The Businessman & Christ continued contacts; some we acquire through the processes of education; some we get from the conditioning of family life and the standards of our par ents; and some we get from our own meditation and the use of that important organ, the brain.
man must master his work or his work will master him. And the slave can never be happy. When we really love our jobs we have mas tered them and instead of slavery we have a sense of liberty and joy. 6) Assuming and discharging re sponsibility. Some men will shirk responsibility at every turn of the road. They shun it for reasons they do not comprehend but this is fatal to success in business. The man who succeeds must not only wel come responsibility but he must also discharge it adequately. To take it without fulfilling it leads to ruin, but to discharge what you gladly welcome is a step in the right direction. 7) Ability to discern between principle and expediency. Some men operate by the law of what is convenient, not what is right. The man who succeeds permanently must be governed by right princi ples which precede and overrule what is expedient. This, of neces sity, includes honesty, integrity and self-respect. “ To thine own self be true; it follows as the night the day; thou canst not then be false to any man.” 8) Trustworthiness. You and I must be men in whom people can have confidence. They must be able to confide in us and to know we will keep their confidences. They must be able to take us at our word and to accept our judgments. Now the third and final observa tion — when all has been said and done there exists between God and m y s e l f a p e r s o n a l relationship through faith in Jesus Christ. There are binding upon me the precepts and commandments of God with Whom I have entered into a per sonal relationship. And His com mandments may be reduced to two basic rules: 1) Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. 2) Thou shalt love thy neigh bour as thyself. “ Love God and do what you want”
said St. Augustine centuries ago. He knew that if one truly loved God such a person would want to do only the will of God. And when there is love in the heart it worketh no ill to its neighbor. Thus is per fectly comprehended in these two laws all that a man needs for this life. Obedience and disobedience to these basic commandments of God carry their own reward and their own punishment. God uses a geo metric rather than an arithmetic slide rule. Thus the evil I do snow balls out of proportion to the indi vidual acts I perform. And good or righteousness, if I choose this path way, in like manner returns results far out of proportion to the individ ual acts. It may interest you to know that this personal relationship between God and myself leads me to con clude that even material success is the gift of God to me, and that what I possess I hold as a steward in trust for Him to be used as He pleases. This is .why I became a tither as early as 1939 when I had almost nothing. And that is why 15 percent of my gross income, agency and personal, now goes into cburch and missionary work of various kinds. I have been amply rewarded in the blessing which comes from giving and I have not lacked for anything. The joy and the satisfac tion which I have derived from it is a personal reward. While no man can buy his way into heaven, no man can truly love God and enjoy a personal relationship to Him without opening his pocketbook for the work of His Church. You may not believe my conclu sion, but it still remains true. I hold lightly both the success I have attained and the money I have made. And should they be taken from me by adverse circumstances it would neither change the prin ciples which govern my life nor destroy my confidence in those things which I believe. END.
I believe that men succeed and remain successful in business when they possess the following charac teristics whether they he acquired or given: 1) Hard work. There is no sub stitute for this quality however a man may get it, but the absence of hard work often spells the differ ence between success and defeat. , 2) Ambition. The man who suc ceeds must know what he wants. Ambition implies two things — one, that there is a great desire which possesses a man’s heart, something that he wants to do or be, and then that this purpose becomes a driving force within him as he seeks to ac complish the purpose. 3) Character. This is what a man really is, not what he supposes himself to be. Character itself is not developed in a crisis but a crisis will always reveal what character a man has. And character is composed of such elements as fairness, objec tivity, lack of prejudice, the princi ples by which a man lives, the abil ity to accept and profit by criticism and in general it reveals those ster ling qualities the word itself sug gests to you. 4) Perseverance. Some may link perseverance with hard work, but it has a quality of its own since it in volves more than hard work. A man may work hard but change his goals, and thus fail although he has worked hard. But perseverance is that quality by which a man does not give up until he has reached the goal he outlines for himself, and he will not be moved nor stopped until it has been reached. Some people may label it drive. 5) Enjoyment of the work. Men who succeed do so because they are captivated by the work they do. A
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THE KING 'S BUSINESS
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