The True Riches

Three Ways To Be Successful

You can be successful by going to a state university and getting a basic education. You can get a degree and learn your career really well. If you'll be faithful in what you learn there, if you're going to be a doctor, lawyer or businessman and learn your career, be diligent, work hard, and not cause anybody any trouble, you can be successful that way. You can work your way up to the top.

However graduating from a state university limits your income because that is not the highest, kind of education.

Or if you want to start off being more successful, you can get your education at a school like Harvard, Yale, or someplace like that. Then you can start off with your salary about three times as much as you can than if you graduate from a state university.

Those major schools carry weight as far as the world is concerned and you can just start out making more money.

You can make over $100,000 a year just on salary when you start reaching the executive top. You can reach a certain amount of success that way. And God will bless that even if you don't know Him. You can be successful in this country without God. God has allowed the land to work for everybody saved  or unsaved.

The second way you can be successful financially is to follow the devil. But that will destroy you. You can be successful by listening to the devil and giving your life over to him and making money illegally.

If you go the illegal route, it will catch up with you and swallow you up completely. And you'll just wind up having nothing at the end of your life or end up getting killed or destroyed. A lot of people who do things illegally are extremely wealthy people.

There is another way you can be successful and that is to work for God and He'll show you what success really is.

God Deals in Honesty

You just have to understand that God's honest. He has a law instilled in the land that He deals in honesty. And if you'll be honest to the corporation you work for and be faithful to them, speaking highly of them with your mouth, be a first-class employee and get along with people, you will succeed.

How I Was Raised

I was born into the world as Baptist and raised Baptist. And my daddy taught me to work. He taught me to be nice. He taught me to say, "Sir," to people older than I, and "Ma'am," to women older than I, and if we didn't do it, my mother and daddy whipped me. They were strict. So many modern parents don't care if their children say "Sir," and "Ma'am," to older people.

There was no such thing in our family as the children sassing the parents or even talking back to them.

If you had sassed my mother or father, they would have smacked you in the mouth so quickly, it would make your head swim. And your head would have been swimming for quite a while.

Some people say, "Well, I can't make my kids mind, they just talk to me awful. What do you think I ought to do?" Well I say you ought to whip them.

They'll stop it.

Lester’s Success

If you knew Lester Sumrall, he gave his life to preaching the gospel.

He was dying at the age of seventeen with tuberculosis, he had only two hours to live and he had a vision. He looked over at the wall and saw a huge Bible. He turned his head and looked over on the other wall and saw a casket just his size.

All the family had been called in, and he was bleeding from within. The doctor said, "He'll live no more than two hours." And so God spoke to him and said, "Tonight you will choose one of these."

You Choose Your Life

All the things in your life depend on what you choose. God will work with you and bless you according to your choice. If you don't desire to be wealthy, you shouldn't be reading this book. This is for people who desire to be successful. If you can't stand to be wealthy, then you'll never get it anyway.

And so Lester said, "I'll choose the Bible." And God healed him. The Bible was open in the vision. He said, "I'll keep the Bible open the rest of my life." The first sermon he ever preached was at seventeen in an old schoolhouse. His ministry grew and grew and everything he had was paid for.

Lester preached several thousand times a day somewhere in the world through his tapes and to hundreds of millions of people. And he raised his sons. All three of his sons lived close to him, within about a block and a half. All three married, had children and none of them worked one day in the world. All of them worked with him. But he knew certain things that people need to learn.

Treat Your Family Right

Every Monday he took his wife, all of his sons, their wives and all their children out to a nice restaurant. They went out to eat as a family, and the children could order lobster tail if they wanted to. He let them order anything they wanted. He said, "Every man has to be good to his family. You have to be home with your family during Thanksgiving, Christmas and special occasions."

I Learned to Work

My daddy taught me to work and to be faithful. He taught me how to have manners and to look up to people and to do a good day's work. My Daddy kept me busy. I worked from nine to twelve years old, for twenty-five cents a day, and that was for eight, ten, twelve long, hot, sweaty hours. When I got to be twelve, I finally got a raise to fifty cents a day. Grown people were making about that then. But in those days hardly anyone made money:

I Lost My Mother and Brother

When I got to be ten years old, my mother died with cancer. And that was a blow. I cried for a year. That was something I could hardly get over, her dying all of a sudden with cancer.

