In 1958, I accepted a job with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. My first two weeks were spent in Memphis, Tenn., at a sales training seminar. It was an intensive program that introduced the people in attendance to the various products the company had to offer and, most importantly, how to make sales.  

I still remember that one of the men who conducted the training sessions was Joe Spranza from New York. I also remember a few things he said that stuck with me. One was that to be a successful salesman, you have to prospect for clients daily. “It’s like shaving,” he shared. “If you don’t do it every day, you will become a bum.”  

Another thing he said was that after a sales interview and you’ve made your pitch, shut up and let the prospect make the next move. He said never to complicate the presentation. KISS, he stressed, which means Keep It Simple and Sweet.  

That advice is good for selling, but it’s also good for living. I’ll admit that I’ve gone to extreme lengths to complicate most of my life, not only in sales, my marriage, raising my children, my relationships, but, most of all, my spiritual life.  

I’m reminded that everything I needed to know about God, I learned in the first grade. I was taught that He made me, loved me and wanted me to serve Him. It wasn’t until later in my young life that pleasing God was made so sacrificial and complicated by religious teachers and preachers.  

Pleasing God seemed almost impossible and was frustrating. It seemed that God took delight in watching people squirm. It wasn’t until I got saved and was set free that the blinders were taken off my eyes. I no longer was in bondage to man-made laws that made me feel guilty.    

I realized that faith was not a long series of religious performances or a pile of pious things. All God asks for is simple faith.    

In Micah, Chapter 6, verse 8, he tells us what is required to please God: To do justice … to love kindness … and to walk humbly with your God. Period

It sounds similar to what I heard in the first grade. That’s really keeping it simple!

If you have any questions or comments, please write to Get High on Life, P.O. Drawer U, Reserve, LA 70084, call 985-652-8477, or email hkeller@comcast.net.