ago
in the weekly newspaper Our Sunday Visitor. It is written by
Mrs. Bobbie Pingaro and titled: I Had the Meanest Mother in the
World. Here are a few lines from it: I had the meanest mother in
the whole world. While other kids ate candy for breakfast, I had
to have cereal, eggs, or toast. When others had Cokes and candy
for lunch, I had to eat a sandwich . . . My mother insisted upon
knowing where we were at all times. Youd think we were on a
chain-gang. She had to know who our friends were and what we
were doing. My mother actually had the nerve to make us work.
We had to wash dishes, make beds, learn to cook, and all sorts
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CONFIDENCE
of cruel things. My mother always insisted upon our telling the

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, even if it killed
usand occasionally it nearly did. . . . None of us has even been
arrested, divorced, or beaten his mate. Each of my brothers served
his time in the service of this country. And whom do we have to
blame for the terrible way we turned out? Youre right, our mean
mother. I am filled with pride when my children call me mean. . . .
Because, you see, I thank God He gave me the meanest mother in
the whole world.
Now the writer of that article had a real human being for
a mother. She was a loving and rugged Christian mother who
understood that it was her duty to raise her children strong, so as
to give them power over their emotional, their mental, their phys-
ical, and their spiritual lives. And she knew that the only way to
become strong people is by becoming disciplined people.
By too much permissiveness, you actually deny a young per-
son his heritage. If you dont give him discipline, the world will
discipline him and discipline him hard later on. Old and young
alike, we all do too much complaining about the difficulties and
hardships in human life. I dont like them any more than anybody
else, but they are good for us. It is through suffering and struggle
that we develop strength and become great human beings. And if
you have this outlook, you can count on a good future.
Let me close with one more illustration. T he scene is Centre
Court at Wimbledon in London. A great crowd is gathered. An
American girl has just won the womens singles tennis champi-
onship of the world. She is a tall, graceful woman. Standing there
listening to the plaudits of the multitude, she sees walking toward
her Elizabeth II, queen of England, holding the cherished cup
114

of victory. She curtsies before the queen and receives from Her
Majestys hand this great sports honor. In this moment of tri-
umph, her mind goes back to the early years of her life.
Born in New York of poor parents, she had had to struggle
with one problem after another. While she was still a child, her
family lived for a while on a little piece of land outside the city. At
that time, she had an illness and was sickly and weak for a long
time. One day her mother called to her and said, Honey, see that
stone down by the barn? I want you to move that stone up here so
we can use it for a stepping-stone by the kitchen door.
Mommy, I can hardly walk to the barn, let alone bring a stone
up here, the girl said.
Well, her mother told her, you go down to the barn as best
you can and start moving the stone. Even if you move it only half
an inch in this direction, move it that much. Move it half an inch
today and half an inch tomorrow, but start moving it.
T he girl went down to the stone. She pushed it half an inch.
She came back to the house exhausted. T he next day she pushed
it an inch and returned exhausted to the house. One fine day she
pushed the stone five inches. It took her nearly two weeks to do
what a child in normal health could have done in a few minutes,
but finally came the day when, with flushed face, she got the stone
to the kitchen door.
People muttered that her mother was a hard woman. Why
didnt she carry the stone herself? Well, she may have been a hard
woman, but she was a wise mother. She knew that things like
moving that stone would make her daughter strong. By and by
the girl did grow strong. T he family moved back to Harlem. T he
girl became a tennis champion. Ultimately she became one of the
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CONFIDENCE
greatest tennis players in the world. Her name was Althea Gibson.
She had many difficulties, but she had the outlook of strength
gained from her experience with a wise mother and from her faith
in God.
Any future that lies out there for anybody is lined with diffi-
culty. But whoever keeps his eye on Jesus Christ as the mark and
reaches forward, having turned his back on the past, will move
into a great and glorious future. Your outlook determines your
future. So get a great outlook.
116

W H AT I S T H E R E T O
MAKE LIFE GOOD?
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.
Psalm 36:9 NIV
Some time ago, after making a rather enthusiastic speech about

this wonderful world and this glorious life, and how everything in
general is good as I happen to see it, I was approached by an obvi-
ously off-beat representative of the younger generation, who said,
Dont make me laugh. What is there good about life anyway?
He never gave me a chance to answer, for he departed, and so did
I. But his question lingered with me. What is there, indeed, that
makes life good?
T he answer, of course, is that there is plenty to make life good
for those who are able to see it and able to take it. What this world
is to you and to me and through us to other people depends, very
largely, on our attitude toward it all, on our cast of mind, on the
spirit with which we approach it.
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CONFIDENCE
T he other night I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to give a speech