I had one brother named Glenn who was about four and a half years older than I was. He was a football player in high school. When I was thirteen and Glenn was seventeen, he took a disease in his kidneys and began to swell up. Then the whole responsibility of the farms, the plantation, everything fell on my shoulders, and I was only thirteen years old.

So I had to take care of the stock and everything because my daddy was working.

Finally, at the age of nineteen, I watched my brother die one morning about two o'clock.

I thought, well, dear God, my mother's dead, my brother's dead, what's the use? So I just dropped out of school and I went to work at the university at Knoxville, Tennessee.

Building My Success

I worked very hard and was very diligent. Before long I got to making four, five, and six thousand dollars a week in my late twenties.

In my early thirties, I kept working really hard and it wasn't very long until I had forty some people working for me, and I became national sales manager for the United States.

In those days, you could buy a new Cadillac for seven thousand dollars. So if you make five thousand dollars a week, in a week and a half you can buy a new Cadillac and pay cash.

So it didn't take me very long to get what I wanted. You could buy a mansion for $75,000. In those days, three bedrooms and two baths were selling for around $14,500.

I had four Cadillacs in my driveway, and I had my own little mansion built. I had a long fence around my five acre little estate with light poles and had it all fixed up just like I wanted it. It had a white gate down at the front with marble posts. You got in when I let you in.

But I wasn't going to church, I was just working hard, faithful, and I was honest for the corporation I was working for. I didn't expect something for nothing.

Every place I worked, they'd give me raises. If I was punching the clock for a company, a lot of times I'd go in an hour before I was supposed to go to work. I'd just go to work and work free. I mean I didn't do it to get a raise, I'd just wanted to do my job right. It was wasn't very long, and I'd get a raise. I'd keep on getting raises.

If you look at the clock, and it's 4:30, so you go to the bathroom and stay thirty minutes you've gone about as far as you'll ever go because you'll never get anywhere with that attitude.

I’m No Smarter Than You Are

All of your decisions and the kind and quality of person you are has got to do with your mind. You make up your mind what you want to be. You can do anything you want to do.

Even though I'm a multi-millionaire, I'm not any smarter than you are. You can do a good day's work for your local department store the same as I could. I used to work for a company that gave me raises all the time. They begged me to stay with them because I was a hard worker.

Be a First Class Employee

Every company and corporation in America is looking for top people that know what's going on, that have good standards. God has a lot to say in the Bible about the relationship between an employee and an employer. When you're an employee, God doesn't want you talking about the company you work for. God doesn't like it. They pay your bills.

If you can't speak highly of them, then stop working for them and go to work for someone else. If you're going to cheat your employer out of a part of a day's work, God doesn't like it. He wants you to be a first-class employee where ever you work.

If you go to sweep the floor somewhere, make sure they're the cleanest floors in town. If you're going to be a waitress in a restaurant, make sure that you wait on more tables than anybody else. Make sure that none of your customers' water glasses gets below half full. You'll build up a business of your own.

The Customer’s Always Right

Dealing with the public, you find all kinds of people. But you have to try to satisfy the customer. The old saying, "The customer is always right." is true. Now, you can't let your customers just run over you, but you have to keep them happy, whatever kind of business you're in because they keep the doors open.

Worldly Things Get Old

And so it wasn't very hard for me to make five or six thousand dollars a week. But the most disappointing thing in the world to me was I thought if you started working as a young man and became successful and had your house paid for, and some Cadillacs you played golf, and you had everything you wanted, you'd be happy.

You know you've got every thing you want for the rest of your life. When you're broke, it's exciting being a millionaire for the first few years and playing golf all the time, but after a while, every thing gets old.

I'd hit the golf ball so much I'd think, "What am I doing? Here I am, standing on the sixteenth green; I'm going to knock this ball as far as I can. And I'm going to walk all that way to knock it again." And I'd get to thinking, "What am I doing this for?"

I’m Supposed to Be Happy

I thought, well, working for twenty- five cents a day, some day I want to be rich. When I get there, will I ever have a time! I'm going to work really hard, and I'm going to get rich and build my empire. And I did.

