Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I hate being old. That's not a godly statement. It's like saying I hate being young. Who made you old?
[00:00:07] Is God in charge of your life or is he not?
[00:00:12] Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. Hey, folks, it's just me, Stephen today and this is a one man show and I want to talk about old age. I kind of think of this as an addendum to what we called the Abrahamic starter kit. We ended off with a topic on the good life. Where are we headed? What is the vision of the good life for the Abrahamic leader?
[00:00:38] As we said when we were doing that starter kit, we could spin off in all sorts of capillary directions on all of those topics. But I think the good life is something that is murky to us. And I think that you probably have a fairly good grid about what being responsible with your money looks like. You probably have a fairly good grid about how to have a good biblical kingdom culture in your home.
[00:01:08] And we're kind of. A lot of times our episodes are answering questions that we know the audience has, whether it's about investing or saving or anything else.
[00:01:19] So often the topics that come up are simply things that I want the guys that I currently disciple to know.
[00:01:26] And this is one of those things. And I can lay out a biblical argument for a belief system. And I just, I want to equip you for your worldview. It has been said that the most important thing about you is your worldview.
[00:01:43] And the thing that makes you Christian is your worldview. It's the way that you see the grand story of life.
[00:01:52] And I think that we have lost something significant regarding aging. And what I find among the church, the people of God and their own attitudes about aging, I think needs a course correction. And it's one thing to try to correct old people, but what can be done so easily would be to shape this generation about their thoughts about aging and shape you now so that you already have beliefs about it before it happens. By the way, I mean, this is what we think about, for instance, being a martyr.
[00:02:32] You might think, oh, I don't know that I would have the courage or faith to be a martyr if the time came.
[00:02:38] Well, what you can do about that is make a decision right now. Just decide right now that if it came to it, I would be willing to die for the Lord. You could say that to him. You could just pray that prayer right now and just commit it to the Lord. Not based on your emotions, not based on the way that you're feeling. Whether I'm feeling strong or not, just go, I think this would be right. God, I'd be willing to die for you if it came down to it. Now, what you've done, you see, is that you've made a decision while you're in your right mind about something that hasn't happened yet. And when it happens, you know how to walk into it because you've already made the decision. You made a prayerful, biblically oriented, godly decision about how you're going to handle that. I think we can do the same thing about old age. And so I want to talk you, I want to talk some of my younger guys and you all in the audience, by extension, about the way that I think we should be thinking about getting old. And I'd like to correct some thinking that exists even in Abrahamic families to some extent. So before I do, before I get into that, I have two announcements that I'd like to make to you.
[00:03:47] Here's the first one.
[00:03:49] Abrahamic Leaders if you've ever felt that your faith was stuck and that you felt like you were reading the Bible more as a duty than like having a passion for it, or you wondered how to truly shape your home around God's story instead of the world's noise, I've got an offer for you.
[00:04:08] In April 17th to 19th in Cincinnati, there is going to be something called the storyformed Life Weekend Retreat.
[00:04:18] The Story Formed Life, or what we call sfl, is a reorienting walk through God's story that we can, we think we can do it in a weekend. It is often a six week study, but we have figured out a way to do that in a weekend and it will put your family's story on solid ground. Some people poke around our podcast or they poke around family teams and they go like there's something that they understand in a bigger picture that I'm not sure that I do.
[00:04:45] Many of our listeners have gone through what we call sfl, the Story Formed life, but many have not. And it's a study that started here in Cincinnati and we want as many folks to experience it as possible.
[00:04:58] If you come April 17 to 19 in Cincinnati, you will walk through God's big story with a small group and one of our most seasoned story guides who will be a facilitator for you. You could expect rich dives into scripture, honest discussion and a fresh lens on the Word that reignites your faith and gives your family the biblical foundation that undergirds the mindset and lifestyle that we preach here at Abraham's wallet. But it's not just about head knowledge. It's immersive.
[00:05:28] If you come April 17th to 19th, you will stay with host families who have lived in the story for years. You'll share a Sabbath meal with them. You'll see their rhythms up close. You can ask the hard questions. And you can witness what happens when a family lets scripture form everything about them. Their identity, their purpose, their parenting and their legacy.
[00:05:51] We have done this weekend before in Cincinnati and we have seen men leave here, finding their real place in God's story, moving from cultural Christianity to active discipleship, and shifting their life and family in ways that echo for generations. This retreat isn't just about stacking up more info. It's about letting God's story reshape your beliefs, your home and your family line. If this stirs something in you, don't wait head to get ready for a long address.
[00:06:22] Storyformedlife.orgcincinnati-retreat I wish we could have made that a little more concise, but it's not. Here it is again. Storyformedlife.org cincinnatire-retreat storyformlife.org cincinnatiretreat to learn more and to register. Spots will fill up fast. If you're in Cincinnati, you could still go to the retreat. You'd just be staying with a family in town.
