Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we bow our unworthy heads before Thee to thank Thee for the privileges of this free land. We thank Thee for the privileges of this educational facility and for each student here, for the parents, and for all who have contributed toward this moment. We do ask Thee to bless the message tonight. We do ask Thee to bless each thing that is done tonight that it might be to Thy name's honor and glory. We ask a blessing on the lives of these young people, and we thank Thee for all the privileges that have been extended to us, that they might come to this institution of learning and prepare themselves to go out into the school of life, and to be better mothers and fathers, and citizens, and servants of Thine. We ask Thee to bless the further events of this evening and bless our lives to Thy glory, for we ask it in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I never preach a sermon with my coat on, but since these students are sweating under these caps and gowns, and misery loves company, I don't think it would be fair for me to take my coat off and let them suffer, so we will all suffer together. I have looked forward to coming here tonight, and I ask that you remember me in your prayers that we might say something that would be beneficial to these students and maybe beneficial to the rest of you.

Several years ago, when my children were small, I penciled a poem in the margin of my Bible, not knowing that it would come in handy some day. The poem goes this way:

At the present, I have a twenty-four year old son, who is about six foot six, who is working on a Ph.D. at Oklahoma State. My Daughter is a senior at Texas Tech University. So I have a great relationship, and a great feeling, for these students tonight. Especially because of the terrible headlines in our world, and when we consider that there is so much unemployment, and there are so many things in our world today that would cause us to lose our vision, and become negative.

I am not going to try to educate these young people, because they have had twelve years of education, and they are probably tired of education. But I would like to say some things to motivate them and to inspire them to work for some goals in the future, that they might find the happiness that the rest of us have found. So, we will dispense with education. I have two children that I have already mentioned, who are better educated than I am already, and I am no longer able to educate them too much, so I just try and motivate them. I try to inspire them and encourage them.

There was a father one time trying to motivate his son, and the son brought in a bad report card, and dad said to the son, "When George Washington was your age he made straight A's." The son said, "But Dad when he was your age he was the President of the United States." Then the father tried again. He said, "Son, when I was your age, I could name all the Presidents of the United States in proper order." The Son said, but Dad, back then there had only been two or three."

I am going to try to do my best to inspire and motivate these young people, and give them a little cheer in a world where there is so much to discourage us. One of the great keys of success in life is self discipline. What I mean by that is this: set yourself a goal and work toward that goal and be disciplined as you drive toward it.

One of the greatest quotes I have on the subject of discipline came from Bum Phillips, who used to coach the Houston Oilers. A few years ago, when Bum Phillips was putting the Oilers in the play-offs every year, they were criticizing him for his loose discipline as compared to Tom Landry's (of the Dallas Cowboys) strict discipline. Bum Phillips made this statement, "Discipline is not making people do things, it's getting them to do things." He says, "The only discipline that really counts, is self discipline."

Since my son is six foot six and larger than I am, and my daughter is larger than her mother, and they are both better educated than we are, and they are going to school over two hundred miles from home, I don't have too many opportunities to make them do anything anymore, but I try to motivate them to do the things they are capable of doing. Remember this as you go away from here tonight, the only discipline that really counts is self discipline.

You have had twelve years in school, where the teachers have attempted to guide you, and your parents have attempted to guide you, but you are headed out into a world where your success in that world will depend on whether you are able to discipline yourselves. There is an old Marine motto that I have penciled in the front of my Bible, and it's probably the strangest thing you have ever read in a preacher's Bible. That old marine motto says, "The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle." I have had experiences where people have questioned me about subjects, or I have had to stand before people and deliver messages about subjects, and I would bleed in battle because I had not done my sweating in training.

It was my experience while in school, when test time would come, that the students who had made the preparations sweated less, when the test came, than those who had not made the preparations. "The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle." I encourage every one of you tonight, as you go to college, or you go to trade school, or as you attempt to make your way in life, that first you set yourself a goal, and that you labor hard and sweat both mentally and physically to achieve that goal. When the time of the battle comes: "The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle."

I recall tonight some of the experiences I had in High School 25 years ago. Just a few days before our graduation, I was with a few of my buddies, and we were having a little session talking about our air castles, and the great things we were going to do when we graduated. There was one boy in the group who said, "Now that I have my education, I intend to join the Air Force." One of the most brilliant teachers I ever had, a lady named Olga Murley, and a great influence in my life, walked over to the group and looked at us with a stern look and said, "You haven't gotten your education." She said, "You don't get your education in school. All we do for you in school is provide you with some tools to equip you to go out into the school of life and receive an education." She went on to say, "There have been great men who have not had these tools who went out into the school of life and through much effort became educated men. On the other hand, there have been men who have had these tools who refused to use them, who went out into the school of life and became educated fools and useless people."

