Three Feet from Gold ... on earth and in Heaven

by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace

Three Feet from Gold by Sharon Lechter and Greg Reid brings us an update of Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich Classic and how it still is having a revolutionary impact on business success today. The authors interviewed the highly successful of today as Napoleon Hill did in the early 1900's. They found most attributed their success to being students of Napoleon Hill's works.

To establish the theme for the book, Three Feet from Gold, they told the story of how a speculator went looking for gold. He made a discovery, invested in more excavating equipment, but then ran out of finding enough gold to pay back his investment. He gave up and sold his land to a junkman. The junkman hired a mining engineer to help evaluate their mining and he directed the junkman to go perpendicular from the direction the original mines were going.

It turned out they were only three feet from a major gold fault line. The previous miners were digging the wrong direction. The point is don't quit and get expert advice when you run into a snag.

He cautions us... do not make major decisions in a valley. Write down your dreams, review and revise constantly and keep pursuing new avenues from your failures and setbacks. The direction we choose every day is up to us.

The success formula is
(P + T) x A x A = success.
P... what's your Passion.
T... then add your Talent.
A... multiply this by your Associations.
A... then multiply all this by Action.
Later on they added faith to the formula as the book was nearing being a published reality.

One unique point is the problem of overplanning. Most overplan they say, and it is important to keep taking action as you know what to do next. Learn from each step and from that determine your next best action step. Each experience trains you and leads you to another. Keep climbing safe. Focus on people more than profits.

More of Greg's discovery nuggets from his interviews.

Be Goal Driven. Set high standards.

Use master mind groups. Use intelligence and accomplished experience from others who know something about what you are attempting to do.

Every wealth creator is crystal clear about two things... a vision and a mission.


Believe in yourself. Find others who believe in you... even if only one person. Run from people with negative attitudes.

Build energy, idea stimulating associations. Most important... find good ones that harmonize with you and that inspire you. Never let people stand in your way.

Turn adversity into advantages. Turn your doubts and doubting people into a catalyst to persevere. Be willing to change. A dream is a reality waiting for you to get there. Don't quit. (Keep saying this. We need to hear it a lot.) Never let mistakes define who you are. Make diversity and defeat motivators. Every adversity carries a seed of a greater benefit. It's the way of thinking of the achievers, accomplishers of visions and dreams.

It's always a new beginning... sometimes the worst situations turn out to be the best opportunities.

Act as if your dream is already happening, and never believe in never. Don't quit five minutes before your miracle. You're three feet from gold.

Add Faith to your success equation.
Passion plus talent times associations times action... adding faith...
equals success.

At the end of Three Feet From Gold, there is an outline for creating your own personal success equation.
http://www.threefeetaway.com/

In Prayer, we can storm Heaven with our requests. In prayer, we are only a few feet from gold, Heaven’s gold.  Heaven’s riches we cannot measure.

In Purpose of Prayer, E. M. Bounds expounds on the possibilities of prayer.

In prayer we have the greatest privilege of God's Presence and interacting with God with His purpose than any other activity in our lives. E. M. Bounds in his book, the Purpose of Prayer, we learn how this is so important. Here are excerpts from chapter 2, "Possibilities and Necessities of Prayer."

"These men knew how to pray and how to prevail in prayer. Their faith in prayer was no passing attitude that changed with the wind or with their own feelings and circumstances; it was a fact that God heard and answered, that His ear was ever open to the cry of His children, and that the power to do what was asked of Him was commensurate with His willingness. And thus these men, strong in faith and in prayer, “subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.”

"Everything then, as now, was possible to the men and women who knew how to pray. Prayer, indeed, opened a limitless storehouse, and God’s hand withheld nothing. Prayer introduced those who practiced it into a world of privilege, and brought the strength and wealth of heaven down to the aid of finite man. What rich and wonderful power was theirs who had learned the secret of victorious approach to God! With Moses it saved a nation; with Ezra it saved a church. And yet, strange as it seems when we contemplate the wonders of which God’s people had been witness, there came a slackness in prayer.

"It takes effort and toil and care to prepare the incense. Prayer is no laggard’s work. When all the rich, spiced graces from the body of prayer have by labour and beating been blended and refined and intermixed, the fire is needed to unloose the incense and make its fragrance rise to the throne of God. The fire that consumes creates the spirit and life of the incense.

"Without fire prayer has no spirit; it is, like dead spices, for corruption and worms.“The greatest and the best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer,” writes Principal Alexander Whyte. “And the best usury that any man or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end of this world is a life of prayer.

"And those servants best put their Lord’s money “to the exchangers” who rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever finding out and ever following after better and better methods of prayer, and ever forming more secret, more steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer, till they literally “pray without ceasing,” and till they continually strike out into new enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrichments.” It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.

For all of chapter 2 of the Purpose of Prayer, go to
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/purpose.II.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library features many books by the Christians who walked in the very power of the Holy Spirit throughout the ages.