Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to Abraham's Wallet. Today we are talking about the five lessons from Charlie Kirk that are going to hit hard for every dad, husband and man of God out there. We hope that we're going to light a fire under you. This isn't just about head knowledge. It's about living out your calling with faith, guts, and holy spirit power anchored in God's word. That's the kind of man Charlie Kirk called us to be.
And today we're unpacking five lessons from his life that'll challenge you to step up and lead like never before. So grab your coffee, buckle up, and let's get after it. Because your family, your faith, and your legacy are worth it.
Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. I'm joined today by author, screenwriter, and executive communication coach Jeff Davenport. We're just kind of talking about this Charlie Kirk stuff because I don't think I. I don't think it's being talked about enough in kind of church circles or the places that you might find spiritually responsible or nourishing. And so that we've got a list of kind of lessons from Charlie Kirk's life that's just kind of an excuse for us to chat. And we're going to show some clips of him doing his thing, but it's really just a chance for us to talk. So, uh, I'm. I. I know that you kind of come at him from a different angle than I did, so I'll repeat the question. It doesn't have to be anything profound, but what have you been making of. Of his death?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Well, I, I knew more, like, general ideas about him than I really knew about him.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: About. Okay, I knew.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: I knew in general who he was. I knew that he had some amount of impact on the. On the election.
I knew that he was some young guy who was. Who a lot of people liked because of how he spoke about his conservative values. That was really about what I knew. I had such an impression of him that anytime his name come up, I felt positive. Like, yeah, I'm. I. Yeah. Glad he exists. I guess he's doing some good stuff out there. I hadn't really watched a lot of his stuff or anything. So when he was. When he was murdered, as you say it was. It was one of those, oh, no.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Like, obviously, this is awful. He has a family. Any. Any human being being murdered. It's just awful, especially in a public arena. But it. It caused me to start to go down and go, okay, I don't know about this guy. I'd like to learn about this guy.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: It's.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: We're at a weird time in history where someone famous who.
You've never met him. I've never met him. I've never been in the same room or arena with him. And yet somehow his death has some sort of impact on us. It's. It's causing. Yeah. Our crews to talk and go, what do we make? How do we make heads or tails out of this?
[00:03:01] Speaker A: It just seems really dumb if you're a Christian leader and you're not talking about this guy. Because it seems to me now. Now I know a lot of people aren't able to. To. To do this because they. Because.
Because his work is political. They put him in that category and can't get him out of it.
For me, he had a. He had a public job, which had to do with influencing people politically, and that's fine. Okay, That's. That's on one side.
What he did was he used his platform of his job to publicly defend the faith in a way that I can't think of an ex. I can't think of a parallel to him without going back 50 years.
I mean, occasionally a believer will receive an award and say, this is for Jesus. Or a football player say, I live for Jesus, at the end of a.
Our. Our. Our. Houston quarterback C.J. stroud, God bless him, he's always talking about Jesus. I love that. But he's not defending his faith to questioners.
So Charlie Kirk is doing this on a regular basis. And the name of his organization isn't Come Meet Jesus. It is a political job.
But in the course of him doing his job, it's like he's endlessly looking for opportunities to shoehorn in the message. Or I say shoehorn in. But really all he's doing is really being very naked about his belief system. Because if you ask him a question about the meaning of life, as we're going to show, he'll not say, well, it's political conservatism. He'll say, well, I believe in Jesus. So anyways.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: If he was just that.
If this was. If this was a young Karl Rove who was really input. We're not having this conversation.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Of course not. Of course not.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: And I think that's why, you know, there's a bit of a lightning rock. Well, he was political.
Yeah. And I don't know that that's really what matters a lot to us. What matters is that this guy was on the stage, and you don't have to. You don't have to scratch Very down, far down into the videos. To hear him answer some question about something, you would go, well, that's clearly a political. And he's bringing it back to Jesus. So you're right. He's out there defending the faith. Yeah, it would.
Maybe part of my struggle is I can't. I can't put this guy in a box, a normal box. Billy Graham didn't just get assassinated. Karl Rove didn't just get assassinated. It's this other. I don't know, this other thing.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I, I'm. I'm feeling like it's time to go right into our list. So I'm happy for us to just muse and give side thoughts and we don't have to, like, stay on topic the whole time. But I. What we're going to do is we're going to show people clips and then you and I are going to comment on them. So our first lesson from the life of Charlie Kirk is that death to self isn't a metaphor in the Bible. It doesn't. Jesus didn't say, like, it's. It's almost going to be like, as if you're dying to yourself. Jesus took that concept, as did Paul, very, very seriously. And Jesus said, one of the calling cards of people following me is that you'll do this thing, dying to yourself every single day.
So we're going to get some comments from Charlie and then we'll come back and comment our vision.
[00:06:47] Speaker C: And it might be foolishly optimistic, but I've been called that before and now you can kind of see it. We want a thousand Dietrich Bonhoeffers. We're not going to say, like, we're going to create them. I want to find them and encourage them. That's it. Find and encourage. Find and encourage. That's it. Because I'm not going to, like, train people or like it. I just want to find and encourage.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Here's just a branding idea. Dietrich Bonhoeffer died as a martyr.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: With a thousand Martin Luther's. It's got a little more.
[00:07:11] Speaker C: That's fair. I like the Bonhoeffer example because of the circumstances, the tyranny.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: But, you know, I also like the Bonhoeffer because I never want to make anyone feel as if I'm being anything but honest. It's going to cost us something, God forbid, our life like that. But eventually we're all going to have to go to heaven. And so Bonhoeffer is the example of, hey, I'm willing to sacrifice everything I have for God's purpose. On earth. But I hear you. It's not exactly the greatest salespeople.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: No, no, no. I suppose I'd rather die in a glorious martyrdom than by getting a Dorito stuck in my throat. I'm shocked at a 30, 31 year old who. These clips aren't hard to find of him talking about death and him going like, the people that I'm addressing and that would oppose me, they're violent. He says that over and over.
And he says, this is real.
What I'm about is real.
And for him to say, and you know, I walk out the door in the mornings and we're sort of. We had a security team, we're praying for safety. And clearly what he's saying is, I'm ready to go.
The scriptures tell us this is second Timothy three, four.
People are going to go from bad to worse.
We see pictures in Revelation 20: to 26.
It's very dark times. We know that we're headed towards those very dark times.
And will we as believers be completely caught off guard? Holy cow. There's violence against Christians? Or will we all be saying, we knew this was coming? It was always time for us to be ready, and now it's time to be ready. And that's something I, I must pass on to our, to my hearers. Whether it's Abe's wallet crowd or the guys I disciple or my children, anybody, we must pass along to them that the, the idea of death to self, it's not for the varsity team.
It's for, it's for us. If you want to follow Jesus, those, those are the terms for entering the door of following him. We, we, we naturally lament the fact that we would live in such an evil world, that such a thing could happen, et cetera.
But we also live in a reality of believing the Bible and going like it's going to get worse.
And what makes me sad is to think of a modern Christian who would like, cry in his milk anytime that the actual threat of violence would happen to us in this time, in this country, knowing that it's happened all over the world for thousands of years. But, but it's not supposed to enter my world.
So I don't know. That's one of my takeaways is that he kind of. We didn't know this. I didn't hear him say these kind of things, but that he faced the present threat of physical danger every day and was like, I don't know. My eternity is taken care of. Let's rock and roll. This is the job.
I Find that very inspiring and kind of, I find it skin hardening, it like, toughens me up in a good way.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Don't you get the sense that if this shooter had been an inch to the right, then Charlie would have lived, that he would have kept his dates for the next ones?
[00:10:36] Speaker A: I do.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: I mean, I don't think he would have gone, hang on, we got something.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: I wasn't expecting that. I, I almost think maybe he thought as he was dying. I'm almost surprised this didn't come sooner.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Yep.
I, I, I have wondered how, you know, how, how long he was conscious after he was struck.
And I think he, if he was, if he was conscious for a second, he probably thought, well, this was it. That this is what I was prepared for.
The world will hate you, Jeff.
The preachers don't teach this. I mean, we have been busy. This is one of the things that has been the cold water in the face for me is that we have been trying to bend over backwards in evangelicalism for 30 years, maybe just trying to beg and plead. People, you can make friends with the world, they don't have to hate you.
And that kind of illusion is going to, it's going to evaporate off of the world stage because the, the, the truth of the times that we live in, the importance of the gospel, the offensiveness of the gospel, that's not going away.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that phrase is something we, we just haven't liked much is the offensiveness of the gospel. It's, yeah, it's, it's medicine. Boy, you gotta, if you don't know, you're sick, it, you just see it as the worst of the worst.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: We have been asking in my household, do you think that Charlie Kirk was a martyr and does he get the martyr's crown?
And I really wonder that, like, does the Lord actually parse the motivations of the killer and go, like, now why did he pull the trigger?
And how much of that was about a Christ witness or maybe a believing worldview. Maybe you get to package that. I don't know. I don't know.
But I refer back to the old quote when it talks about, you know, is there enough evidence to convict you for being a Christian?
I would like to think there's enough of a reason out there for my speaking boldly for the cause of Christ that I could be a candidate for martyrdom. It sounds like the rewards are pretty good for martyrdom. I've said this before here, but let me get to the next point.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Hang on. You, you, you, you threw by A phrase there and when. Of course, everyone's heard that a hundred times, and I don't think that's true. I don't know that I'd heard it. Is there evidence, what was it? Is there ev. Is there evidence out there enough to convict you as a Christian?
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. Well, that's. If you're, if your life was on the stand, is there enough, ev. Evidence of your life that could convict you for being a Christian? Like, that's in the public sphere. Like, oh yeah, I talked to him. He was always talking about Jesus. Oh yeah, I saw him at the coffee shop. He had his Bible out and like, oh yeah, I saw him praying with his family at the restaurant before the meals. Like, oh yeah, this guy's a Christian. Like, could the, could the observers of your life stand on the, on the witness stand and convict you? Like, he was definitely a Christian.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Well, you made that statement as if, like, I know we all heard this in high school. You probably did. I bet you 99% of the people hearing this just didn't. So maybe, maybe that's what some people can walk away with is, I don't know, how does the evidence stack up for me?
And maybe not that you go out to do things, but you just keep, you kick past the gag reflex and go, yes, I don't want to be that Christian who's out there. And the words like, don't, don't be ashamed of me.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Yes. Speaking of being unapologetic for your witness, let's go to the second point, which is that the world needs your witness.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I was talking with a group of, of 9th grade boys recently, did a little retreat. And I got to kind of talk with them about some things and about their identity and, and who they are. And one of the things we kept coming back to was this idea that kind of sprinkled throughout the New Testament but probably said Most clearly in Second Corinthians 5, 20. It says, Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.
God makes his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
That just like, you know, the US has an ambassador to China, and that person goes to China and stands on behalf of the United States and to some degree speaks on that behalf of the United States.
We're meant to be ambassadors in our world for God. And it's not in a tea, it's not this.
And don't go be an ambassador reconciling God to humans, because I think that's what we do a lot is we kind of, we act like a PR team for God, and we go, oh.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Now I didn't remember. That's it.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Like, let me reenter. We're meant to come straightforward and communicate clearly what God says is true and how humans come up short and to plead with people, to beg them to make. Make good on the promise that we're meant to represent him and we're meant to point towards God and be reconciled to him.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: That's right. Well, we're going to watch a quick video of a dude giving a testimony of what. What Charlie's witness meant in his life.
[00:16:18] Speaker D: I had tickets to see Charlie October 29th at Ole Miss. I was really looking forward to it. I've been a lifelong atheist. I never believed in God, but I saw the joy that it brought to Charlie and it brought me to God and really moved me to see him. And I was looking forward to meeting him and telling him that you helped me find God. I saw that peace that he had.
And so I'm here today day to celebrate his life and make sure that people don't forget how much of an impact he had for all of us.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: What do you think?
[00:16:50] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you could picture this guy up in heaven saying the same thing. You know, he's gonna. He's gonna honor the Lord and go, oh, the guy over there, I forgot his name, but he, his joy. He. He. He reconciled me to the Creator. He. God used him to reconcile me to my creator.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: I mean, what. One thing that's so cool about what Charlie did was that he had public conversations with opponents of the gospel or people that were estranged from God.
And I reckon, as this guy's testimony demonstrates, I reckon there were thousands of people listening who weren't direct parties of that conversation.
And he was convincing. Even if the person he's talking to directly would go, like, yeah, no thanks. I don't want what you've got. The listeners were going like, hold on, there's. There's something there that makes sense. And Charlie said over and over, I. I gotta throw this in, Jeff, that you and I grew up in the days of, like, Josh McDowell, who would defend the faith and explain the faith.
And this is kind of one of C.S. lewis's magical charms, is being able to explain the faith in a rational, culturally current, If I can say, not, not. Not doing stupid Sundays at the movies, but describing the gospel in a way that made sense to the people of his time.
And I have been on the lookout for, where's Josh McDowell? For our times for definitely 20 years, going, who will defend the faith for the arguments that are coming from our culture.
And Charlie did this. And you see this, this post atheist guy that's going like, I didn't know any answers. And I went to find maybe he was politically curious or something. He's like, this guy's defending his faith. And I go, I want what he's got. What has he got? How do, how does, how does somebody make sense of their life like this?
And we were having a conversation this past weekend at our midrash about Charlie Kirk and Jeremy Pryor made the comment to me that how did we get in the shape that we're in, where what we consider to be an evangelist is a guy who builds a whole auditorium with the lighting and the sound and everything built around his comfort so that you get to come to where he is and he puts on his dog and pony show.
Nobody challenges or opposes him. He says his speech, we're done when it says that in Jesus's day, he's talking with people in the temple courts every single day. He's talking to people.
The early church is getting together in Solomon's Colonnade every day. And there's a lot of interchange with everybody. What's this new teaching you have? You think, you think the Messiah's come, et cetera. And that presence, that gospel presence is gone from our society.
If you're just kind of an inquisitive person and you want to hear the gospel defended on neutral turf, where could you possibly go?
And, and, you know, I, I don't know about the whole picking up, picking up Charlie's mic kind of thing, but I love that he, that he would stand before the most opposed people. And he was always, if he was shouting anybody down, he was shouting down his own team. No, no, let him talk. No, no, don't boo them. I want to hear your objections.
And always doing it with grace and speaking truth, but never insulting people.
He was just a master at that thing.
So I gotta honor that. And if you are hearing my voice right now, why don't we just agree together? And asking the king of the universe, would you send us thousands of people who would be willing to engage the lost on their turf, not because we think we have all of the answers, but because we know God. And one thing that was so cool, I just have to throw in about Charlie is that when he. There's so many things. We're gonna actually gonna watch one of these. But there were so many times that would happen to him.
Actually. I'll just go into my, my third Little clip here that. My third lesson is always be ready. To always be ready, which is. Comes from Colossians. Always be ready is a Holy Spirit requiring command.
So always be ready to share your faith. We're going to be salt, et cetera.
Really cool thing is that somebody would oppose Charlie. You can go watch these clips endlessly. We'll watch one of them here in a second. Somebody would oppose him, ask him Frank questions. He didn't set up this conversation.
He didn't set up. You're going to ask me this question.
He's stumped. He's given a stumper and he says you can hear it come out of his own mouth. I'm depending on the Holy Spirit to give me wisdom and shrewdness in that moment to know how to answer people. And here he answers this guy because he's put his butt on the line. He's out there with a tent. Prove me wrong. Somebody challenges his faith and this dude comes out with.
It's very cool to me because clearly he's done the homework to be prepared.
And I think he's sensitive to the Holy Spirit and answering somebody. So let's just watch him respond to this guy.
You a Christian?
[00:22:42] Speaker C: Very, very much so.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Like, why is that exactly?
[00:22:44] Speaker C: Oh, Jesus saved my life. I'm a sinner, gave my life to Christ. Most important decision I ever made.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: So you believe the Bible is real?