As I look back 25 years ago to my graduation, I am thinking about our High School fight song. The fight song went this way:

I used to sing that fight song. I haven't set foot on that campus since the night I received my diploma. "Down through the years ahead we'll ere be loyal to the blue and gold." I have never been back. One of the main reasons I have never been back is, the year I graduated, they tore the school down, hauled away the bricks, and put a shopping center where the school used to be. But I still remember many of the things I experienced in Pleasant Grove High School. I made straight A's through High School, and in 1957 our government became concerned about the reports that the Russians had a better education system than the Americans and there were some tests given to High School Seniors all across the United States of America. That year I placed in the top half of one percent of all students that graduated in this country, and received a letter from President Eisenhower. But, now that I have told you that I made straight A's, and graduated in the top half of one percent of all students that graduated in America in 1957, I have a little confession to make. Many times I sat in a class and was bored to death. I thought the class was a drag, and that there was no purpose in what the teacher was putting before me. I crammed it into my head enough to take the test and make an A, and then tried to forget it.

I look back tonight, as a middle aged preacher, and see many things that looked useless back then, and I wish I had paid more attention. I had English teachers who would go to the black board and would try to teach me to diagram sentences, to discombobulate verbs and things like that (Oh, you never heard of things like that before. That's Texas lingo. Your English teacher never heard of it before either). They taught me how to diagram sentences, and I got all that information down to make an A on the test, but I never saw any use for it. Twenty-five years later, as a middle aged preacher, I often have to diagram a sentence. I didn't pay a lot of attention in English class, except to the extent that I crammed it in, made an A, and didn't see any use for it. Now I have to stand before people over three hundred times a year, deliver radio broadcasts, write articles, sometimes write for encyclopedias, and I try to remember those rules I was taught years ago, and about all I remember is that a preposition is something you're not supposed to end a sentence WITH. That's about all I remember.

If the teachers back then could have impressed on me that those were some preparations that would help me many years later, I would have paid more diligent attention. There was a teacher who stood over my shoulder in typing class and tried to teach me to type. Today, as I try to write articles, I sit at the type writer and my fingers are like ten sticks of sausage, and I wish I had paid more attention in typing class.

I live on a small ranch and sometimes when I am trying to build a barn or a shed, and I am trying to cut rafters, and I have pipe on the ground, trying to weld up my own medal trusses, I remember a Geometry teacher long ago, who told me that if you knew the base of a triangle, and you knew the altitude of the triangle, there was a formula by which you could figure this thing over here, it seems like it was a hypotenuse (now I may not be right about that, but I remember that word from somewhere). If I had paid good attention back then, I could measure the base and the altitude, and weld those trusses on the ground.

What I am trying to impress on you tonight is that there were many things that I was taught back then that would be useful today. Those teachers were trying to give me some tools to prepare me for the things I am facing now. But I couldn't see that as well as I can see it now.

I remember a coach I had in High School. Back then it was popular for a coach to say that the main thing in competition was the desire to win. I am facing a group of people here tonight who want to go out into life and be winners. There is no intelligent person who really wants to go out into life and be a loser in marriage, or be a loser in your career, or to be a loser socially, or in any other way. This coach in High School took me aside and told me, "This old saying that the main thing in competition is the desire to win doesn't make good nonsense." He said, "The main thing in competition is not the desire to win, but the desire to prepare to win." You say, "The main thing is the desire to win." Have you ever met anybody who really wanted to lose? People with the desire to win are a dime a dozen. Everybody wants to win. But, my friends, the main thing is the desire to prepare to win.

There are many men in my field of preaching who want to be successful as ministers of the gospel. They have a desire to win, but many of them do not have the desire to spend hours and hours studying the scriptures, and studying books, and meditating on things that they need to know. There are many people in this world who have the desire to win. But they do not have the desire to spend hours in a college, or in a trade school, in a beauty college, or working as an apprentice to a carpenter or to a welder, preparing to win.

I want you to remember this tonight if you do not remember another thing I say. When a team or a person goes into a field of competition with just the desire to win, that person does not have a good chance of winning. But when you can have the desire to prepare to win, and put that together with the desire to win, then you have got a winning combination.

These teachers have spent about twelve years preparing you to go into the school of life and become a success. When we look at many of the things that are offered to us in this life, it's possible to cram our heads full of useless facts. I am trying to point you to some things tonight that I at one time considered useless, such as diagramming sentences and plane geometry. Many things that were taught me years ago looked useless to me then but are useful now.

