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Key Bible Verse: A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold (Proverbs 22:1). Bonus Reading: 1 Timothy 3:1-13

Young Dennis Rainey was in a bind. The high-school senior had canvassed most of his hometown of Ozark, Missouri, trying to sell magazine subscriptions, and come up with nothing. Zilch. Not a single sale.

Dennis was never one to quit. (His mom claims her second son, the "roadrunner" as she calls him, came out feet first, hit the ground running, and hasn't quit since.) He ventured outside the town of 1,300 to the countryside. At a farmer's doorstep, the sandy-haired teen again presented his pitch, but this time mentioned his father, "Hook" Rainey, who sold propane to the farmer.

That did it—the farmer invited Dennis in for cookies and bought two subscriptions. With his father's good name before him, Dennis saw farmer after farmer respond in kind, until he sold so many subscriptions he set a record that still stands at Ozark High School.

"I won 25 stuffed animals, a tape recorder and a radio," Dennis, now 50, remembers. "But I realized I really hadn't sold anything. All I had done was hitchhike off my dad's reputation and the legacy he left me."

—Judy Nelson in Worldwide Challenge

• What are the building blocks of a good reputation?

Thought to Apply:The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us … but those who live their lives perfectly, simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mold us.

—OSWALD CHAMBERS (British World War I chaplain)

Credits: Adapted from—Monday: Worldwide Challenge (11-12/98)

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity. For reprint information click here.

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