Norman Vincent Peale - Confidence

CONFIDENCE

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.

This 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
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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 information would be appreciated.

Scripture quotations marked ( ESV ) are taken from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version , copyright 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 God's 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

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Thank you for your interest in the work of Norman Vincent Peale. We hope you'll 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 carefully selected thoughts and anecdotes on the meaning and applicability of Scripture in daily life and the practical advice garnered from Dr. Peale's long life spent serving God and preaching His Word. The syntax has been slightly modified for our time but has preserved the true timelessness of Dr. Peale's original message of hope, toughness, and love, as well as his enduringly warm wit, knowledge, and affectionate presence.

Editors of Guideposts

INTRODUCTION

Confidence. A word we all use often but many of us barely think about. I am not a slave to a dictionary, so I'll 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 aren't 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 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 spiritual needs You are dealing with me only in spiritual things. But the statement doesn't 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. The 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 doesn't 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 don't sit around and wail and whine and moan and complain 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 say to yourself, I believe in my God. Then 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 tremendous 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. Then 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? They found that the same laws that are operative on earth are operative on the moon. They 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. Those men were so enthralled that they repeated these words from Scripture: