Dr. Robert H. Schuller is founder and senior minister of the famed Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. His book, Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do has helped many people to hold on to hope and faith in the face of adversity during these rough economic times. Following is an excerpt from Part II of the book, entitled: Here’s How You Can Be Tough Too!

Don’t surrender leadership to the fates. There are all kinds of negative “fates” that social structures or the “stars” might try to impose on you. I have been asked under what star I was born. I always reply that I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Too many people allow their futures to be unnecessarily predetermined by imaginary factors. Astrology is like fortune telling and I don’t like fortunetellers. They make too many negative statements.

I’ll never forget this one poor anxiety-prone person who didn’t have enough faith in God to go to church. Instead, he went to a fortuneteller, who said, “In your future I see poverty. Bad luck and failure until you reach the age of forty.”

To which the person asked, “Then what?”

The fortuneteller looked at him and said, “Oh, after that you get used to it.”

Fortunetellers, chart readers and any others who program people subconsciously or consciously with negative self-fulfilling prophecies are dangerous people. Never allow these people to move into the control position of your life.

Don’t surrender leadership forecasts. You know there are people who are constantly saying, “Things are bad and they’re only going to get worse.” There will always be negative, cynical people who only believe that life will go downhill as time goes on.

I love the story the late Bear Bryant, head football coach at the University of Alabama for many years, told me once. Years ago, when he was coach at Texas A&M, his team was scheduled to play SMU in one of the big bowl games. He said, “All of the newspapers said that my team was going to get swamped. These were the words they used: slaughtered, swamped, driven into the ground. There was no way I could keep my boys from reading those negative forecasts. So I went to bed the night before the game, and I suddenly remembered all that the reporters and sportscasters were saying: “Bear Bryant of Texas A&M is going to get beaten by three or four touchdowns.” Others were saying five touchdowns. All of these extremely negative words were in my mind as I fell asleep. I woke up early in the morning. I looked at the clock and it was one o’clock. And I was petrified. We were going to get slaughtered. That was the forecast.”

Then he said, “I remembered that Bible verse: “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing shall be impossible unto you’ [Matt. 17:20]. I got up, called my coaches and said, “I want you to have all the players in the locker room in thirty minutes.” I pulled my pants on, put some shoes and a sweater on. I got in the car and started it. The two headlights pierced the blackness of the night. At 1:30am there wasn’t a car on the road. I swung into the parking lot, went into the deserted locker room, paced, and waited. Other car lights started coming, one lonely car after another. The players came staggering in. A couple of them were still in their pajamas and bathrobes.

“I said to them, “Did you hear the news? Have you heard what they’re predicting? They say we’re going to get slaughtered. Beaten by four, five or six touchdowns. You all heard it. O.K. I want to tell you something. Jesus said, “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed – a little mustard seed – you can say to your mountain, Move! And it will move. And nothing will be impossible to you.” Now go home to bed.’”

I asked him, “How did you do?”

He said, “Dr. Schuller, we lost. But by only three points. We lost the game, but boy, we saved our pride.”