Some sports use a plus/minus system to grade the efficiency
of individual players. In ice hockey, for instance, they use a very simple
system: if you are on the ice when your team scores a goal you get a plus one.
If you are on the ice when the other team scores a goal you get a minus one.
So let’s say you’re a +35 at the end of the year. That
would show you are a positive force for the team; good things happen when you
are on the ice. On the other hand a negative number at the end of the season
shows you are making negative contributions to the welfare of the team.
This might be a way we could look at what we give to our lives
remembering that our way of thinking creates the experience of our lives.
By your
thinking you are either adding to your good or taking away from your good. This is an inexorable law. It’s another way
of defining what I referred to two weeks ago as the “law of consciousness.”
Failure, or lack in your life is simply the result of
“minus-ing” yourself. Conversely, success and prosperity are the results of
“plus-ing” yourself. It is wise to occasionally take inventory of yourself. Are
you “negatizing” every thing and everybody around your, or are you “positizing”
it?
I want to tell you a story about two brothers who had
positive faith in the power of prayer, but before I do I want to preface it
with something Jim T. said to me on Friday. We were talking about all they hype
and controversy that’s going on around the return of Peyton Manning to Indianapolis after being
let go two years ago. Part of the controversy around tonight’s NFL game was
fueled by Jim Irsay, the owner of the Colts.
Here’s what Jim Tallman said to me about Jim Irsay, “If his father
hadn’t have made a lot of money (His father is dead and Jim now owns the team)
he’d be just like us.”
The
point is we tend to think of financially successful people as a breed different
from the rest of us, but they’re not. So when I tell you this story is isn’t
about a special group of people, it applies to us, too.
This is
the story about the McViker family and a soap manufacturing company, the Kutol
Company of Cincinnati.
Kutol was founded in 1912. By 1927, the company was facing closure. Cleo
McVicker determined to save the company and after taking the matter to prayer
was led to hire his brother, Noah W. McVicker, to manage the plant. Noah
organized the plant, had it running more efficiently, and, the company's
prospects improved. Cleo served as the company salesman, while Noah not only
managed the plant but helped to develop new products.
One thing you need to be aware of is
this is all taking place during a time when coal was how buildings and homes
were heated. Coal heat put out a lot of dust and homes required constant
cleaning. If you’re old enough – and I’m not – you’ll remember that walls had
to be cleaned regularly.
In 1933, Cleo approached the Kroger Company
about manufacturing wallpaper cleaner for the grocery store chain. Kroger
officials agreed to replace their current cleaner with one manufactured by
Kutol Products. Cleo agreed to provide Kroger with fifteen thousand cases of
cleaner. If he failed to do so on time, Kutol Products was required to pay
Kroger five thousand dollars in fines ($88,600 to 1.42 million). This amount of
money would have bankrupted Kutol Products. Unfortunately for the McVicker
brothers, Kutol Products had never manufactured wallpaper cleaner before. Once
again, “What do we do now” was taken to prayer and they were inspired to
eventually create a product that worked. It was made of wheat flour, water,
salt and a sort of petroleum distillate. When you applied this dough-like
substance to the wall and peeled it away, the coal dust and dirt came with it,
too.
Kutol Products made the deadline.
Over the next twenty years, Kutol Products
primarily manufactured soap and wallpaper cleaner. The company became the
largest wallpaper cleaner manufacturer in the world during this period.
Unfortunately for the firm, after World War II homes were heated less and less
with coal and more and more with natural gas, oil, and electricity.
In 1949, Cleo McVicker died in a plane
crash. By the mid 1950s Kutol Products once again faced closure.
Cleo’s widow, Irma McVicker hired her son,
Joseph McVicker, and her son-in-law, Bill Rhodenbaugh, to help Noah reverse the
company's downward spiral.
Again, this situation was taken into
prayer. Our prayers are always answered. With positive faith wee can “see” our
answer. With negative faith we become blind to the answers we seek.
Sometimes we have to be open enough to see
the answer. Especially when it comes in a form that doesn’t seem to be an
answer.
Joseph McVicker sister-in law was a school
teacher and she asked if she could take some of the product that was sitting in
the warehouse for her – I think it was kindergarten class. She was of the
opinion that since the wallpaper cleaner was easier to squoosh for little hands
than modeling clay, that her students would have some fun making things with
their hands just like the big kids could.
It was a big hit with the little kids and
in 1955
the
McVickars decided to give some to all the schools in Cincinnati. It was well received but there
was a problem, it was a dull kind of grey-white and not very exciting.
In 1956 the packaged their wallpaper
cleaner in white along with red, yellow and blue, and called it Play-Doh! (http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Kutol_Products_Company, modified and used without permission)
There
are ups and downs in or lives and taking our circumstances into prayer
transforms them.
The
McVikers weren’t in a special class by themselves. They’re just like you and me
and when circumstances changed they “plussed, or positized” their life with
prayer and prospered.
Have
you ever thought your faith was weak, or that you had none at all? We all have
faith, all the time, and its powerful faith. We may have made the assumption
that having faith means being confident in the positive outworking of this,
that, or the other thing, and when we aren’t positive we are in a state of not
having faith. I would say that when we aren’t in a state of positive faith then
our faith lies in the negative. And you can’t cop-out by saying your faith is
neutral. That’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I guess I’d say it this way, “If
it’s not positive faith/thinking then it’s not positive. If it’s not “positizing”
your life then it’s “negatizing” your life.”
Faith
is the key that opens the Kingdom
of Power within me. You
have the power and the faith.
God
loves everyone; no exceptions. All prayer is answered with inspiration; no
exceptions. Sometimes the answers seem to comes through us and sometimes they
seem to come to us… but the answers always come.
Have
faith in that.
No comments:
Post a Comment