A MAJOR-LEAGUE baseball pitcher once pitched a game when the temperature was over one hundred degrees. He lost several pounds as a result of the afternoon’s exertion. At one stage of the game his energy sagged. His method for restoring his ebbing strength was unique. He simply repeated a passage from the Old Testament—“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)
Frank Hiller, the pitcher who had this experience, told me that reciting this verse on the pitcher’s mound actually gave him a renewal of strength so that he was able to complete the game with energy to spare. He explained the technique by saying, “I passed a powerful energy-producing thought through my mind.”
How we think we feel has a definite effect on how we actually feel physically. If your mind tells you that you are tired, the body mechanism, the nerves, and the muscles accept the fact. If your mind is intensely interested, you can keep on at an activity indefinitely. Religion functions through our thoughts, in fact, it is a system of thought discipline. By supplying attitudes of faith to the mind it can increase energy. It helps you to accomplish prodigious activity by suggesting that you have ample support and resources of power.
A friend in Connecticut, an energetic man, full of vitality and vigor, says that he goes to church regularly to “get his batteries recharged.” His concept is sound. God is the source of all energy—energy in the universe, atomic energy, electrical energy, and spiritual energy; indeed every form of energy derives from the Creator. The Bible emphasizes this point when it says, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” (Isaiah 40:29)
In another statement the Bible describes the energizing and re-energizing process: “… in Him we live (that is, have vitality), and move (have dynamic energy), and have our being (attain completeness).” (Acts 17:28)
Contact with God establishes within us a flow of the same type of energy that re-creates the world and that renews springtime every year. When in spiritual contact with God through our thought processes, the Divine energy flows through the personality, automatically renewing the original creative act. When contact with the Divine energy is broken, the personality gradually becomes depleted in body, mind, and spirit. An electric clock connected with an outlet does not run down and will continue indefinitely to keep accurate time. Unplug it, and the clock stops. It has lost contact with the power flowing through the universe. In general this process is operative in human experience though in a less mechanical manner.
A number of years ago I attended a lecture at which a speaker asserted before a large audience that he had not been tired in thirty years. He explained that thirty years before he had passed through a spiritual experience in which by self-surrender he had made contact with Divine power. From then on he possessed sufficient energy for all of his activities, and these were prodigious. He so obviously illustrated his teachings that everyone in that vast audience was profoundly impressed.
To me it was a revelation of the fact that in our consciousness we can tap a reservoir of boundless power as a result of which it is not necessary to suffer depletion of energy. For years I have studied and experimented with the ideas which this speaker outlined and which others have expounded and demonstrated, and it is my conviction that the principles of Christianity scientifically utilized can develop an uninterrupted and continuous flow of energy into the human mind and body.
These findings were corroborated by a prominent physician with whom I was discussing a certain man whom we both know. This man, whose responsibilities are very heavy, works from morning until night without interruption, but always seems able to assume new obligations. He has the knack of handling his work easily and with efficiency.
I commented to the physician that I hoped this man was not setting a dangerous pace that might possibly lead to a breakdown. The physician shook his head. “No,” he replied, “as his physician I do not think there is any danger of a crack-up, and the reason is that he is a thoroughly well-organized individual with no energy leaks in his make-up. He operates a well-regulated machine. He handles things with easy power and carries burdens without strain. He never wastes an ounce of energy, but every effort is applied with maximum force.”
“How do you account for this efficiency, this seemingly boundless energy?” I asked.
The physician studied for a moment. “The answer is that he is a normal individual, emotionally well integrated, and, what is more important, he is a soundly religious person. From his religion he has learned how to avoid drainage of power. His religion is a workable and useful mechanism for preventing energy leaks. It is not hard work that drains off energy but emotional upheaval, and this man is entirely free from that.”
Increasingly people are realizing that the maintenance of a sound spiritual life is important in enjoying energy and personality force.
The body is designed to produce all needed energy over an amazingly long period of time. If the individual takes reasonable care of his body from the standpoint of proper diet, exercise, sleep, no physical abuse, the body will produce and maintain astonishing energy and sustain itself in good health. If he gives similar attention to a well-balanced emotional life, energy will be conserved. But if he allows energy leaks caused by hereditary or self-imposed emotional reaction of a debilitating nature, he will be lacking in vital force. The natural state of the individual when body, mind, and spirit work harmoniously is that of a continuous replacement of necessary energy.
Mrs. Thomas A. Edison, with whom I often discussed the habits and characteristics of her famous husband, the world’s greatest inventive wizard, told me that it was Mr. Edison’s custom to come into the house from his laboratory after many hours of labor and lie down on his old couch. She said he would fall asleep as naturally as a child, in perfect relaxation, sinking into a deep and untroubled slumber. After three or four, or sometimes five hours he would become instantly wide awake, completely refreshed, and eager to return to his work.