to a large audience made up of salespeople and the general pub-
lic. T he people in charge suggested that I remain in my room at
the hotel as long as possible and then come to the auditorium by
taxicab. At about five minutes of eightthe meeting was to begin
at eightI got into a taxicab, little realizing that it was a twenty-
minute drive. So the meeting was held up a bit.
Well, I gave the address of St. Patricks Auditorium to the
nice, clean-looking young fellow who was driving this taxicab. As
we started, he asked, T here is a doctor from New York speaking
there tonight, isnt there?
I guess there is, I said. Why?
Well, he continued, I would like to hear him, but I cant.
I have to work tonight. I go to college during the day, Dalhousie
University, and I drive this taxicab at night. My wife would like to
go, too, but she is a nurse and she cant be off tonight.
You are a hardworking young couple, arent you? I remarked.
Yes, he said, but dont be sorry for us. We are having a good
time. We like it. But, you know, I would like to hear that man
tonight.
Well, I said, you have the man right with you now. What is
it you want to know?
Are you the man who is going to make the speech?
I am.
He turned around and looked at me. It will take us fifteen
minutes to get there. Cant you give me a rundown of the speech
as we drive along?
And I did. It took me forty-five minutes to give it in the audi-
torium and fifteen minutes to this man.
118

I want to tell you something, he volunteered. T his is a won-

derful world, and this is a wonderful time to be alive. Now, he
continued, you take my father. He always taught me to love God
and to live the right kind of life and to have a positive attitude
toward things. And my wife and I, we are going to do something
with our lives. We just know we are.
I told him about my off-beat, far-out friend who could see
nothing in life, who thought it was a flop, a dismal failure, a
wash-out, and various other things.
T he young man commented, You know, I feel sorry for those
guys. Somehow or other they are so mad at everybody and so mad
at themselves that theyve got all mixed up. I think we ought to try
to convert some of them, dont you?
It is refreshing to be visiting in a city, whether in the United
States or in Canada or wherever else, and to find that there are
people who have such a vital idea of life. T hat is why the Bible lives
on from generation to generation. T he Bible knows the score. T he
Bible writers knew everything about the rottenness and depravity
in human existence. T he Bible writers knew all about the evil in
men. But the reason this Book does not become obsolete is that it
also transmits the realization that God is good and the world is
good, and there is a great deal of good in human beings.
In the thirty-sixth Psalm, verse nine (kjv), is the affirmation,
For with thee is the fountain of life. What a picture! A surging,
sparkling fountain. T hou (God) art the fountain of life. And out of
that fountain comes great goodness.
In life we have to balance one thing against another. We are
aware, very painfully aware, that everything in this world today is
not sweetness and light. And sometimes we have to deal with ugly
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CONFIDENCE
facts. I have an editorial clipped from a prominent religious jour-

nal, and I cite this in order that you may balance the conditions it
depicts against any superficial effervescence about life:
T he writer says that many servicemen returning from foreign
lands see America from a wholly different perspective. In some
cases their long absence sharpens their awareness of Americas
moral decline and they gaze with bewilderment on a scene
marked occasionally by riots, strikes, racial tensions, obscenity,
sexual license, and spiritual atrophy. And: T he facade of afflu-
ence cannot conceal the desperateness of our plight and the speed
with which we seem to be approaching the end of our nations
greatness. I am hearing this now more and more.
Well, now, I dont know whether I am willing to accept
that appraisal, but it is a fact that the time is long overdue when
people who believe in God and in Jesus Christ and in the Ten
Commandments and in the moral standards of our civilization
should rise up and do something about it. I am glad to say that
we in Marble Collegiate Church are attacking current problems
through spiritually oriented programs aimed at changing the lives
of people as well as improving conditions.
But granting the deplorable trends mentioned above, it is also
true, thanks be to God, that there are thousands upon thousands
of members of the younger generation who instinctively in their
hearts know that life is good and want what is good. T he pity is that
too often the churches fail to tell them that through the power and
the grace of Jesus Christ, they can have life that is good and won-
derful and ever new. In Switzerland last summer, while on vaca-
tion, I received a telephone call from a boy who told me he was an
American soldier stationed in Germany. He asked if he could come
120

to see me. Not knowing what it was about, I replied, Well, I am

only going to be here until tomorrow, and I havent much time . . .
I assure you, sir, it is a life-or-death matter with me, he per-
sisted. Will you see me?
If it is a life-or-death matter, I surely will, I replied, though
I dont know how I can help you. How did you know I was here? I
asked. Did you contact New York?
No, he said. I have a couple of your books, and I know you
go to Switzerland sometimes. I know you go to certain cities, so I
have called around to those cities, praying that I might find you.
He added that he was three hundred miles away and said, I will
be there in the morning.
All right, I said, nine oclock.
At nine oclock the next morning, a nice-looking American
boy, about twenty-one or twenty-two years old, walked in. He
seemed nervous. We secluded ourselves in a corner of the lobby
and sat down. Whats the trouble? I asked.
I cant stand the kind of life I am living. It is hell! I cant live
with it anymore. Ive got to get away from it. And he described a
not unusual kind of moral decline.
Where are you from, son? I asked him.
He said he was from Maine. Ive got to have help, Dr. Peale.
Ive got to have help. I fell for all the talk that this was the kind of
life to live. But there is no fun in it. And I feel dirty. Dirty! What
will I do? And he asked nervously, Can I get a cup of coffee here
somewhere? T hat is characteristic of many people when they are
nervous. T heyve got to have either a cigarette or coffee. T his fel-
low had to have coffee. So we went across the street to a little caf
on the corner.
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CONFIDENCE
T his interview was taking place in Interlaken, Switzerland.

T here is a big meadow in the heart of the town, and towering
over this meadow is one of the great mountains of the world, the
Jungfrau (Young Wife). Like a coy young wife she often throws a
veil over her face in the form of cloud formations. T hat morning,
however, the veil had been cast aside and there she was, in all of
her white, sparkling, radiant glory. We sat there at a table at the
caf. T he boy gazed at the mountain and said, I never saw any-
thing like that. And he added, T hats the way I want to be: clean,
like that!
I had a glimpse of something of the depth of the boys soul.
He has it in him to be a tremendous leader of men, if he can be
responsive to such cleanness and give expression to it. You can
be, I said, if you will bring Jesus Christ into your life.
Oh, he exclaimed, thank God! T hats what I wanted to hear
you say!
So apparently nobody else had said that to him. Why wouldnt
they say that to him? He leaned over the table where we were hav-
ing coffee and at my urging gave his heart to Jesus Christ. He told
me he had one more day off. Go up there among the mountains,
where it is clean, and talk with God, I said. T hat boy now knows
that not only is there real good in life but where to find it.
It is a great tragedy for the youth of the present generation
that so many of them have never been pointed in this direction.
What is the trouble with the older generation and with the Church
that they have not been witnesses to the fact that this is truly the
way of the good life?
Yes, what is there good in life? T here is cleanness. T here is
peace of mind. T here is serenity of heart. T here is self-respect. All
122

these are good things. And then, too, another thing that makes life
good is that you never need be defeated in this world, never, even
when you are old, or when you have had a lot of disappointments
and frustrations and heartache or when things have gone against
you. It is still good out there, life is. You can still recoup. You can
still build again in this wondrous land of opportunity. I am con-
stantly hearing criticism of the establishmentsome bad, mean
thing that holds everybody down. T his country isnt perfect. Not
at all. Who is perfect? But there is still great opportunity in this
country, under God, under freedom, for a human being to say to
himself, With the help of God, who is the fountain of life, there is
always something new and wonderful for me. I was talking once
with a friend, a man now who has since passed. He is Colonel
Harland Sanders. He always wore a white suit and a black string
tie. He had white hair and a white beard and carried a cane. His
face was just written all over with kindness. He looks like, and is,
in fact, a Kentucky colonel of the old school. All around this coun-
try you will see his picture, if you look for it, on many a restaurant
where they serve Kentucky Fried Chickenwhich is, according
to him, finger-lickin good. And Colonel Sanders was one of
the most generous of men. He was really a lovable man.
His father was a miner, back in the days when they didnt
make much money mining. I think his father was killed in the
mines and his mother had to go to work in a shirt factory. She
had three young children, and Harland was given the job of being
cook for the familywhich later paid off with the fried chicken.
He has worked very hard all his life. He had to leave school at the
end of the sixth grade. He experienced the kind of poverty that has
always existed in the Kentucky mountains and in Tennesseeat
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CONFIDENCE
least in the poverty pockets. He grew up very, very poor. Finally he

got a little restaurant going. T hen they rerouted the highway, and
he lost everything. T hat was when he was sixty-five years of age.
So he is sitting on his porch in Corbin, Kentucky, one morn-
ing, when the mailman comes up the walk and hands him an
envelope from the United States Government. It contains his first
Social Security check. Amount: $105. He is sixty-five, broke, and
defeated. My government is going to give me $105 a month so that I
can eke out an existence, he thinks. So he began to pray: Dear God,
You brought me into life for more than this. I ask You to guide me
and also help me to help mankind.
While he was praying, the thought of his special recipe for
fried chicken came to him. He knew a particular formula. And
he decided he would go out and see if he could sell franchises to
this fried chicken. He had a car about ten years old, and he had a
blanket. He toured the country, sleeping in the car when it was
cold and wet, and sleeping out on the ground when it was dry.
Sixty-five years old, undefeatable, a Christian who believed in the
guidance of God and believed that not one of His children need
ever be defeated.
In Salt Lake City, he sold his first franchise. For every chicken
sold he was to get five cents. Later on there were six hundred fran-
chised restaurants. At that point, when he was seventy-five, he
sold most of his rights for two million dollars. T he company that
bought them then hired him at forty thousand dollars a year to be
their goodwill ambassador.
T hen, at eighty, this man walked among his fellows like a
saint. It is not that he achieved a great financial success that makes
his life story significant. It is that he knew life is full of good and
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that God is the fountain of life for everyone who will put his trust
in Him. So when you think of the present-day world, how evil it
may have become, how the old standards seem to have broken
down, how mankind has reverted to the filth of Roman Empire
days and wallows in it, remember also that there are beautiful
mountains and rushing rivers and sounding seas and magnificent
forests and that the stars come nightly to the sky and that the sun
still goes down in the west in an eff ulgence of beauty. Remember
also that there are good people, people reaching for the good, peo-
ple who will not let anything overwhelm them, people who see the
surging fountains of the waters of life and who wash themselves in
them and become clean and fresh and restored. Be glad that you
have life. It is a precious thing. It is awfully good. Keep it good as
long as you have it.
125

THE POWER
OF HOPE AND
E X P E C TAT I O N
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why
art thou disquieted within me? hope thou
in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the
health of my countenance, and my God.
Psalm 42:11 KJV
T here are two dynamic words that can change your life. Write
these words in gigantic letters across the sky of your life, as you
sometimes see skywriters writing advertisements against the
heavens. Embed these two great words in your consciousness
deeply. Condition your attitudes around these words until they
become a motivational part of your whole being. Do this and your
life will be good, very good, no matter how much pain or difficulty
you may experience.
And what are these two magic words? What words can
produce such dynamic results? I call it the power of hope and
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CONFIDENCE
expectation. Set these words out clearly, these amazing words:

hope, expectation.
The Bible, which is the wisest document ever known in human
existence, which defies the ravages of time and change because it
contains the truth that cannot be changed or invalidated, says in
the forty-second Psalm, the eleventh verse: Hope thou in God: for
I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance (even
healthy in the face) and my God. What a text! There is power in it.
In the city of Detroit, there is a church on Woodward Avenue
where a great minister by the name of Merton S. Rice preached
for many years. I used to hear him when I was much younger. He
was a great preacher and a giant of a man. Once he preached a
sermon on this text, and a gifted sculptor was in the congregation.
T his artist was so impressed by what he heard that he conceived a
bronze statue, which was later placed outside the church, depict-
ing a man struggling against every difficulty, every obstacle, every
pain, but was always looking up. And on the pedestal of the statue
is carved: I shall yet praise him. T here is another text that is
from the sixty-second Psalm: My soul, wait thou only upon God;
for my expectation is from him (verse 5 kjv). T hat is to say, what-
ever you want from life, expect that God will give it to you and
keep waiting on Him so that you will deserve to receive it. T his is
truth out of the wisest Book ever written.
So, there are the two words, hope and expectation. Do you
know what can be done with words? It is amazing. Words spo-
ken by an orator can electrify multitudes of people. Such was the
power of the words of Demosthenes, William Pitt, Gladstone,
Bryan. Words are alive. Words can destroy, and words can cre-
ate. Words can break down, and words can build up. T he kind
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of words you keep in your mind determines ultimately what you

are, what you become. T here is no power like that of words.
What are the words you use every day? Better get a piece of
paper and write down the chief words you use. If you want a mir-
ror of why you are what you are, look at those words. Words are
far more than an assemblage of letters; words are symbols express-
ing life. Confucius, who was one of the wisest men who ever lived,
was once asked what he would do if he could suddenly become the
emperor of China and, as it used to be in the old days, have com-
plete power of life and death over his subjects. What would he do?
He said he would teach the people of China specific words that were
creative. He knew that you can make or break yourself by words.
So here are our two words: hope and expectation. Mary Martin
used to sing in South Pacific: Im stuck like a dope with a thing
called hope, and I cant get it out of my heart. She personified
expectation too. How is your hope? How is your expectation?
Expectation and hope can release the potential that is within
us. T he fact isand you dont hear it said enough that every one
of us has more potential than we think we have. Everybody in the
world ought to get up in the morning saying, By the grace of God
Ive got some potential. You try that tomorrow morning and see
what your wife does! Shell think you are a little balmy, but she will
be glad, because that is why she married you: she saw the potential
in you. Its there. Have you got to the point where you are willing
to settle for yourself as you are? Dont answer yes to that!
A man the other day remarked with an air of great wisdom,
Well, youve got to take people as they are.
I dont believe that at all, I said. I dont believe in taking
anybody as he is. Take him as he can be, as he ought to be.
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CONFIDENCE
Dont you ever say to yourself, T his is it. T his is what I am. I
have to settle for what I am. Settle for your potential. If you expect
potential, if you hope for your greatest potential, you will bring
it out. T here isnt anybody who by application of these two great
words, hope and expectation, cant live a bigger, more creative life.
Furthermore, individuals seem to react in direct ratio to the
way they are treated. Psychologists have recently been studying
this relationship and have called it the T heory of the Self-Fulfilling
Prophecy. Some interesting experiments have been conducted by
the Harvard University psychologist Dr. Robert Rosenthal, to
prove the power of self-fulfilling prophecy. He took twelve stu-
dents and gave each of them five rats, just plain old everyday rats,
all of a kind. But the professor told six of the students that he was
giving them the greatest rats in the whole history of rats. He told
them that their rats all had great potential and that they could
train these rats to do practically anything.
T he other six students were told that their rats were the
dumbest, most stupid rats that had ever been developed in
the rat kingdom. T he professor said he was sure the students
couldnt do anything with such rats and he was sorry, he wanted
to apologizebut he gave them their five rats just the same. T he
twelve students, over a period of six months, were to train their
rats to go through mazes and do all sorts of contortions and
maneuvers.
Well, at the end of the period the students with the rats pre-
sumed to be brilliant had developed the most marvelous rats
imaginable. T hey could do anything. When food was placed at the
end of the maze, they would go through every kind of maneuver
and trick in order to reach the food. T hey performed brilliantly.
130