And after I got there it was the most disappointing mess that I've ever come in contact with. You're supposed to be happy. What's wrong? You mean to tell me you've worked all these years like a slave and now that you've got all this coming in, a safety deposit box filled with money, everything you could possibly want, and you're not happy?

Too Busy For Church

I was raised as a Baptist, and I believed that God was real, but I just got too busy to go to church. All the doctors, and lawyers, and manufacture owners I'd meet at the club on Saturday night to have a T-bone with were a lot older than me. Guys that had reached my height financially were forty-five, fifty, and fifty-five years old. And I'm in my late twenties and early thirties.

No Happiness, No Peace, and No Contentment

I was having success and money which I thought were going to bring me happiness, but they brought me only two things: A totally empty feeling on the inside, and a confused mind. I had no peace and no rest. I was living in a world of wondering what was going to happen next.

I would have to go to Broadway stage plays, the club, or get around some old buddies to try to make myself laugh.

Cocktails were every where. And suddenly I saw the face of my old-fashioned mother who had been dead ever since I was ten. I remembered when she'd go back to the bedroom, get on her knees and start praying, and pray for an hour.

Success With Emptiness

The older I got, the emptier I got. A number of years of that gets tiresome. Nightclubs get flaky, golf courses get flaky. You can only eat one T-bone a day, I don't care how much money you have. It's a sad mess to have anything you want, and you can't find happiness.

For some reason I thought if you ever got riches, you'd be happy. I found out that that's what most Americans are working for. That's what I was working for. The motels I stayed in were full of salesmen and manufacturers' reps from all over the world. They're trying to make a dollar, to be successful.

And it's nice to be successful; it's God's will for you. But you become a slave trying to be successful without Him. That's what I was doing. I just got so tired being that way that I fell on my knees one day.

I asked God, wherever He was, "Oh, God, please take my life." I said, "I don't know what You'll do with a mess like me, but I wish You'd do something because I'm not happy. God, I am not happy. I've got everything except happiness and peace, and I want that. Why don't I have it? Lord, You just take my life and do anything with me you want to do."

Jesus in the Front Seat

I didn't feel a thing. So I went back home when that trip was over. Later, I attended a stockholders meeting in Columbus Ohio, and was coming back down old highway 40 to Indianapolis. I began to say a little simple Baptist prayer asking the Lord some way, some how, to try to help me. Oh, boy. I never thought it would happen to me, but it did.

All of a sudden, a whirlwind came down around my car, the Lord got in my car.

The car and the air was so full of something powerful and clean and something that made me cry. Hey, I was an executive; I didn't cry for anybody. But I did that time. I tried to make myself stop crying and I couldn't. There was something on the inside of me jumping. My belly was jumping, and all I did was weep for an hour and a half. I started into the city limits of Richmond, Indiana, after an hour and a half of weeping. All of a sudden just as it came, it went.

"Come and Follow Me"

I could hearing something so sweet, "Come and follow me." When it left, all the emptiness on the inside of me was gone. All the confusion, all of it, had disappeared. I was possessed with peace. I was possessed with kindness, with the appreciation of even being a human being. I was totally possessed with a peace that passes all understanding.

I didn't know what to think. I'd married a girl, raised in Boston and New York. I'd met her in New York. She was really a beautiful girl. We'd been married eleven years and had a nine-year old daughter. I knew she was raised as a Catholic, and I didn't know how this was going to go over. I thought everybody in the world would be proud.

I got home and she was over next to the sink. She looked around and said, "Norvel, what's happened to you? You look like you've seen a ghost. What's wrong with you?"

I said, "Jesus, He came and sat in my car for an hour and a half. He wants me."

"Who?"

I said, "Jesus. You know, God."

"Oh. What does He want with you?"

Possessed With Peace

I said, "I don't know. But I'm going to follow Him. He gave me peace and joy that I never had before." I said, "I'm going to give my life to Him. I've been so hungry for this for years. Look at me — I'm totally possessed with peace; I've got joy and peace saturating me. I haven't found any peace and happiness in Cadillac cars, money or careers."

You only find peace and happiness in Jesus. If you're looking for happiness in a top position with your company, you won't find it. If you're working yourself hard because you're going to be the president of a company one day, you're not going to find happiness there.

