The 5 Levels of Biblical Family Leadership: Which One Are You?

[00:00:01] Hophni bankrupted his family. [00:00:04] Lot drifted with the culture. [00:00:07] Jacob hustled selfishly, Isaac planted faithfully, and Abraham multiplied. So which of these family archetypes are you right now? [00:00:22] You feel it, don't you? Earning, paying bills, having no clear path and wondering, are we winning or are we just surviving? Where are we going? You just don't know. That's because oftentimes you're just collecting tactics. [00:00:41] You get a little idea about your money here. You hear, I'm supposed to maximize my IRAs, whatever that means. You get an idea about savings, oh, I'm supposed to be doing an interest bearing savings account and we just collect tactics. But you don't visualize a system. You don't have a map for where you're going. Well, the biblical map runs from Hophni to Abraham. [00:01:07] The Hophni archetype, the very lowest rung on the ladder represents a foolish lack of thought. [00:01:15] There's no plan. You spend where you want. The wife has no idea what's really going on. You're hiding and secretly you're afraid of what a hard look in the mirror would reveal about your finances and your family leadership. [00:01:29] The Lot archetype represents a refusal to fight the cultural drift. Your family is led around by the world's culture and the world's allure. You're surrounded by compromise and you haven't made decisions about where you're going. [00:01:45] Finances might be a little more stable. We think of the Lot archetype as earning some or. But the family's a mess in general. [00:01:53] The Jacob archetype represents a turn. [00:01:57] Now he is starting to stabilize financially and he's doing some leading of his family, but he's motivated by selfish ambition and the vanity of performance. [00:02:10] You have no margin and no generosity system in place. You're building an empire for yourself, not a kingdom empire. [00:02:21] The Isaac archetype goes to a new place. This is the guy who's really doing all the right things. His finances are in order, his family is in order. He feels that he's gaining ground spiritually and financially. But he hasn't quite made it to the place of the goat. [00:02:42] Abraham. That's who we're talking about today. [00:02:46] So quickly, here's the ladder that we're trying to establish. This is this stair step. The levels, they go from Hophni, who is drowning, Lot, who is drifting, Jacob, who is grinding, Isaac, who's planting, and Abraham, who is multiplying and blooming everywhere because he's the goat. And, and let's be honest, before we Go on. Most Christian money advice stops at get out of debt. Now, Abraham did not stop there. He started there and built and built and built a family that was maybe the most successful family that's ever walked the earth. Now, Abraham wasn't a perfect man, but he is the biblical model of family leadership. And his story was written down for generations of people who weren't born yet so that we could piggyback and go to school on his life. In Genesis 18:19, God says, I've chosen him because he will direct his children and his household after him. We know in retrospect that his direction was both spiritual and financial. As we look at his story, he trained over 300 men in his household. [00:04:00] He blessed, and by that I mean he laid hands on and spoke directly to blessed his children. He trusted God for the future. He owned assets with orders attached to them. He didn't just have a bunch of assets and go, gee, I hope they are good for the next generations. He had some instructions that went along with them. Now, are your kids watching you hustle? I hope they are. I hope they're not watching you sit around and watch tv. Are they watching you hustle or do they watch you lead and bless? [00:04:35] Do they know what your money is for? Do they have any idea of what the family vision is, why we exist, or where we hope to be going in 50 and 100 years? [00:04:47] I know what it's like to be worked up about family finances. And I know what it feels like when you think you're not doing all you could be doing spiritually for your family. [00:04:56] So on that note, let's consider the two sides of Abraham from which this podcast gets its name, Abraham's Wallet. So we're talking about Abraham the spiritual leader, and we're also talking about his finances. Every archetype in our stair steps includes both. So let's talk about spiritual family leadership for the Abraham archetype. [00:05:21] The spiritual Abrahamic family leader. He's a trainer of his household. He's not just the provider. He has daily instructions. They're described in Deuteronomy 6. It says, as you're going in the coming and going of your family, you're giving your family instructions about the ways of God. Not just an occasional lecture, not just at Thanksgiving, not just at Christmas, not just at Easter, but daily regular instruction. He speaks the future over his sons. That's the family vision. [00:05:53] Your kids should be able to describe the family's vision because you told them the family vision repeatedly. And he trusts God publicly when it costs him that's what Isaac remembered from Moriah, if you remember that story, God provided and Abraham said so. He told his children about God's ways. He was a trainer of his household. He speaks the future over his sons and he trusts God publicly. That is he, he says it with his mouth. I trust God. God is good. God will take care of us. [00:06:28] Now let's look at the financial aspect of Abrahamic leadership. He was an owner, not a consumer. [00:06:36] He had land, herds and servants assets that outlived him. We know that he passed those things on and they