[00:06:54] You can come and experience what's happening in the kingdom here in Cincinnati. A lot of people ask about that. How could I, kind of, how could I visit what y' all have going on? This is a way to do that. And you could learn why your family's future might just depend on it.
[00:07:12] So I invite any of you to go to storyformlife.org and be a part of that retreat on April 17th to 19th. That's this year, 2026.
[00:07:23] Number two, as a Christian dad, do you ever feel like you're spending your best working years building someone else's empire while your own family's vision and their resources just have to wait?
[00:07:37] I have known a guy named Joe Freudenberg for about 10 years. I was right there when he stepped out from a small time job. What he thought of as kind of, you know, kind of just killing time to launching his own business. And back then he actually joined us on Abraham's Wallet to talk about getting started with building pickleball courts and hard courts.
[00:08:00] Why? Well, because he had a vision for something that his family would own and that would bless his generations. And and now his income has skyrocketed.
[00:08:11] His company has booked over a million dollars in revenue in a really short amount of time while his responsibility has grown too, including leading his own team with real ministry opportunities.
[00:08:23] Some of us do like disciple making on the side, like a side hustle. When you own your own business, you realize you are doing real time disciple making all day long because you are leading men and you're showing them how to father and you're taking care of their whole worldview under your watch. So Joe is now at court Pro coaching and he helps intentional dads like you start profitable court building businesses in the exploding hard court market.
[00:08:53] By the way, you don't have to have any prior experience.
[00:08:57] You don't have a whole bunch. You don't have to have a whole bunch of money to invest.
[00:09:01] You could think I would love to do something like that. I don't know how. That's what this is for people just like you. So you get hands on training, you will be brought into a community.
[00:09:12] You actually get referrals from Joe. And listen to this, you'll get a three month guarantee that if you haven't booked $30,000 worth of work in three months, Joe will shift his entire model to help you get there. So there's a guarantee for you to get income and to get you moving fast and fueling your multi generational legacy. So stop serving someone else's dream. Head to courtprocoaching.com that's courtprocoaching.com just hit. Let's talk and connect with Joe today. Your family's future provision can start right here.
[00:09:55] All right, after those two announcements, I'm ready to jump in.
[00:09:59] Can we talk about my past weekend in Texas? So I just spent several days with my widow mom in Texas and we actually spent quite a bit of time. The roots of where our family is, which is in the middle of Texas called Grimes County.
[00:10:18] There's a little town where my parents met and where we still have family property and have all sorts of family connections. Well, when I am spending time with family, that's when I'm spending time with older folks. You know, that's extended family.
[00:10:38] My great aunt just recently passed away. She was 102. This is my great aunt Vivian.
[00:10:45] And if all of your family lives in one place, you understand that you get the opportunity when you go near family.
[00:10:52] Whether it's, I don't know, Thanksgiving or a wedding or something like that, you get to see the older folks. Well, that was my wedding. I mean, that was my weekend. I got to see some. I got to spend extended time with family and older folks.
[00:11:07] I got to see retiree Culture. So one thing is with. With my mom, I spend time when I'm with my mom in Houston.
[00:11:16] I go to her Sunday school class on the weekends. Really love those people.
[00:11:21] They loved my father. They were all at his funeral. And a lot of those were my Sunday school teachers as a child.
[00:11:27] And spending time around that crowd, you hear an attitude about growing old in general.
[00:11:37] And these are Christians, but these are, you know, these are more or less churchified Christians. If you're one of those people, I'm not trying to criticize you. This is where I came from.
[00:11:48] My mother's still at the home church that I grew up at.
[00:11:51] What I mean by churchified people is that they still think in the Christian sort of modern, pop Christian terms. They don't think like Abrahamic families. So that being the case, they think things like, well, you want to raise moral kids, you want them to know God, and then you want to send them out.
[00:12:11] And one of my contentions is that God isn't actually looking for us to raise individual Christians. I don't think he's. I don't think that's my assignment with my children is let's see if I can raise some individual Christians and then send them out.
[00:12:28] That's better than the alternative.
[00:12:30] But I think what God is calling me to as a family leader is to lead a biblical or kingdom, family.
[00:12:38] That means all of the machinery of family, which includes my finances, which includes the relationships in our family, which includes multiple generations.
[00:12:48] All of that is supposed to be looking and smelling like the kingdom of God, not like I'm spinning out individuals. Oh, good luck. Hope that goes great. Bye. Hope that goes great for you. That's one of the things I appreciate going home to Grimes county is that there is a tight community where multiple generations are always interacting with each other.