Of course, the rats knew nothing about this, but the students from
the start had an idea that these rats were good.
On the other hand, the rats that the students training them
regarded as dumb were lethargic, indolent, and lazy. T hey per-
formed no tricks. T hey could hardly get their food.
T he lesson is that even in a rat there is amazing power in
expectancy. Expect the rats to come throughand they did.
Expect them not to come throughand they didnt.
Maybe you fi nd that experiment too bizarre to be con-
vincing. Well, the same professor went into a poor area of San
Francisco, where students were undisciplined, where they never
produced, where they were problem children. He picked at ran-
dom twenty-four children and divided them into two groups, as
he had done with the rats. Now we are on a higher level; we are
not on the rat level, but the human level. He put half of these
children in the hands of certain teachers, telling them that
these students had tremendous potential. He assigned the other
twelve children to another group of teachers, telling these teach-
ers that their children were lacking in potential, that they didnt
have what it took and doubtless it would be impossible to accom-
plish anything with them. T hen he prescribed a series of exer-
cises for all these children to be put through.
He returned six months later to check on the results. T he
students in charge of teachers who had been told that they could
expect great results from their students were doing spectacular
work, whereas the other students were, if anything, even more
desultory than before.
T here are a lot of statements going around about how we can
raise the quality of our citizenry today. I would just like to put
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CONFIDENCE
forth the theory of self-developing, self-fulfilling prophecy. What

people think you expect of them, they will deliver. And what your
own psyche thinks you expect of it, it will deliver.
T he development of a human being is illimitable if he hopes
in God and expects from God. So there are two great words.
Examine your words. What are the chief words that motivate you?
Substitute hope and expectation.
We could talk on this theme for hours, for it has all kinds of
possibilities. Hope. Expectation. With these two words you can
overcome any defeat. No one really needs to be defeated by any-
thing. I believe this! I wouldnt say it if I didnt. If you practice
hope and expectancy, you can ride out whatever happens. My wife
and I were in England for a little while last summer. And one typi-
cal English summer daywhich means a cold, dark, dismal, rainy
day: Have you ever read the weather forecasts in an English news-
paper? T hey run about the same day after day: Tomorrow: rain,
fog, hail, wind, with a few bright intervals. Isnt that wonderful!
Well, on this day we didnt have many intervals, but it was a great
day. We went down to Chartwell, Winston Churchills old home,
where he lived for many years and especially during the war. T hey
have opened it now to visitors. A beautiful place it is, overlooking
the wealds of Kent, with the greenest grass you ever saw, probably
because it rains so much. You go through the house of a great man,
left just as it was when he died.
I went through part of Churchills library. I saw he had all
kinds of books; so I looked to see if he had any of my books! I
thought, Wouldnt that be great. But you know something? He
didnt have, that I could find, a single one of my books! He did
have one by another New York City minister, though, and I am
132

going to congratulate him. Churchill seems to have read every-

thing. He was a wide and prodigious reader.
Outside the house we were shown where Churchill used to
stand every evening during the dark days of the Battle of Britain,
big old hat on his head, chomping on the inevitable cigar, and
watch the German bombers coming over in great waves. He could
hear the reverberations of explosions in the center of London.
From Chartwell he could see the flames. In a field nearby they still
have one of the little Spitfires, the fighter planes with which the
RAF fought off the Germans. Flying singly, one man in a Spitfire,
they saved civilizationthey and this indomitable old charac-
ter. T he woman who served as our guide was an old friend of the
Churchills. I asked her, Did Winston Churchill ever lose hope?
She laughed. Churchill? No. Hope was built into him.
He never expected anything but ultimate victory. T hat is why
some men become immortal. T hey stand against every defeat,
because they have hope and expectation built into them.
Well, you may think, Im not Churchill; Im just a plain human
being. I get assaulted by all the difficulties of life. T hings that I plan
go wrong. T hings that I want dont come to pass. I am struck by
trouble of one kind or another: illness, pain, weakness, prejudice,
mistreatment.
Certainly you are! But dont say you are going to let these
things defeat you. Not when you have God, in whom you can
hope, Who will help you yet to praise Him, and Who will put
such a glow of victory and health in your countenance that it will
be a thrill. Every day you can read about people who have prac-
ticed hope and expectation. In a magazine put out by American
Airlines I read an article about Hayes Jones. I have not met Hayes
133