I don't have any days where one day I'm up and one day down—one day successful and one day a failure. All of my days are full of love and power and success, glory to God, all of them. And if one starts out being different, I change it and make it become successful that day. You can change anything you want to with God.

So my wife said, "I'm not going to live like that, Norvel. I am not going to live like that." She just boldly told me.

But I wouldn't turn against Jesus for anything. I had found peace and joy, and I wasn't going to turn loose of it.

After a while you get so tired being miserable, confused, and depressed, after a few years, you'll do anything to find some happiness. And I'd found it and I knew I had. Regardless of what it cost me, I didn't want to let go of it and it cost me her.

No Plastic Life For Me

Why are people happier when they're poor than when they're rich? Most of the time a simple type life will bring you more happiness than the fancy, goofy, plastic type life. I just spent some time a while back in a home in Beverly Hills. I was their house guest for a few days. For them the great effort that day was planning where to have lunch. They wanted me to come over and minister some to them and pray for a lady there in the house, and so I did.

A seven million dollar home and I am sitting by the pool and here's a daughter whose mother is worth $200 million. And the daughter came out complaining because she had to get her nails and hair fixed that day and it would just ruin her day.

They had servants, door servants, cooks. I'd go in the kitchen and two cooks would have all this food cooked, and nobody ever ate it.

They'd say, "Let's go out and have lunch."

I said, "Go out and have lunch? You've got enough food in here for thirty people. Look at all this good stuff."

"Oh, I know, but we want to go to the club."

And then the daughter would say, "I wanted to ride in the powder blue Rolls Royce. You mean I've got to ride in this white Cadillac limousine? The blue Rolls Royce takes the bumps easier."

Talk about a flaky life. Dear Lord, that's pathetic to have to live Like that.

Do Something for God

Thank God for the job you've got. Thank God for the opportunity and thank Him for the health to get up in the morning and go to work. Make some progress each day for the world. Do something for somebody each day. That's what living is all about.

Real Work

Two weeks after my wife got the divorce, she gave me our daughter, nine years old. I didn't have anything to do with it. She just gave her to me. So I took her. Took her to Tennessee and began to raise her. I found out what work was. You ever try to raise a nine-year-old daughter and you don't know anything about it? Oh, God. I was trying to raise her, trying to do something for the Lord, but I was so possessed with success and making money, so I began to read the Bible.

I wanted to do God's will, but I didn't have any desire to feed the poor. I would try it, but I didn't have that kind of desire so I began to pray about the truth and asking God to help me again.

Your Heart AND Your Life

There's a lot of difference in giving your heart to God and giving your life to God. You give your heart to God to try to stay out of hell. But so many Christians' lives belong to themselves.

How could God lead me by His spirit; my life didn't belong to Him; it belonged to me. I ran my house, made my decisions, it belonged to me.

Jesus Knows Exactly How to Deal With You

Always remember, if you need something, go to the Lord and ask Him to help you. He has all the answers. You're just like me. You don't have all the answers yourself. Jesus has all the answers; He knows exactly how to deal with you.

Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy sole prosper.

3 John 2

A Bible Vision

I was reading the Bible on top of the bed one day and all of a sudden, a power came on top of my head, it felt real warm and went a little in my eyes, and when it did, this world disappeared and I saw into another world. And I came up off the bed, out of my body and I went up into the air and looked down. I saw a field and the field had thousands of lilies in it, beautiful lilies. All of a sudden, I went from the air straight down into the field, and I saw one lily. God took my eyes and let me see one lily come up out of the ground. It looked so beautiful, so peaceable.

It didn't toil, it didn't spin. It glittered and shone from every branch and every leaf. Oh, God, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my lifetime. I've never seen anything as pretty as this lily. It doesn't have to struggle to live, to have peace; it just shines and glitters because God's touched it. I was looking at that from the bottom to the top, and suddenly the scene changed.

I saw an empty high-backed chair with long straight arms with funny carving on the arms. I saw it sitting on the top of billions and billions of dollars worth of gold.

Green stuff was running down the side of the gold and it had dried on there and had cankered, sitting there for centuries. And the chair was empty. You know that favorite chair you have in your house to sit in? One day it will be empty. You won't be there any more. That house you're trying to pay for, or those millions of dollars that you've accumulated, or the cars. Everything you own is going to be right there, and your chair will be empty. And you'll be gone.