Sometimes we can cram our heads full of useless facts. There was a poor hillbilly couple who saved their dimes and quarters to send their son to college. They sent their son to college, and he came home at the end of the first semester, and Dad asked him, "What air ye a learning son, air we gittin our money's worth? What air ye a learning?" And the boy says, "Father, I am learning a lot. I have just completed a course in logic and effective argumentation." He says, "I can win an argument with anybody, anywhere, anytime, on any subject." The young man's father said, "That sounds good son, but what's it good fer?" The son said, "For instance Father, you see these two pieces of chicken on the table." The father said, "Yes, there's two pieces of chicken thar." The son said, "I am going to trick you, Father, into admitting through logic and effective argumentation that there are really three pieces of chicken there." He says, "This piece of chicken here is the number one piece, agreed?" The father said, "all right son." The son said, "This piece of chicken here is the number two piece. Now that's number one, and you said this is number two, and one plus two is three. Father, I have tricked you into admitting that there are actually three pieces of chicken on that table through logic and effective argumentation." The father said, "That's wonderful son. I'll eat this here piece, and your mother can eat that thar piece, and you can have that third piece." Now the moral to that lesson is, you can cram your heads full of useless facts which will not help you.

One of the most important things in life is to set yourself a goal. There was a great man named William Barclay that said there are three essentials to success and happiness in life. Number one is to have something to hope for in life, to have some goal or direction. Proverbs 29:11 says, "where there is no vision the people perish." When my wife and I married 25 years ago, I didn't have a good job. I just had a few dollars in my pocket, but we were not worried about it because we felt that someday we would have a family, and have a place of our own, and have some of the things we desired in life. We had a vision of something we have been working toward for about 25 years.

In our country today I hear so much negative talk. Some are saying that it's impossible for young people to ever own a home because of the high interest rates we are facing. They say there is no future for young people. When we consider inflation, when we consider nuclear weapons which are round about us, and the terrible headlines, there is much to cause us to lose our vision. But I beg every one of you tonight to set yourself some kind of goal in life, and have something out there that you're hoping to reach.

William Barclay said that first we should have something we are hoping for and looking forward to. The Apostle Paul says in Philippians chapter three, "forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." The Apostle Paul said he had a mark he was pressing toward. Some of you I talked to before this service began told me of your plans to go to college or to trade school. Some of you told me of things you intend to do in life, and I want you tonight to set your eyes toward that mark.

The second essential to happiness is to have something to do. You must stay busy. There are two types of real miserable people in this world. On one hand we have the workaholics who are over worked, and I am considered one of those. But the most miserable people I meet are those who have nothing to do.

To be happy in life, William Barclay says we need to have something to hope for, something to look forward to, something to do, and the third essential is that we need to have someone to love. It is my prayer for each and everyone of you, in a nation where two out of five marriages are ending in divorce, that it will not be so with you, and that each one of you will go against the grain and against the statistics. It is my prayer that two out of five of you will not end in failure in finding someone to love. It is my prayer that all 128 of you will find someone in life to love, and that you will have children to love. If you do not find a companion in life, if you choose to go through life alone, learn to love your neighbor and to love your fellow man. Remember, something to hope for, something to do, and someone to love.

I remember several years ago reading a statement that was made by a wise man. He said that a man's happiness is not determined so much by the things that he owns or the things that belong to him as the things to whom he belongs. There are a few things in life that are supposed to belong to me. I have a small herd of cattle in Texas, some farm equipment, several guns, and a personal library of about 1800 books. There are some things in life that are supposed to belong to me. But the reason I am so happy tonight, and the reason that I wouldn't trade places with anyone in the world, is not because of the few things in life that belong to me. The reason that I am among the happiest men in America is because of the things to whom or to which I belong.

First, I have a hope within me that I belong to the Lord. Next, I belong to this country. Regardless of what anyone may tell you, this country is worth living for, and this country is worth dying for. This is still the greatest country on the face of the earth. [applause] Someone might say that it is easy for you to speak of dying for this country because you are a middle aged preacher. I have got some news for you. I would probably grab a rifle in defense of this country quicker than any preacher in the United States, and my friends here that know me will attest to that fact. Someone says, well, you are a middle aged preacher, and you probably will never have the privilege of defending this country. The communists have boasted that by 1983 they expect to be on the Texas border. I don't say this tonight to frighten you, but unless God blesses this country, and unless some of you young people out here and others across this land make a greater contribution than some of us have made in the past, I may have the privilege of defending this nation in the streets of the United States of America. I don't say that to frighten you, but I am speaking chilling facts. This is still the greatest country in the world to live in.