CONFIDENCE
Jones, but I certainly hope I will sometime. He is the commis-

sioner of recreation of the city of New York. He was working
for American Airlines, but his accomplishments as a volunteer
helper in physical fitness programs in Detroit attracted attention,
and Mayor Lindsay borrowed him for two years to do this job in
New York. T he mayor is very smart to hire a man like this.
Back in 1960, Hayes Jones was the phenomenon of the year
in high hurdles racing. He had won everything. He was the sen-
sation of the hour. Naturally, he was picked for the Olympics, and
he went to the Olympic Games at Rome with this worldwide rep-
utation. But he failed to win a gold medal. In the 110-meter high
hurdles, he finished third. It was a terrible disappointment, and
the logic of the situation was that he should quit. T here would be
no more Olympics for four long years, and he had already won all
the other coveted championships. T hat was the logic, but Hayes
Jones said, You cant be logical about something youve wanted
all your life. So he started training again, three hours every day,
seven days a week.
In the next couple of years, he made some new records in the
sixty-yard and seventy-yard high hurdles. T hen came the night of
February 22, 1964, in Madison Square Garden. It was the sixty-yard
high hurdles. He had announced that this would be his last indoor
race. He ran it in seven seconds flat, tying his own previous record.
T hen a strange thing happened. In those days, in the old
Garden, runners, after crossing the finish line, disappeared under
a ramp before they could slow down. When Jones walked back
into view, he stood there with his head bowed. And seventeen
thousand people stood in tumultuous applause. Jones wept. Many
134

of the spectators wept too. Because a once-defeated man had made

a comeback.
At the Olympic Games in Tokyo later that year, Hayes Jones
ran before a crowd of one hundred thousand in the 110-meter high
hurdles, one of the most grueling races in the whole field of sports,
and he ran it in 13.6 seconds, finishing first.
Now he is teaching the youth of New York. Anything wrong
with the youth of New York? T here is nothing wrong with the youth
except that a lot of people over a long period of time have been
giving them the pernicious impression that they werent intended
by God to make something great of themselves. Americans love
a man who was a loser but who will become a winner because of
hope and expectation.
If you never stop fighting, you will never be defeated. So
build up hope and expectation in your mind and in your heart.
Use those great texts. You have heard them before, no doubt. If
you havent, take them now. Write them on your consciousness.
Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, (yes, you will) who
is the health of my countenance, and my God (Psalm 42:11 kjv).
My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from
him (Psalm 62:5 kjv).
If you expect little things from God, you will get little things.
If you expect nothing from God, you get nothing. But if you expect
great things from God, He will draw out of you your self-revealing
potential. You have it. You can release it. So take the words and
walk with them and live with them and think with them and pray
with them. Have the power of hope and expectation.
135

G O F O R WA R D W I T H
CONFIDENCE
For we are Gods workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus to do good works, which God
prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 NIV
As we wind to a close, Id like to mention that it is a fact that any

human being who approaches the business of living with cour-
age and confidence has two enormous factors going for him. And
there are two special texts that apply. T he first is this: T he Lord is
the strength of my life . . . in this will I be confident (kjv). Which
is to say that you can depend on the Lord, come whatever, to give
you strength. T hose words are found in the twenty-seventh Psalm,
the first and third verses.
T he second text is from Isaiah, chapter 30, verse 15 (kjv): In
quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. T his is a very
subtle statement. No one is ever going to be confident if he is all
137

CONFIDENCE
stirred up on the inside. Agitation foments fear and self-doubt, but

quietness, deep inner peace, produces confidence.
So how can one go forward with confidence? A part of the
secret is to have a sound, humble awareness of the qualities within
yourself that make for strength and for power. One of the tragedies
of human existence is how little we realize the great power built
into us by the Creator that is potentially available to us. So strongly
do I believe this that I do not think anyone need ever be defeated
by anything, no matter how difficult it may be. All he needs to do
is to draw upon these enormous inner resources of strength that
Almighty God has put within him against the hour of his difficulty.
Are you really acquainted with yourself? How long have you
lived with yourself? Well, that is perhaps an embarrassing ques-
tion. How long have I lived with myself? A long while. Do you and
I know ourselves? Really? Your opinion of yourself can be entirely
wrong. You may think of yourself as inadequate and weak, as hav-
ing ability just to a certain level, and you may settle for that. But
that is doing yourself a disservice, because within every human
being there is greater capacity than anything he has ever dreamed
of. You see evidence of this again and again.
I like to think that one of the purposes in going to church,
taking with you your weaknesses, your feelings of inferiority, your
sense of defeat, is to hear the power-packed words of the Scriptures
that can shoot into you an enormous injection of spiritual adrena-
line by which you are able to do things you ordinarily could not do
and overcome difficulties that had seemed insuperable. T he Lord
is the strength of my life . . . in this will I be confident.
William James, who without a doubt was one of the great-
est persons who ever lived in this country and who is generally
138

recognized, I believe, as the father of philosophical psychology,

stated after long study of human beings: Compared to what we
ought to bewe are only half awake. Well, were not supposed to
be that way. It really is pathetic.
A scientist in a Midwestern university not long ago expressed
the opinion that the average man uses only a fraction of his pow-
ers. T he average man, he declared, would increase his efficiency by
50 percent. Now just think what would happen if we increased our
efficiency by 50 percent. What wouldnt we do with life! T homas A.
Edison remarked that if we human beings would do all that we are
capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves. And why
is it that we dont? Its because we have never been fully released.
One of the great gifts of the Christian religion is to release human
beings to the full potential of what God designed them to be. I
have been preaching this for years, and I intend to go on preaching
it as long as I can stand up, because I feel that today all too many
churches neglect to tell the individual what, by the grace of God,
he can be.
Many ministers seem to think that Christianity is merely
a program for social actionsocial changeand that is all they
preach. But Christianity is more than that. It does provide a blue-
print for social changedont ever think it doesnt. And we can-
not go on having poverty among us or so much injustice or such
living quarters as in the ghettos of our great cities. T hese con-
ditions must change, and Christianity is dedicated to changing
them. But it is also dedicated to helping the poor individual living
in the midst of this world who feels defeated and discouraged and
needs to be reminded of who he is and what he is. When he knows
who he is and what he is, then he can live confidently.
139

