June 15, 2026

Business by the Book

Psalm 56:5  Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil.

Every successful person must learn how to deal with those who twist their words and devise evil against them. In considering how to deal with those who would trouble you consider four things to do.

One: have confidence in yourself. One of the enemy’s favorite strategies is to shake your confidence. If you begin doubting yourself, then the enemy is well on the way to winning.

Two: eliminate the word “quit” from your vocabulary.

Three: be careful of becoming overly defensive.

Four:  be the bigger person. In every conflict that is resolved, at least one party in that conflict decides to be the bigger person. The “bigger person” means the one who decides to rise above the conflict, end the strife, and make peace.

I once knew a man with a hard-core military background during the Vietnam era. He told me that he and his buddies would sometimes play a game called “first-in.”  When they were together in a bar they would take turns playing the game. It was a very simple game, it consisted of watching the door of the establishment, and the first one through the door was the man they had to pick a fight with. If they won the fight they won the game. The person telling me this story said that on one occasion it was his turn. The man through the door was a short, somewhat thin, and not very athletic looking. The first-in player sidled up to his target at the bar and bumped into him. The man at the bar moved a little further from the first in player.

The first-in player moved closer and bumped into him with more force. With that the man at the bar said something like, “You want to fight?”  To which the first-in player said “Yes” and hit him, hard. The man telling me this story then said the next thing he knew he was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood experiencing tremendous pain. Over him stood the man from the bar. The first-in player then said, “You want a drink?,” to which the man replied, “Yes.”  Even though the man was in trouble and his ego surely wanted him to fight on, he knew in order to survive he had to become the bigger man and end the fight.

Upon visiting with the man from the bar, the first-in player learned that the man was a former bantamweight boxing champion. His friends later told him that the man at the bar hit him at least ten times before he ever hit the ground. He was a flurry of fists against which the man playing the game had no defense. Not only does this once again prove the story against judging a book by its cover, it also proves that to end a fight someone, sometime, and somehow must become the bigger person and end the conflict.

Be that bigger person, end the struggle before it gets out of hand. Also, beware: the one you choose to fight may be much better trained at fighting than you are and you will find yourself on the ground lying in a pool of your own blood.

Dr. William Howe