Mrs. Edison, in answer to my request that she analyze her husband’s ability to rest in a manner so natural and complete, said, “He was nature’s man,” by which she meant that he was completely in harmony with nature and with God. In him there were no obsessions, no disorganizations, no conflicts, no mental quirks, no emotional instability. He worked until he needed to sleep, then he slept soundly and arose and returned to his work. He lived for many years, and was in many respects the most creative mind ever to appear on the American continent. He drew his energy from emotional self-mastery, the ability to relax completely. His amazingly harmonious relationship with the universe caused nature to reveal to him its inscrutable secrets.
Every great personality I have ever known, and I have known many, who has demonstrated the capacity for prodigious work has been a person in tune with the Infinite. Every such person seems in harmony with nature and in contact with the Divine energy. They have not necessarily been pious people, but invariably they have been extraordinarily well organized from an emotional and psychological point of view. It is fear, resentment, the projection of parental faults upon people when they are children, inner conflicts and obsessions that throw off balance the finely equated nature, thus causing undue expenditure of natural force.
The longer I live the more I am convinced that neither age nor circumstance needs to deprive us of energy and vitality. We are at last awakening to the close relationship between religion and health. We are beginning to comprehend a basic truth hitherto neglected, that our physical condition is determined very largely by our emotional condition, and our emotional life is profoundly regulated by our thought life.
All through its pages, the Bible talks about vitality and force and life. The supreme over-all word of the Bible is life, and life means vitality—to be filled with energy. Jesus stated the key expression, “… I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) This does not rule out pain or suffering or difficulty, but the clear implication is that if a person practices the creative and re-creative principles of Christianity he can live with power and energy.
The practice of the above-mentioned principles will serve to bring a person into the proper tempo of living. Our energies are destroyed because of the high tempo, the abnormal pace at which we go. The conservation of energy depends upon getting your personality speed synchronized with the rate of God’s movement. God is in you. If you are going at one rate and God at another, you are tearing yourself apart. “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.” The mills of most of us grind very rapidly, and so they grind poorly. When we become attuned to God’s rhythm we develop a normal tempo within ourselves and energy flows freely.
The hectic habits of this age have many disastrous effects. A friend of mine commented upon an observation made by her aged father. He said that in early days when a young man came courting in the evening he sat with his intended in the parlor. Time in those days was measured by the deliberate, ponderous strokes of the grandfather clock, which has a very long pendulum. It seemed to say, “There—is—plenty—of—time. There—is—plenty—of—time. There—is—plenty—of—time.” But modern clocks, having a shorter pendulum with a swifter stroke, seem to say, “Time to get busy! Time to get busy! Time to get busy! Time to get busy!”
Everything is speeded up, and for that reason many people are tired. The solution is to get into the time synchronization of Almighty God. One way to do this is by going out some warm day and lying down on the earth. Get your ear close down to the ground and listen. You will hear all manner of sounds. You will hear the sound of the wind in the trees and the murmur of insects, and you will discover presently that there is in all these sounds a well-regulated tempo. You cannot get that tempo by listening to traffic in the city streets, for it is lost in the confusion of sound. You can get it in church where you hear the word of God and the great hymns. Truth vibrates to God’s tempo in a church. But you can also find it in a factory if you have a mind to.
A friend of mine, an industrialist in a large plant in Ohio, told me that the best workmen in his plant are those who get into harmony with the rhythm of the machine on which they are working. He declares that if a worker will work in harmony with the rhythm of his machine he will not be tired at the end of the day. He points out that the machine is an assembling of parts according to the law of God. When you love a machine and get to know it, you will be aware that it has a rhythm. It is one with the rhythm of the body, of the nerves, of the soul. It is in God’s rhythm, and you can work with that machine and not get tired if you are in harmony with it. There is a rhythm of the stove, a rhythm of the typewriter, a rhythm of the office, a rhythm of an automobile, a rhythm of your job. So to avoid tiredness and to have energy, feel your way into the essential rhythm of Almighty God and all His works.
To accomplish this, relax physically. Then conceive of your mind as likewise relaxing. Follow this mentally by visualizing the soul as becoming quiescent, then pray as follows: “Dear God, You are the source of all energy. You are the source of the energy in the sun, in the atom, in all flesh, in the bloodstream, in the mind. I hereby draw energy from You as from an illimitable source.” Then practice believing that you receive energy. Keep in tune with the Infinite.
Of course many people are tired simply because they are not interested in anything. Nothing ever moves them deeply. To some people it makes no difference what’s going on or how things go. Their personal concerns are superior even to all crises in human history. Nothing makes any real difference to them except their own little worries, their desires, and their hates. They wear themselves out stewing around about a lot of inconsequential things that amount to nothing. So they become tired. They even become sick. The surest way not to become tired is to lose yourself in something in which you have a profound conviction.
A famous statesman who made seven speeches in one day was still boundless in energy.
“Why are you not tired after making seven speeches?” I asked.
“Because,” he said, “I believe absolutely in everything I said in those speeches. I am enthusiastic about my convictions.”