[00:22:50] Speaker C: Yes, I believe the Bible is true and real.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Why is that?
[00:22:53] Speaker C: Well, I could give you the technical answer. There's never been archaeological discovery that has contradicted the truth of the Bible. And then, of course, the wisdom. There is not a truth of the Bible that if you apply to your life, your life does not improve dramatically. And then finally, we have the most accurate and transparent, historically robust account that one can have of the most important figure ever to live in the history of the world, Jesus of Nazareth. And the resurrection is the. Is the pinpoint of my belief that Jesus did rise from the grave so that we may live.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: What makes Christian mythology real?
[00:23:21] Speaker C: So that's not mythology, but that is theology. If Genesis 1:1 and the resurrection is true, anything in the Bible is possible. You're looking at the greatest miracle. The greatest miracle is creation. And then the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. I say, how do you know that Jesus rose from the dead? Well, show me another historical piece of a story where so many people willingly died a brutal death for a lie. Every single person around him had everything to lose, and yet they went to the absolute death. From Paul to Peter to the half brother of James saying that Jesus is Lord Jesus rose from the dead. Not to mention, if you were going to fake a story, you would not use female witnesses in the ancient world. In the scriptures, it said that the feet, the women were the first one to see Jesus Christ. If you're trying to fake a story, you would never do that.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: It's funny. Everything you've shown has no political angle to it.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Of course not. No.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: And that's where I think some of the model could come in. For people who are coming in from the outside and going, well, we've got this melange of politics and theology. I get it, I get it. But just listen to this guy about this stuff.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Yes. So I, again, let me go back to my. He had this job and this job platformed him so that he could present the gospel.
So we're going to hear him.
I think it's one of the last clips we're going to do where he's going to talk to a guy about being an electrician and he put, he's going to lay his theory out on the line, which is if you're an electrician, it gives you a platform to share the gospel with people. Get good at using that platform to share the gospel.
So his job, which isn't neither here nor there, is he's going to, he's going to do political conservatism. But for him, we're looking at all of these opportunities where he is like, oh, I can share the gospel right here. I will.
I just love that. And I love how obviously when he's giving that answer, he's thought about that answer before. Right.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: He was ready to give it an answer for the hope within.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: That's exactly right.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: He reminds me a little. I don't know if this will ring a bell with you, but when I was at the University of Texas for college, first few years, I don't know if this guy came to A and.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: M. I bet he did.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: His name was Cliff Kneckley or something like that. It was an odd last name.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: But he would show up. So I was at University of Texas, like, this is Pagan. You.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: And he would, he would set up a little microphone and a little speaker. And at the time, I bet he seemed so old, I bet the time he was 30 years old.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Very serious guy. Not much, not much humor in him, but he would just start talking about the gospel and he would answer anybody's question and people would be doing this, you know, I, I, yes, yes. I could see that. I'll explain what the scripture.
[00:26:10] Speaker C: And he.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: He was bullet proof.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Unflappable, this guy.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: And he.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: I would. And I always, to be honest, just to be candid, I would feel a little embarrassed as, like a kind of meek Christian, like, is he gonna. And he just handled things so well. And of course, you know, I think if he was warmer, people might have liked him a little more. Laughed a little. I don't know. But.
So that was. That was in 1991, I believe, when that was happening. I was in an Uber recently, within the last three months, I get in the Uber and this guy, he's from Africa. And I get the sense this guy's a Christian. Oh, you're Jesus. We start talking, he's fresh from Africa. He's like, have you heard of this guy? He starts playing me clips of that Cliff guy who's still out there doing that.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: 30 years later, 40 years later. It's crazy. Anyway, this reminds me of him. Cliff, he's never going to be on the national news when he passes away. But these people who go, you know what? Someone's got to go out to them. Someone's got to speak at the areopagus. Somebody's got to stand at the tomb of the unknown and go, let me. Let me help you understand these things.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Back to my conversation with Jeremy Pryor. He said it would be really simple for us to get out a map of the city and figure out where are the public courts right now.
You could just identify every public park.
You could look for every university campus.
I don't know where else could you speak? Farmers market.
And go, here they are. Here's the public courts. And he said, shouldn't.
Shouldn't we be able. I don't want to put a should on. Every believer's got to be doing this.
But shouldn't we be able to man the stations with all the believers that are in the city, that you could stand up and engage with people anyhow? He said, wouldn't it be neat if, in our city, if you want to be a. If you want to be a defender of the faith, you want to take a paycheck for been on a church staff, you got to give five hours a week to going into public square and defending the faith or something, you know, and it feels like your Cliff boy, there's plenty of room for old Cliff, I'll tell you that. Nobody's elbowing him out of his spot There, there. Christians aren't good at this. That's why I say that one of the lessons for me in looking at Charlie Kirk's life is not only was he led by the Holy Spirit in that moment, but he was prepared. He educated himself. He was ready with answers. So when you say, like, I mean, imagine cliff now 30 years on, do you think that it's conceivable to ask him a question that stumps him? Correct. Impossible.
And so he will have devoured. I mean, let's say you get humiliated out in the public square. Oh, I didn't think about this creation.
Stumper. You're going to go home and solve it and you figure out what does the scripture say? Okay, I got it. That one I got. Okay, I'm not going to get stumped on that one again.
And to be ready means that take some prep work for us, which we are largely unprepared to do. We're ill equipped at actually talking to lost people. That's one of the reasons that I just so esteem Charlie, because he, he convicts me of my own unpreparedness. And I have to throw in that when he started his little rantings at age 18, he would say of himself, I. I came from a Christian family and I didn't walk with Jesus. I didn't, I didn't. I didn't know him. And it was only in his 20s that he came alive, realized, boy, everything's about Jesus. And you can hear him talk about. At the end of the day, what matters is do you know God or not so well?
[00:30:10] Speaker B: The kingdom's full of buck privates and there's just, there's nobody who can go. Who, who is equipped to go out there to share the faith like this.
But then I, I kind of think of like, you know, I know there's this movement of what's called mama bear apologetics and yes, this kind of thing that, hey, let's equip. Not, I think a lot of it. Sadly, though, well, not sadly, but an element of it is defensiveness. Like, I want my kid, when they go off to whatever college, to not lose their faith. Don't lose their faith. That's fine. Like, that's good. We want to shored up.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: And yet they're, you know, the sword will defect, defend you, but it's also meant to cut down and it's got to end up moving both ways. I think a buddy of mine named Trevor, I'm not sure how steeped he is in apologetics, but this cat can't sit in a coffee shop without turning to somebody and just dragging up a Converse and Next thing you know, oh yeah, that guy came to church with me and now he's, he's, he's.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: We're discipling. You know that guy.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: He can figure out any way to turn this into a Jesus conversation. And I think we'd say the same about Charlie.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
All right, we're gonna, this is gonna be the longest one that we do because it's worth your time. I think it, it's right. Hits right in the, in the middle, the epicenter of Abraham's wallet ness.
You were going to see Charlie talking to a young man. This is the electrician. He's going to be talking to him about the direction of his life and what to be doing. And so I'm calling this lesson that manhood is an assignment. It's not a given, it's a way that we're supposed to be walking in. So let's watch this clip.
[00:31:55] Speaker E: Hey, Charlie. My name is Isaac. I'm 20 years old.
[00:31:58] Speaker C: That means laughter.
[00:32:00] Speaker E: It does. And I do like to laugh a lot.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Good.
[00:32:03] Speaker E: So a couple years ago on the way home from high school, when I was in high school, I was listening to your show and I heard you advocate for the trades and not going to college. So I wanted to thank you for that input because I gladly skipped college and I've been an electrician for two years now.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:32:19] Speaker E: So thank you.
[00:32:20] Speaker C: Great for you, man.
[00:32:23] Speaker E: My question is a faith related one, actually.
I'm sure you know that most tradesmen are either alcoholics or divorced or felons or sometimes all three. But it's okay, we love them.
What would your advice be to young tradesmen who love Jesus more than anything and want to exemplify them or exemplify him in every word and action, but have a really hard time consistently operating that way in an environment where mentioning Jesus is like committing a war crime, man.
[00:32:49] Speaker C: First of all, God bless you and thank you for. I, I, I just, I love the hard working men of Wyoming. Can we. It's just gives me so much hope. It's just amazing.
Number one, you have to make your faith center in everything that you do, in all that you do.
In the same advice I gave previously to the podcast you listen to while you're doing your work. Make it sermons, make it teachings, make it speeches that glorify God and all that you do. If you know that most tradesmen have problems drinking, maybe you're just going to say, I'm going to not drink in my life. I don't drink. And it's a great way to live. Everybody. Tucker Carlson doesn't drink. Donald Trump doesn't drink. You got a lot of energy when you don't drink.
[00:33:29] Speaker E: And I'm seven months sober, by the way.
[00:33:32] Speaker C: Praise God, man. That's amazing. Good for you. And let me ask you, are you.
Do you see a positive benefit from.
[00:33:40] Speaker E: That in every aspect of every second of every day?
[00:33:44] Speaker C: Praise the Lord.
And my advice for people in this audience is that if you're struggling with alcohol, tomorrow can be a new day where it can be your day. 1. Jesus Christ is with you through every single one of those steps and those struggles. And even if you say, well, you know, I don't have an alcohol problem, that's fine. That's not actually the contention. The contention is, is it good for you in what you want to do? So here's what I say to young men, and Jordan Peterson's been saying this for a while, which is, what are you aiming at? What is your goal? What is your destination? And so by not drinking, what you've done is you've just taken one of those variables completely off the table. And let me tell you, if you're an alcoholic, you're more likely to get divorced. So you now have decreased the likelihood of getting divorced. I don't know if you're married or if you're, you know, look, you're looking for.
[00:34:28] Speaker E: My whole heart belongs to Jesus right now.
[00:34:30] Speaker C: Amazing. There's a lot of women here that I think would love to meet you. So.
So.
And read the word every single day and come up with clear rules for your life of things that you will not do, things you will not watch, ways that you will not engage. And finally, don't never be satisfied with the skill set you have. Learn a different language, learn more about a specific topic that you enjoy. Start another business. And finally, you're in a unique place, because when people call an electrician, they're looking for help, you have a chance to minister. So when you walk in to be an electrician, you don't have to be like Billy Graham and so proclaim it. You don't have to be that. But you could say, hey, how you doing? You having a good week? People will talk to you. It's amazing how they'll talk to people they welcome into their home. Especially if you have a good way about you and you're organized and you're put together and you don't have alcohol on your breath, they'll talk to you and they'll say, oh, it's just terrible. You Know, my kid is this and that. Be like, can I pray for you?
And by the way, this is Wyoming, right? This is not San Francisco. So a lot of people will say yes.
[00:35:33] Speaker E: Right?