CONFIDENCE
A newspaper carried an item entitled, T heres a Fortune in

Your Attic. According to this article, there are several billion
dollars lying around in old trunks, mattresses, dresser drawers,
and elsewhere in the form of unclaimed securities. Several bil-
lion! Once in a while youll see an advertisement in the newspaper
listing unclaimed bank accounts. Well, according to this story,
an elderly woman, very shabbily dressed, came into the office
of a big utility company and asked to see the treasurer. She carried
a soiled manila envelope, and inside were some yellowed stock
certificatesvery old. She said to the treasurer, Im a very poor
woman, Im living from hand to mouth, and I need some money
desperately. While rummaging around looking for something else
I found these. I dont know where they came from; they must have
been there a long time. T hey look like stock certificates. Do you
think maybe you could lend me a little money on them?
T he treasurer took them and went back to the inner office.
Later he came out beaming and told her that the certificates,
forgotten for so long, were worth on the market as of that day
sixty-six thousand dollars.
Now dont rush immediately to ransack old drawers and
trunks and attics for securities, but if I may borrow the figure of
speech there is a fortune in your atticnot in the attic of your
house, but in the attic of that temple of the soul called the human
mind. T here is a fortune there in the form of potential strength
and peace and power and joy and happiness.
For we are Gods workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to
do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
God who created you told you that He gave you dominionnot
over any person but over the circumstances of life. So dont go
140

on, defeated and crawling through life on your hands and knees.
We need a new emphasis on the greatness of man. We hear plenty
about the wickedness of man, the littleness of man, the cruelty of
manand he has all these elements in him. But, as Wordsworth
says, Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our
home. Essentially, man is a tremendous beinga marvelous crea-
ture. T hat means you. It means me. Greatness! In my study along-
side of my desk I have a bronze bust of a gentleman by the name
of William Shakespeare, who is known to all of you. As I sit there
working on a sermon or a bit of writing, I frequently look into this
bronze face of the Bard of Avon. Now I havent the slightest idea
what Shakespeare really looked like; I doubt that anybody has. But
whoever made this bronze bust got something of the old boys wis-
dom into it. T here is a kind of quizzical look on the face, with a
little half smile. T he eyes, even though they are bronze, seem to be
full of light, and its as though he were asking, Do you know what
youre talking about? Do you believe in yourself? He has talked to
me a lot, Bill Shakespeare, and one thing he seems to tell me is to
go out and tell people what they can be.
When I first came to Marble Collegiate Church, we had a
basement downstairs that had been left unfinished since the place
was built in 1854. It had only about a five-foot clearance; you had
to duck your head to walk through. T here were two or three brick
crosswalks and I think five furnaces, all of which smoked at differ-
ent times on Sunday morning.
Finally we excavated and replaced that antique basement with
a beautiful hall. And in the course of the excavation, this bronze
bust of Shakespeare was unearthed. Where it came from, nobody
knows. One of my predecessors, Dr. Burrell, was president of the
141

CONFIDENCE
Shakespeare Society of New York many years ago, and it may be

that he received it as a gift.
At any rate, it was dusted off and the sexton put it in his office.
Walking by there, I used to see this bust of Shakespeare. One
day I had with me a curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a
very learned man in his field. He stopped and asked, Whats this?
T hats Shakespeare, I said.
He examined it, looked at the inscription on the back signed
by the artist, and said, Why, this is a very valuable piece of art.
T his was done by one of the greatest workers in bronze in this
city about seventy-five or eighty years ago. Whereupon, with the
consent of the sexton, I took it out of his office and put it in mine.
Now our denomination was established by the great reformer
John Calvin, who was a tremendous teacher of mans greatness
through the redemptive grace of Jesus Christ. And we have some
rigid people in our denomination, ministers and othersnot
many, but a few. One of them came into my office one day shortly
thereafter and inquired, Whos that?
Its Shakespeare, I replied.
Why do you have a statue of Shakespeare in the office of a
minister? he asked. Why havent you got John Calvin here?
If you want to know, I answered, its because we didnt find
John Calvin in the cellar.
Well, what I am leading up to is that Shakespeare wrote:
What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite
in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In
action how like an angel!
Which is to say, go forward with confidence, believe in your
Creator, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, believe in the sanctity
142