Billions of dollars worth of gold and a cold, dead dry looking empty chair. God said, "Look at it, stare at it." I kept looking at it. It was hideous looking. I'd back away from it. I had put my whole effort to get position and money. And I had both of them. But my soul wasn't prospering. Thank goodness I'd found enough peace to pray and ask God to help me again.

And I stared at it for probably several minutes. All of a sudden, everything disappeared. I caught myself slipping back in my body sitting on the bed and my Bible in my lap. And my body was weeping, my face was filled with tears. My natural senses began to come back into me. And I said, "Lord, what was that?"

I was reading the Bible that day in the 6th chapter of the book of Matthew. And the Lord said to me, "You just received a Bible vision, Son."

Always remember, in the Word of God is all of your answers. God can help you big. He knows the answer to all of your problems, not part of them. I looked down at the 6th chapter of the book of Matthew, and there it was, staring me right in the face. Notice the 28th verse. Jesus is talking to us.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.

Matthew 6:28

God says, "Why don't you consider the lilies of the field and how they grow?"

I'd never given any thought to lilies of the field and how they grow: "they toil not neither do they spin." The best things in life are free, and we give no thought to them at all. It's just dog eat dog in this world, me and my four and no more, wife, child, and dog. Trying to get our homes paid for and our cars paid for and get money, food, clothes, cars, more money.

Notice the 29th verse. Jesus says,

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Matthew 3:29

I remembered Solomon. He was the richest king in the world. Jesus uses him for an example because he was on top. One of these lilies is prettier in the eyes of God than Solomon in all of his riches and glory.

The Other Way to Be Successful

God can give you one vision and manifest Himself to you one time and change the whole destiny of your life. I got up off that bed wiping tears, and I walked outside, a brand new man. My heart had been turned to a heart of flesh, and I could see the lily. The money, the position, the king's chair meant very little to me anymore. I had a deep desire in me to feed the poor and to help anybody that needed help.

I had a deep desire within me to get high school kids off dope. And I started doing something about it. You can do something about all those sinners living in your community if you choose to. I'd done promotional work training salesmen. I knew how to build territories. God said, "Use the same principle to win souls for Me. Help this city." I began to go to the high school principals in their offices, sit down and talk to them intelligently. "I want to bring youth ministers in here that can help these kids be solid citizens and get them off dope."

I found favor. God gave me supernatural favor with about twelve high school principals. God began to bless me so much, I could hardly stand it. I began to take some time to feed the poor and I'd go over to the city dump and work with little poor kids. I took time to raise the money to build a church at the city dump for little kids, barefooted, who had no food and no place to go to church.

Success God’s Way

I'd carry food to poor homes that had no food at all. And I worked for the ministry of helps with no offering. I didn't want any money to work for God. I just worked my own money out. And I did that for seven years. Then the Lord began to give me orders. Revelation knowledge began to come to me. He'd tell me to go do something, and I'd go do it. Sometimes while I was doing it, He'd manifest Himself and it would make me $200,000. I'd never work one day for it.

He told me to go pass out tracts one time, and I did. On the way home, He made me a quarter of a million dollars. I never did work one day to get it. That's the other way you can be successful.

Jesus said, "You can't even give your brother a cup of cold water without My giving you a reward for it!" You can imagine what He'll do if I buy him a hamburger, or try to get all the high school kids off dope in your community. Or start working at feeding the poor and trying to help people.

Just like God did for me, if you have a heart of stone a heart for building your empire at any cost, God can change your heart to a heart of flesh. And with that you'll have peace and a success like you've never known.

THE TRUE RICHES

Multi-millionaire businessman Norvel Hayes explains three ways to be a success — and which one is the best way! If you don’t desire to be successful, then don’t read this book.

Norvel tells of two direct encounters with Jesus and how He changed him from a miserable and empty success to one filled with peace and a desire to serve.

Find out what real success is and how you can obtain it too!

*****

NORVEL HAYES, a successful businessman, has learned through personal experience that God’s Word works for anyone who will believe and apply it. He shares with a bold simplicity that captures the heart of the reader and shines new light on hidden treasures.

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