[00:35:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:33] Speaker C: And then you can all of a sudden use your electrician job as a way to witness to other people. And it doesn't mean you have to all of a sudden rename your electrical company to like, you know, Jesus heals your electrical problems. Right.
At the same time, you need to be a witness in every way because you're going to find people that are suffering. You're going to see kind of, you know, discord and, you know, disillusionment. And you are now a missionary and you didn't even realize it. You get to go into more homes that I get to. I mean, I broadcast a lot of homes, but you're going to be intimate. And even if you walk into a business, you get to meet in your career. How old are you?
[00:36:07] Speaker E: 20 years old.
[00:36:08] Speaker C: You're 20 years old. So you're going to be an electrician probably for the next 40 years, 50 years. You're probably going to walk into 10,000 to 15,000 homes.
That is a mission field the likes of which that now at 20, you'd be like, you know what my aim is? My aim is to bring 250 people to Jesus over the next decade. Or my, my, why is to do that? So now all of a sudden, you're using a trade that can then fit, feed, you know, feed your family eventually and make you money to go glorify God on an ultimate purpose. And that's my advice for all of us, is to infuse your daily work for God's glory and to do it in ways that we could never imagine. And so, man, God bless you. And I just want to say that, like, I love people that, that go in the contrarian way. I'm sure there's a lot of pressure to go to college, but you're going to earn a great living being electrician. There's a shortage of electricians in this country, as you well know, all across, because we look down upon these trades in this country, and we said we should elevate them. So I'm counting on you to be the missionary electrician from Laramie, Wyoming. God bless you, man. Thank you so much.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Well, there you go. I mean, that's. That's it right there, right?
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Yes. Again, forgive me for repeating. I think this is my third time I'm saying this.
Charlie believed a biblical idea. There's no such thing as a Christian vocation or an unchristian vocation. We are Christians out in the world and we're going to make the most of every opportunity. I loved what he said about, do you have the boldness to simply ask somebody, can I pray with you? I mean, I've done that with grocery store clerks and most people are so shocked by that question, they'll just blurt out, yeah, yes, yeah, sure. Because they like, I don't know what to do with this question. So I'll say yes, but great. I'm going to ask the king of the universe to come meet with us right now. I'm going to. And I don't. I try to minimize the weirdness. Like, I'm going to make this a three sentence prayer and I'm going to keep my eyes open. I'm just going to touch your hand as I pray or whatever.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: Well, run that back. Like, okay, you're, you're giving out a little practical thing there.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: Like explain her. Let's say I'm the, I'm, I'm the hairy looking grocery clerk and you sent something in me. What do you actually say?
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah, well, one thing that you can always do with people is just ask them.
Harried is the right word. This is what grocery clerks usually look like.
And I always just kind of try to enter into what I see on their face and go, like, are you gonna, is, are your shift almost over? That's what they're thinking.
So they'll say, I don't get off till 10.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: Wait, wait. I'm a communication person. I'm a parse. This one. What you, if you're watching at home, what Stephen did was he showed the emotion on his face, then he's trying to read on that person. Are you, are you really, are you hoping your shift's almost over? When that, when someone feels that they're doing the emotion that they're feeling, they feel a connection immediately.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
So if somebody seems stressed out or sometimes I've had people that look angry at me for like even bothering them, like, coming through. I thought this is where I was supposed to check out.
I just want to, I want to get in a place of agreement with them. Something that Charlie was a master at doing. You'd say, I think we would both say that life is valuable. Right. And the other person goes, well, yeah, of course. All right, well, it's a starting point. We, we, we actually, he would, he would always go, like, I think we have, like, more in common than we have opposed to each other. You Know, he did this with Bill Maher, famously, where he's going, like, I think we would agree on this, Bill.
So you.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Which. Which, real quick, before we go on from that. That is a massive thing.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: It is.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: I think Paul would do that. I think Jesus applied this.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: Of course he did.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Hey, let you. If you start at places of disagreement, you're going nowhere.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: So you have to go.
Some people have to go very far up. Can we agree that we're alive?
[00:40:11] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: You have to go very far up.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: If you don't start there, there's no. I mean, this is rhetoric 101. There's no common language.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: And so Peter, Paul, these guys exhibited this constantly. Sorry.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I remember one when, you know, I think we were thrown into the deep pool of witnessing.
7th, 8th grade.
And I became convinced that if I asked my friend, well, do you believe the Bible's true? And they go, no.
I'm kind of like, well, you throw.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: The note cards over your shoulder and walk away.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: What do we do here? So you might notice Charlie Kirk never asked that question of anybody.
He's asking their questions about values and love and truth and life. And then he would simply throw in, well, I'm a Christian, and we believe this.
Just say that. That's where we stand on this. I believe that God is accurate when he says, whatever.
So anyways, back to the grocery store clerk. And you go, like, hoping to get off. And you go, and I'm not out till 10.
And I. And I wouldn't say this because it seems corny to me, but I'm thinking you seem stressed out. And so I would just cut to the chase and go, anything I can be praying for for you?
There's always an answer to that question.
Yeah.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: I'm short on money, so I'm not gonna make my rent.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: That's right. Or my parents are in a hard way, or we're looking for a place to live or whatever.
Okay. Can I pray for you right now? I'll make it so quick.
And they're so flattered. Yes.
Okay. And I just keep looking at them. I might. If it's. If it's convenient, I might reach that hand over and just put it on their forearm, look them right in the eye and go, jesus, I'm praying for Susie right now. I'm asking for your presence. You are our deliverer.