I belong to the Lord and I belong to this country. There is a lovely lady here, and we have been together 25 years. I belong to her. There are three children in this world. I belong to them. You say, "they belong to you." No, the thing that really makes me happy is that I belong to them. There is a church in my home county. I belong to that church. There are thousands of people across this country. I feel like I belong to them. The things that will really make you happy in life are not the things that belong to you, but the things and the people to whom you belong. The most miserable people I find in this world are people who don't have the assurance that they belong to anybody or to any place.

You have some parents to whom you belong, and many of them are here tonight. You have some teachers who have an interest in you. This area here, this beautiful country that I have visited for about fourteen years, you have your roots here. I don't know of a finer place to live in this country than in this area around Sparta. You have your roots here, and don't forget it, even though your careers may carry you far from these green hills.

Now then my friends, I am not going to be lengthy tonight, but there are a few things I want to say to you in closing. I read a true story the other day of a giant oak tree, a majestic oak tree of great strength. People who had lived around that oak tree had witnessed that oak tree for several generations withstanding many storms. Many great winds, many storms of different kinds, had blown across that great oak tree, and it stood. A short while ago, in a gentle wind, that great oak tree fell across a highway. The people in that neighborhood were baffled that this great oak tree, that had withstood so many storms, was toppled over by a gentle breeze. Upon examination, to their surprise, this great oak tree, that looked so strong on the outside, had silently been hollowed out on the inside by thousands of little insects. As I thought about that great oak tree (and this is a true account of something I read a few days ago), that great oak tree that had withstood so many storms, I compared it to the United States of America. When we have our moral foundation and stand together, there is no enemy on the face of the earth that will be able to topple the great oak tree, America. The Soviet Union does not have the power. All the nations of the earth together lack the power. I am not the least bit afraid that if this nation would return to the principles on which it was founded, that any nation could overthrow the great oak tree, America. The greatest dangers to our country are the little insects that are silently eating away internally at the moral fiber of our country. I speak of the little insects of dope addiction, of drunkenness, of divorce, of immorality, and fear. These things are eating away at the heart of our country.

That oak tree also reminds me of a personal life. Many of us who have lived forty or fifty years have withstood many storms. But the things which can topple us over are the things that eat away on the inside, such as doubts, fear, jealousy, and negative thinking. These things eat away on the inside; and when that inside is silently eaten away, the least little storm can topple a person over.

I urge you to set some goals in life. To set that mark in life and remember this, the greatest thing in competition is not just that desire to win, it's that desire to prepare to win.

When my children left home a few years ago, I gave them a few little bits of advice. I am going to give them to you, and then we will go to the Lord in prayer.

It is said that the average girl in America needs about eight hours sleep. I have a beautiful daughter at home, and on a scale of one to ten, Daddy thinks she is the impossible eleven. I have a gorgeous daughter at home that must be an above average girl. I am told that the average girl needs eight hours of sleep a night. My girl gets along well on about ten or eleven. She is above average.

I told my son and my daughter, when they left home several years ago, there are three things to remember if you want to be successful in life. Number one is do not overeat. Overeating makes you sluggish. It makes you so sluggish that you do not function well in classes. You do not function well when you are up on high rises doing welding on tall buildings. You do not do your best when you have over eaten. I said, Don't over eat! Man brought death into the world by eating, and he has been eating himself to death ever since. Over eating will do other things to you that I will not get into tonight for fear that I will offend some folks who are present.

I told my youngsters, do not over eat, and do not over sleep. Solomon says, "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man." (Pr. 6:10-11). I have watched people who did not have self discipline throw an entire day out of kilter, and run in a mad rush all day long, because they tried to get fifteen minutes extra sleep. When you leave Sparta High School, to enroll in a college or trade school, those of you who have the discipline to arise in the morning and make preparations to go to class, those of you who have the discipline to burn the midnight oil, will probably succeed in life. Those of you who do not have the discipline to arise in the morning, and continue to study while others are sleeping, will probably fail.

I study the political and economic conditions of our country carefully. A prosperous man asked me day before yesterday "Brother Pyles, you travel a good bit, and you read several financial journals. I consider you informed in several fields. What do you think about the financial situation in the United States of America right now." I gave him a short answer: "The winners are still winning." Someone says, this is a world where everyone is losing, everybody's failing. The winners I am facing tonight, are going out into the world and are going to win.

I told my youngsters three things. Don't overeat, don't oversleep, and don't over spend. I close tonight with the advice the old Scotch preacher told every couple he ever married, "Fear God, and stay out of debt."