were outrageously significant. The amount of land and cattle that he had under him and servants, of course. [00:06:51] Number two, the succession plan is settled. So the Abrahamic leader has a will and a trust in place. He has the beneficiaries articulated. The next owner is trained and ready. He's thinking long term. And that's really the distinctive between the Abrahamic leader and what we call the Isaac mindset is that the Abrahamic leader is not only managing his own scene, he's not only successful as far as spiritual leadership, financial leadership, but he is projecting into the future and he's thinking about the future. This is Abraham, the father of many nations. [00:07:30] Number three, his money has a job description. After he's gone, he's not leaving it for pointless luxury for the grandkids that wouldn't bless them, that would actually ruin them. [00:07:42] So the Abrahamic leader doesn't just say that we're going to give millions to the next generations. No, like I said, his money has a job description attached to it. So he's thinking multi generationally and he's also describing what the family's finances will be after he's gone and how they'll work. [00:08:02] So if you're thinking to yourself, I think I sound more like lot right now and not much like the Abraham description. [00:08:10] I want to say that's good. That's why we're laying out all five stages and we're going to give you one killer move that will keep you moving up the staircase. Subscribe because next week we're going to start at rock bottom with Hoffney. So if you are an Abrahamic family leader, I'm going to give you a little two options. The road's going to split here. I'm going to give you two options. If you think that you are an Abrahamic family leader, I'm going to give you a, a one page family manifesto in the notes to fill out this week. That's your killer move as an Abrahamic leader. You're Going to answer questions like, who are we? You say, we're the Smith family, servants of God. Describe your family. [00:08:51] What is money for in this house? And you can say, we think it's to provide or protect or multiply for generations. It's for giving in this certain way, blessing the world. Fine. Number three, what happens when I'm gone? [00:09:05] So you have your will articulated, you have your accounts named, your beneficiaries, all that stuff. What happens when we're gone? And number four, what's our mantra? What's one verse or one money rule every kid can quote? Does your family kind of have a slogan that everyone knows? Now, if you're not yet an Abrahamic family leader but want to be one, I'll give you two actions for you to do this month. Number one, fund one next gen account, even if it's $50 on an autosave deal. My wife and I did this before we had our first child. I remember we opened up a tiny savings account at our local bank. I think it was $50. [00:09:48] And we called it Grandchildren because we saw the verse, a righteous man leaves an inheritance for his children's children out of Proverbs 13. And we thought, that's who we want to be. We want to start thinking about our children's children even before we have our first child. So we had a very tiny little account that we set up. We put $50 in it, and that was an act of faith for us. And if you haven't done something like that, it will open up a doorway in your mind. So that's one job for you. Fund one NextGen account and two, get your will written and signed and the beneficiaries named. [00:10:29] I don't care if you're 25 years old and you've got one baby and you think we don't have anything to pass along. No. [00:10:38] Start taking this step towards being Abrahamic. Put a will in place. What it does, it's kind of like opening that Next Gen account. It starts moving your mind toward the future and thinking, there will be a time when I'm not here and I'm going to start my mind working on the future. So do those two things in the next month. That's it. Vision and paperwork. That's Abraham. You can't have great ideas if you don't execute on them. Abraham did both vision and paperwork. So let me just draw a picture for you before we go. Today I mentioned that for the Abrahamic family leaders, you ought to be able to fill out that one page vision statement. The sort of family manifesto idea. I want you to imagine your great, great grandson seeing that one pager 25, 40 years from now, and he sees it and he goes, oh, yeah, I know this. [00:11:38] I know exactly what to do. That's the kind of training and confidence that Abraham gave to Isaac and then to Jacob, which he would have known. Abraham would have known Jacob. And I want you to imagine having a family that knows who they are so clearly that when they read what you wrote about the family vision, they go, oh, I absolutely know that. I already know what the money's doing. I know why I'm being trained, because someday I'm going to take over this family story. [00:12:09] You don't become Abraham in one explosion of effort. You climb from Hophni to Lot to Jacob to Isaac to Abraham. Nobody goes from Hophni to Abraham. It is a process and you walk through these steps. So don't give up, fellas. This pathway that we're laying out for you is yours for the taking. And even if you haven't thought in these terms, with these specific levels, you're going to hear that these skills are real. They have to be collected or you never get to a place of. Of godly family leadership. We'd love to see your comments below. What stage are you in right now, Hoffney? Lot, Jacob, Isaac or Abraham? And be sure to watch. Next week, we're going to start back with Hoffney, and we're going to tell you how to stop bankrupting your family's future in just seven days. See you then.