Our deliverer. I'm asking you to deliver her from this trouble she's in. I'm praying for it in Jesus name.
Done.
And she's like, you know, a little twinkle in her teary eye going like, thank you so much. You bet, man. He loves you. He cares about you. You got mercy. Okay. Have a great day. You know, I'm not trying to make it weird or prolong it or anything. We're just trying to be salt and light. Well, I have a good friend Ambassador.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: You're ambassadoring Ambassador.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: That's right.
I have wanted to have Abe's wallet T shirts printed up, something like, you know, public servant. I think that would be a great T shirt for a man of God to wear around that said public servant. And so when I walk into. Wouldn't it be great if, when I was in a coffee shop, somebody goes, we're having a disagreement over here. Could you help us? Yes. What would tell me about it? What's going on? Or like that my mom actually needs somebody to carry her out to the car. Could you do that? Yes. I'm great at that. I'm. You know, we're supposed to be. Jesus said, if you want to be great in the Kingdom, you be the slave of everyone.
So I don't know that. That. That ought to be our. Our move is, like, I'm out in the public sphere. Whoever I'm crossing paths with. I was with some Jewish people this past week, and we're talking about the Torah. We're talking about God, and I'm going, like, how do I. Is there a way for me to just squeeze in there? Well, I believe that Yeshua is the Messiah. You know. You know what? You know, just looking for opportunity. So. Okay, let's proceed.
I really like that that man manhood is an assignment. It's something that we're trying to work on. I know that a lot of people listen to this podcast because they're trying to build up their skills and their knowledge. We have a vision of where we're trying to get. That's what Charlie was trying to describe this electrician.
[00:44:01] Speaker B: Can I throw a verse in on that?
[00:44:02] Speaker A: Manhood, please, please.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: First Corinthians 16, 13, 14 says, Be watchful.
So you're looking out. You're looking out for opportunities.
Stand firm in the faith.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: Okay. Act like men.
Be strong.
Let all that you do be done in love.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: I mean, that.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: That.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: That hits for the cycle.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
This is like, can you distill. How do you be a disciple of Jesus and a representative of the Kingdom in one verse? Okay, here you go. What is it again, Jeff?
[00:44:38] Speaker B: 1 Corinthians 16, 13, 14. Be watchful, stand firm in the faith. Act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. Don't you get the sense that after Charlie talked to some angry person, if he could go hug him, he would?
[00:44:55] Speaker A: Yes.
And he would always say, if you watch enough of him, you'll, you'll just hear him say to people in public, it takes a lot of courage to come up here. Sometimes people would say, I hate you, I'm so mad at you. And then they would stammer because they don't know everybody's looking at him. And they, they had enough courage to say that, but they don't know the next sentence. He would always jump in and save them and go like, don't worry. It takes a lot of courage to stand up and speak your mind in front of a lot of people. I know that this is nervous. It's okay. Anything else you wanted to say? Because I'd love to address what you said.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Let me think this, I don't want any of this to feel like, you know, hagiography.
We're all praise Charlie Kirk.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: I'm okay with that personally, but go ahead.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: Well, I think what we're getting at is we're looking around for human beings, for men who, we go, my word, I think that's how Jesus would be living his life today.
So when we're, when we're in praise of Charlie, what we're saying is, yes, we thought this is a great guy in a lot of ways. The things we are, we are applauding. We're actually applauding in our king. We're saying that he exhibited our king's traits, our king's tendencies, our king's characteristics.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:46:16] Speaker B: That's what we, that's what we get jazzed up about.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Yep.
Yeah. Last lesson I want to put in front of the abe's wallet crew regarding Charlie Kirk was, he was a young single man when he started his, when he started his non profit, which was about politics, he, he gained a following.
He was increasingly successful. As I said, he, his faith came alive. He started deciding, I'm going to serve the Lord with everything.
And as we just heard him talk to that electrician, where he arrived at is such an important thing, which I think if you really actually pursue Jesus in the scriptures, you will find this. Where he arrived at is the last lesson. Prioritize family over everything else.
So this is a guy who you can go watch clips of him talking about, I honor the Sabbath, I'm going to be at home with my family.
He says that job one is to be a father and husband. Although he was important in like, I mean, have you, Jeff, have you seen these vigils happening like in Korea and overseas for Charlie Kirk?
[00:47:30] Speaker B: Not overseas, no.
Are you kidding?
[00:47:32] Speaker A: Like how did they know of this guy? But I guess it's kind of the wonder of YouTube is that it spans the globe. Yeah, there are, there was a demonstration in England. I mean it's just crazy.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: I did see a clip of some Africans holding a sign God bless you, Charlie Kurt, because he's going on a mission trip.
[00:47:50] Speaker A: I saw that too.
So on, on the undergirding all of his public stuff and, and he, I heard him describing one time billions of views that he had gotten for turning point stuff over the, over the years.
He would say, but number one for me is my family.
He got married, he's got two little kids. And to prioritize family over everything else. So let's just watch this final clip real quick.
[00:48:21] Speaker C: This one matters more.
Great family or great career Family. Great family. You should want to meet your future husband that will be able to make enough money that you can quit.
That would be my advice. My number one thing I'm obsessed about. I want to live in a country where if a woman does not want to go to work having to have a kid, she does not have to go to work. And she could stay at home and raise those kids. Honestly. It's much more important for you to raise your 6 month old baby than crunching numbers on a spreadsheet for some company that doesn't even know your name. In 1980s, a a father working was able to support an entire family. Now things are so expensive.
