Lifting up people by pushing them up

Like me, I expect you recall someone in your life who helped push you along. They lifted you up. They offered encouragement when you needed it most. Had you failed to respond to their helping hand and opportunity for improvement life could be a muddled mess for you.

Personal decisions we make and those we make about helping someone else have eternal consequences. I was by nature, as a teen and young adult, the kind of person who could have stayed in the shadows of bashfulness. I was not always sure of myself, but I excelled in basketball, track and baseball.

I lost much of that insecurity after I met the Reverend Ivan P. Alls. He had read the books of Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, W. Clemet Stone and Norman Vincent Peale. At the time, I was a student at Marshall University majoring in sociology with a minor in psychology. Pastor Alls not only encouraged me to do things and gave me opportunities to do them, but he bragged on what I did. He knew I would respond to a little encouragement with my very best effort.

In the summer of 2008, Kitty was reading one of our favorite magazines, The Saturday Evening Post, the July/August issue, when she said, "Bill, you won't believe it. Here is a terrific story about our friend, Lloyd Tomer." As soon as she finished the story, she handed it to me and I quickly devoured every word of it.

It is an amazing story about an unusual man and his extraordinary experiences and success as a businessman. I first met Tomer when he was a football player at Anderson University, Anderson, IN. Later he was a pastor in Benton, Illinois, where he helped a small church in a small town reach 2,000 in attendance on dedication day for their new building.

He now heads up a travel agency that may have reached his dream for his people-centered business as being "the world's largest travel agency." Just two years ago, he had 170,000 referring travel agents working in his company.

Lloyd got his big start with A. L. Williams and his insurance company promoting the novel idea of buying lower cost term insurance and investing the difference. When he built his own company, he founded it on the same principles "of honesty and morality."

Just a few days ago, I came across a treasured book, Pushing Up People, by Art Williams, a man I met and heard speak. The book was a gift from J. Lloyd Tomer, which he presented to me on March 15, 1988. On the first page of this book that I cherish and hope that maybe I did "push him up" at one time in his life, he wrote, "Bill, you have given your life to Pushing Up People. At a time in my life you picked me up and dusted me off and said, 'Go get-em.' Thanks !!! Your Buddy, JLT."

The subtitle on the book by A. L. Williams is "The Secret Behind One of the Most Exciting Success Stories in American Business." Men like Tomer, Williams and others have developed the good habit of helping others experience success financially, spiritually, socially and in living life at its best. They make a difference in the lives of thousands of others. Tomer is known and beloved as a "Life Coach."

Did Jesus have in mind men like Williams and Tomer when He said, "For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more" (Luke 12:38)?

Join me in finding others who can be pushed upward and onward with nothing more complicated than an encouraging word.

By Bill Ellis