Norman Vincent Peale: Handle Your Problems Successfully Part 1

Guideposts Video: Inspiring True Stories

[MUSIC PLAYING] Years ago, I was very friendly with John L. Kraft, the founder of a great company that makes cheese. Mr. Kraft was a very dedicated Christian, a very prominent Baptist, and he believed absolutely and without any question that God would help you with a problem.

He started making his cheese himself, he and his wife. And they peddled it in a wagon, and the wagon was drawn by a horse. It was pre-automobile days. And the horse’s name was “Paddy.”

And Mr. Kraft told me many times about Paddy, God, and himself because he said, there would come days when I didn’t know where the money was going to come from to make the cheese for the next day. So I would talk to Paddy about it as I drove along. And then, I’d talk to God. And sometimes, I didn’t know whether I was talking to God or Paddy.

[LAUGHTER]

But when I had a problem like that, I learned, he said, to be very quiet and to try to get all the nervousness out of my mind. And then, I would take the matter up with God and/or Paddy. And then he’d say to himself, I’ve got to have an answer to this by next Monday morning at 9 o’clock.

So he would say to the Lord, Lord, I want you to take all the time that’s necessary. And I don’t want to interfere with the way you do things, but I’ve got to have an answer to this at 9 o’clock next Monday morning. Why, I said, you can’t put a time limit on the Lord like that. He said, I know you can’t, but I did.

And Monday morning at 9 o’clock, when I had to have the answer to the problem, the first idea that came into my mind, I assumed that that was what God was telling me to do. And almost always, in a miraculous way, he said, that worked out to be a proper solution to my problem. So you see, if you bring God in it. Jesus in it, no matter how difficult the problem may be, then you get the right answer.

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