and greatness of your own self and recognize the inherent power
you have been given over everythingover weakness, over sick-
ness, over old age, over opposition, over trouble. Its within you.
Let the Lord Jesus bring it out. Dont hug it. T hat is tragedy
hugging it. Let it come out! An important element in going forward
confidently is to live daringly. Faintheartedness always gets faint
results. Faint heart neer won fair lady. It never won any battles.
Faintheartedness is destructive. Dont ever get to the point where
youre excessively cautious. Of course a certain amount of sensible
caution is required. Dont run out into the street without first look-
ing both ways. But throw fear to the winds and live courageously.
Dare to be what you ought to be; dare to be what you dream
to be; dare to be the finest you can be. T he more you dare it, the
surer you will be of gaining just what you dare. But if you go at
things timorously, telling yourself, Im afraid Ill never make it or
I just know I cant do it or I havent got what it takes, then you will
get a result in kind. Dream great dreams; dare great dreams. Have
great hopes; dare great hopes. Have great expectations, dare great
expectations. T he Lord is the strength of my life . . . in this will I
be confident.
A friend of mine sent us for Christmas last year an attractive
new edition of a wonderful little book by William H. Danforth.
Bill Danforth was chairman of the board of the Ralston Purina
Company of St. Louis. I knew him well and admired him very
much. In this book he tells about a great experience in his teens
that changed his life. At that time he was a sallow, narrow-chested
boy; he was weak; he was pathetically thin. He had been reared in
swampy country where malaria was a rampant disease in those
days. His folks worried about him and pampered him so much
143

CONFIDENCE
that he developed fears of chills and fever and got the notion he
was fated to be a semi-invalid all his life.
T hen one day at school a certain teacher who frequently
gave the boys some strong talking-to on health singled out young
Danforth and said to him, I dare you to become the healthiest
boy in this class. Now practically every other boy in the class was
a real husky compared with Bill. But the man said to him, I dare
you to chase those chills and fevers out of your system. I dare you
to fill your body with fresh air, pure water, wholesome food, and
daily exercise until your cheeks are rosy, your chest full, and your
limbs sturdy. I dare you to become the healthiest boy in the class.
Well, Bill Danforth took the dareand he developed a splen-
did, robust physique. Seventy years after that time, in the lobby of
the Jefferson Hotel of St. Louis where I had a little visit with him,
I asked, Mr. Danforth, just what did you do to get strong? And
so enthusiastic was he that despite his advanced age, he proceeded
to show me all his exercises right there in the lobby of the hotel
and insisted that I follow the exercises myself.
We soon had an audience of about twenty-five people around
us. He said to them, Everyone can be strong. And they believed
it. And I believe it. He told me that he had outlived every member
of his class. Dare to be strong!
Mr. Danforth in his little book tells about a salesman named
Henry Woods. (T his has to do with another kind of strength.) T his
salesman came to him one morning and said, Mr. Danforth, Ive
had it. I never can be a salesman. I havent got the nerve. I havent
got the ability. You shouldnt be paying me the money I receive. I
feel guilty taking it. Im quitting right now.
144

Mr. Danforth looked at him and said, I refuse to accept your

resignation. I dare you, Henry, to go out right now today and do
the biggest sales job that youve ever done. I dare you.
He writes that he could see the light of battle suddenly blaze
up in the mans eyesthe same surge of determination that he
himself had felt when that teacher years before had dared him to
become the strongest, healthiest boy. T he salesman simply turned
and walked out. T hat evening he came back and laid down on
Mr. Danforths desk a collection of orders showing that he had, in
fact, made the best record of his life. And the experience changed
him permanently. He surpassed his own record many times in the
years that followed.
T he important thing is that a brief, frank talk between two
Christians bolstered up the confidence of the one who needed it.
T he Lord is the strength of my life. He surely is! And in this
will I be confident. With this formula, go forward, always with
confidence. Amen.
145

A NOTE FROM THE
EDITORS
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CONFIDENCE

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Copyright 2013 by Norman Vincent Peale. All rights reserved.

Distributed by Ideals Publications, a Guideposts company

Guideposts and Ideals are registered trademarks of Guideposts.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed and bound in the United States of America

GPBK292-Confidence.indd iv 12/07/13 9:42 AM

Pray Big, Think Big, Believe Big . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

How to Be an Asset to Yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Better Ways to Better Days. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

Every Problem Contains Its Own Solution . . .29

How to Stand Up to a Tough Situation . . . . . .39

Why the Crowds Love Him . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49

Keep BelievingNever Lose Faith. . . . . . . . . . .59

New Heart When Disheartened . . . . . . . . . . . .67

Enthusiasm Makes Life Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77

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Why Worry When You Can Pray?. . . . . . . . . . . .97

Your Outlook Determines Your Future . . . . .107

What Is There to Make Life Good? . . . . . . . . . .117

The Power of Hope and Expectation . . . . . . . .127

Go Forward with Confidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137

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Confidence. A word we all use often but many of us barely think

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say to yourself, I believe in my God. T hen you begin to grow

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

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Mankind affirms the greatness of God. And we affirm the

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At the beginning of my ministry I was shy, inordinately shy,

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the way Roland Hayes described his grandfathers prayers, using

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This time it seemed too much to believe! Surely a verse chosen

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an astonishing tragedy. You have to gear yourself to believe big.

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Are you an asset or a liability to yourself? Are you helping your-

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be her fourth marriagethe other three having been ended not by

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and therapy in those eight verses than in many five-hundred-

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