NEWS FEATURE: Billionaire Shares Wisdom Gleaned From Faith and Business

c. 2000 Religion News Service GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. _ Rich DeVos knows the odds are stacked against his getting into heaven. He is well aware of Jesus’ teaching that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. He learned this […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. _ Rich DeVos knows the odds are stacked against his getting into heaven.

He is well aware of Jesus’ teaching that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. He learned this and other biblical lessons growing up in an ultra-conservative Calvinist church, long before he cofounded the Amway Corp. and became one of the world’s richest men.


But DeVos is nothing if not a can-do individual, and that includes challenges of biblical proportions.

“Just because things are difficult doesn’t mean they’re impossible,” says DeVos, relaxing in the cozy office of his Holland home on Lake Macatawa.

“The Bible talks a great deal about being wealthy, and about working hard,” says the man recently estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth about $1.9 billion. “I think I’m following the admonition of what I’ve been asked to do: to work hard, do well and then share out of that.”

At age 74, with a transplanted heart beating in his chest, DeVos doesn’t apologize for the riches his life has brought him. But as he surveys the life he has lived and has yet to live, he keeps in mind the narrowness of the needle’s eye.

“I don’t have a problem with my riches, because I don’t consider that they’re mine,” DeVos says in his plain-spoken way. “They have been given to me to use. I am the current steward of them, and will be held accountable for how I dispose of them.”

DeVos’ philosophy on wealth, faith and the values he holds most dear are outlined in his new book, “Hope From My Heart: Ten Lessons for Life.”

It is due to be released officially Aug. 22 but already is available in some Christian bookstores.


“God is more interested in the state of our hearts than in the status of our bank accounts,” DeVos writes in the slim, handsomely packaged volume published by J. Countryman, a division of Thomas Nelson Inc.

In its 120 richly illustrated pages, DeVos discusses the dogged persistence, fearless confidence and other traits he says have served him well _ and which he asserts will help others achieve their highest potential.

He also describes in detail his two heart attacks requiring bypass surgery, a stroke, a near-fatal chest infection and his heart transplant three years ago. He shares how those brushes with death strengthened his faith.

“Only the spiritually blind could fail to see the hand of God in my circumstances,” DeVos writes of the transplant performed at London’s Harefield Hospital.

Later, in his office, DeVos displays no doubt that God, not chance, was behind the remarkable circumstances that enabled him to survive.

“He wanted me to live for some reason,” DeVos says, then picks up his book. “Maybe he wanted me to live to write this book, and tell this story.”


It’s the story of a man who has pursued his dreams with a sometimes reckless optimism, and the lessons he believes can help anyone from tycoons to truck drivers.

“Hope From My Heart” is DeVos’ third book. It follows “BELIEVE!” (Revell, 1975), a motivational book, and “Compassionate Capitalism” (Dutton, 1993), which calls for a return to capitalism’s moral basis.

He calls his latest volume “a book of practical wisdom.” Designed for quick reading, it weaves stories from DeVos’ family life and business history with observations about universal virtues.

His virtues read like captions of Norman Rockwell paintings: respect, family, freedom, faith. And it’s clear DeVos believes passionately in every one of them.

“One of the most powerful forces in the world is the will of men and women who believe in themselves, who dare to hope and aim high, who go confidently after the things they want from life,” DeVos writes.

In an interview, DeVos talked about his book, his faith and his health, and touched on other topics near to his heart _ inner-city ministry, school vouchers and Amway.


His office is lined with photos of his beloved sailboats, and a mini-backboard behind his desk bears the name of his NBA basketball team, the Orlando Magic. He splits his time between Holland and Florida, where his Palm Beach area home is now his official residence.

Leaning back in an easy chair wearing a blue shirt, yellow tie and loafers, DeVos says he feels “pretty great.”

“I can’t go out and play football,” he quips. “But I can swim and I can walk and I can talk.”

His lack of health problems since the transplant, he says, is “just a matter of the grace of God.”

DeVos gives thanks for that each morning, when he prays and reads devotionals with his wife, Helen. He learned a lot about grace, he writes, in receiving a new heart from a 39-year-old woman who herself needed a transplant, and whose abnormally enlarged heart and rare blood type were just what he needed.

He describes being wheeled into the operating room, staring up at the fluorescent lights, feeling weak and helpless but prepared to meet his maker.


“We had to look death in the eye and decide, `OK, if that’s the way it’s supposed to be, it’s all right. And if the Lord wants me to live, that’s OK, too,”’ DeVos says.

But even a man this supremely confident has his moments of doubt. He admits he’s occasionally uneasy about his wealthy lifestyle compared to those in poverty.

But still, he hopes readers will be inspired to pursue their dreams.

He’s gratified that notable friends from former President Gerald Ford to Billy Graham and Charles Colson have praised the work, joking that their endorsements are “the best part of the book.”

DeVos has heavily supported Prison Fellowship, a ministry Colson founded soon after serving time for Watergate-related crimes. Colson said the two became friends soon after he got out of prison.

He recalled getting a phone call just before DeVos left for the heart transplant.

“He called just to say that if he didn’t see me again here, we’d see one another up in heaven. He was at total peace about it.”

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“Hope From My Heart” draws heavily on DeVos’ youth when, he writes, “I had a brash and sometimes unjustified sense of confidence.” He tells of sailing to the Caribbean with Jay Van Andel, his Amway co-founder, and sinking off the coast of Cuba.


He also tells of working at a gasoline station to help pay his way through Grand Rapids Christian High School, and of the deep faith instilled in him by his parents, Simon and Ethel DeVos. He calls his faith “the foundation on which all else in my life rests.”

Though a longtime member of LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church, DeVos was raised in the Protestant Reformed Church, a denomination that broke away from the CRC in the 1920s over doctrinal disputes. Today, DeVos has little use for theological hair-splitting.

“Puritans like to get hung up on the details, but I don’t get hung up on those details,” says DeVos, who now considers his home church Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale. “If they accept Jesus Christ as the son of God and savior of the world, I’m OK with them.”

But he firmly insists on the need for a religious faith.

“It gives you purpose for your life and why you live. If people don’t have a faith of any kind, absolutely anything goes.”

He says his faith guides how he uses his wealth, summing up the ethic as “make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)

DeVos gives millions to ministries, the arts and charitable causes through the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, praying as he and his wife wade through fat notebooks full of requests.


One of the causes he enthusiastically promotes these days is the DeVos Urban Leadership Initiative, a family venture to train and support leaders of inner-city youth ministries. DeVos calls them “a forgotten breed” who “don’t have anyplace to go for training or courses or encouragement.”

He’s also backing the school voucher movement.

“You’ve got kids trapped in bad schools,” DeVos says firmly. “This is an opportunity to get them out. There are hundreds of thousands of parents of kids in these schools who are trying to get them into a private school to give them a better education.

“As a believer in Christian schools and private schools, knowing the quality of that education, I think these kids should have an opportunity for a better education.”

DEA END HONEY

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