Homes are out of reach. Inflation has crushed us. Both the man and the woman have to go into the workforce. That is bad. It is bad for everybody. It creates strangers raising our kids and also it creates women that have to go into the workforce that are unhappy in their job because they'd rather have their six month old baby in their arms.
[00:49:21] Speaker A: Did you know that he's the one that introduced J.D. vance to Don Jr.
No.
And I just learned today they've just done this vigil in Washington D.C. for him. And Kennedy got up and spoke. He said, Charlie Kirk was the one that brokered my relationship with Donald Trump. Did you know that?
[00:49:43] Speaker B: I did hear that this morning.
[00:49:45] Speaker A: That's crazy.
Well, Charlie Kirk had said I what I'm going to work toward when the election cycle comes back around. I'm trying to get J.D. vance elected. And then when that happens mine. What I'm going to turn everything toward is we've got to resurrect and glorify the family.
We're. We're going to. I'm going to try to pass every law possible to support and defend the family. The family, the family. This is one of the things that God does to a man when he gets married.
I just was with a newly married guy this morning, and suddenly his mind is turning to how do I make more money? And when can I start having kids? Well, that's God's plan, is that he starts thinking that way.
Have more kids, have kids, have a lot of kids. And then when you start having kids, you start thinking to yourself, how do we protect and defend and expand what I'm experiencing? Because it is the zenith of glory of humanity that I am a married man, I have children.
This is as good as it gets. So how do we expand this thing? So that's what his mind had turned toward. And he was convinced, as he was a. As he was a growing family man, that the family is sort of, as I always say, is Kingdom of God headquarters. It's where the buck stops with family.
I love that about him. And so hope for that for our audience, that nothing would convince you that, well, the church is where the action is. I'm just a family man. Or the political arena is so important.
I'm just a father just hanging around, just paying the bills, spending time with my kids. Yeah, we have a Sabbath. We read the Bible. But otherwise unimportant. And I would say the sun rises and sets on what you do in your home. And there's nothing more important than what happens in your home.
[00:51:45] Speaker B: I agree. I can't imagine that. I imagine his wife is sitting around.
I imagine his wife is sitting around going, the world. The world was better with my husband in it. And then she goes, but my family was where we saw him really show up.
[00:52:02] Speaker A: She says that. She said. She said that. We heard her say, everybody's impressed with Charlie's mind. Everybody's impressed with how articulate he was and how caring he was with people. But nobody saw him. Him like we, like me and the kids saw him. And I'm telling you that this guy knew Jesus because of the way that he lived with our family.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: I saw a little video today. It was her following him. It was a super cut. And she would just on some random day, go, click, okay, he grew on whatever. Charlie, words of wisdom for the day. What do you got? And he's just found either it's a scripture or an aphorism or just something that comes up. I mean, I just thought it was so.
It was both cute and profound.
[00:52:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it was great. I love that. Yes. Oh, man.
[00:52:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you. I mean, that's one of the things that has been said over and over again. If he was a single guy and this had happened to him, you know, I think some of this would get swept under the rug. But there is. There is pathos to the fact that he was married to this woman and they had beautiful children and they have this family.
And I think whether you.
Whether you get it or you don't, I think it's. It's rich deeply in our psyche that that's the way things should be. And when that's broken and busted, something in us, whether, you know, we might kick against the nodes or not, but when that's busted, we feel it. We know that something is very, very wrong.
[00:53:31] Speaker A: Yep. And no matter what happens in the world, if you need to hear me say this today, no matter what happens in the world, how strange and dark and perverse it gets, these kingdom principles of faith and family and understanding God's word and representing him out in the public square and letting your faith infect every area of your life, those things are never going to change. They're only going to increase in importance.
So, folks, we just walked through five absolute game changers, I think, from Charlie Kirk's life. They're not just ideas. They're a call to action for you to lead your home with courage and conviction. Maybe I should have opened with this, but we're going to leave this little bonus clip in the show notes. And I want to make this point for anybody that I don't know whether you are too. Too vocally passionate about politics or you were gritting your teeth the whole time because you don't want to be talking about politics at all.
I just want. I just want to. I want you to see this video on your own time, which is Charlie making the point that political conservatism is not the solution to your problems or to our nation's problems. We are in a spiritual battle that must be engaged with spiritual understanding, which. Which is an amazing statement if. If his entire career is given to political activism. So here's your challenge, brothers. I want you to pick one of these lessons and put it into practice this week. Maybe it's dying to your own agenda to serve your wife and kids. Maybe it's stepping up to share your faith boldly when the Holy Spirit gives you an opportunity as Jeff's been talking about. Whatever it is, don't just hear this. I challenge you to do something about it, to run hard after the kingdom in your home, and let's build a community of men who are all in for God and family in an effort. I just have to throw this in here at the tail end in an effort to build this community. We'd love for you to come find us at Abe's wallet abrahamswallet.com or to come on our Abrahamic Blueprint retreat that's happening November 21st. You can go to abrahamswallet.com retreat to sign up for that. We're just going to spend time with a whole bunch of people that are running the same direction, and we're going to equip and inspire you to do that better and better.
Until next time, thank you, Jeff, for your time and keep running your home like a biblical boss.
[00:56:01] Speaker B: Hear, hear.