[00:13:08] Well, what I see among retiree culture, I saw it this past weekend because we are part of an older church, so there's a lot of gray hairs there. There are hundreds of people in their 70s and 80s at that church, which I know is an unusually large church. But I think of our groups here in Cincinnati, and we don't even have old folks around. If you have them around, they're almost like a mascot. They might show up occasionally, but, yeah, they're not where the action is. Right. When you walk into a church house and you scan the audience, you're looking for your friends, you're looking for those couple of dudes that. Oh, yeah, that's one of. That's my guy over there. You might be if you're an unusual person, you might be looking at, oh, there's the seventh and eighth graders that I build into. I'm trying to make disciples out of. Oh, that's my guy over there. You are usually not scanning the crowd for, who are the gray hairs here? Oh, there's old Pete. Oh, I got to go talk to Pete. We don't think that way. I think it's a mistake, but it's how things look in the church, in the modern church.
[00:14:18] So what we hear from those people who are largely not valued is we hear complaints about their health. Often we hear complaints about youth culture or like a shoulder shrug. I don't know. I don't know what they're doing these days. I don't think follow any of that stuff. We hear complaints about customer service or they don't make plumbers the way they used to, all that kind of stuff. There's a kind of an attitude about waiting around until you die or being more dialed into the life that you used to have instead of the one that you have now. Instead of asking ourselves, what am I uniquely able to do now? There's a lot of thought about, well, my son's gotten older now, we don't have any kids in the house.
[00:15:07] As if it is a death sentence, which it's not. Biblically. There's so many passages I'd like to read to you today, but let me start with this one from Titus 2.
[00:15:18] You might have heard the second half of this. A lot of women's ministries in Bible churches, for instance, they'll even call the ministry Titus 2 ministry.
[00:15:28] But let's talk about Titus. Titus is what's called a pastoral epistle, which means Paul is writing to this guy named Titus, and he's telling them how to be an elder in his church. How would you run a group of people?
[00:15:44] And so Paul gives very practical advice to Titus about how to deal with particular people groups, particular demographics within the church. And there's a whole section in Titus 2 where he says, now teach the young men this.
[00:15:59] Teach the older women this. So I'm going to read part of that section that's about old folks. Listen to this.
[00:16:05] Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self controlled, and sound in faith, in love and endurance.
[00:16:18] Now, anybody that's familiar with Abe's wallet, that's going to kind of ring a bell to you because it really sounds like a summary of what came a chapter before in Titus 1, which is a whole passage on being an elder. The elder. Oh, I just Use a word that sounds so important, it sounds so reserved. Such a small percentage of people ever make it to the hallowed grounds of being an elder.
[00:16:46] It has been an ambition of mine for all of my life, of making disciples that I want to kill the idea that being an elder is a special thing.
[00:16:55] I would like to bring in the idea that eldership is for every believer. So if you're 21 years old, you just got born again, I want to set in your mind the idea of I have the ambition to be considered an elder in God's church when I'm 60, 65 years old. Elder just means older. It doesn't mean that there's some magical position in the church that you get elected to by a committee.
[00:17:24] It just means an older person that would be respected. And that kind of person is described in Titus 1. I reckon that Paul is referring back to that list in Titus 2 when he says, now teach the older men to he could say, teach the older men to go read the chapter before of the letter that I just wrote to you. Then he pivots and he goes, likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way that they live, not to be slanderous.
[00:17:50] That is what I was just describing, the sort of critical what do you think of the new pasture? Well, I'll tell you what I think of that guy I heard that his wife, blah, blah, blah. That's slander.
[00:18:01] It's also called gossip and it's real common. That's why it's here in the Bible. Teach these older women not to be slanderers or addicted to too much wine, but to teach what is good. Isn't that interesting, Paul? Mr. I don't let the women teach in. The church calls out, I want these older women to teach what is good. I want them to be teachers.
[00:18:27] The question follows, Paul, what do you want them teaching here? He'll tell us. To teach what is good. They can urge the younger women. So there's their target demographic for all older women according to the book of Titus, chapter two.
[00:18:42] They can urge the younger women what? To be great leaders? To rattle the cages of patriarchy? No. What are they supposed to urge younger women to do? To love their husbands and children? Apparently those are skills that require instruction and training. And Paul says, that's exactly what I want older women to do. I want them to go find younger women, urge them and train them to love their husbands and children, to be self controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind and to be subject to their Husbands. That's the curriculum for older women to be teaching specifically to younger women.
[00:19:25] I'm not going to go on about that. I just want to say that in Paul's worldview that he instructs Titus with, there is a specific role that older people are supposed to be playing. And I would contend to you if you compare this list to what he wants younger people doing. These are the instructors of God's church of God's kingdom. Are these people, these older people?
[00:19:50] When I look around, if I were to just take a straw poll of every over 70 year old person in every church that you could go into on a weekend and ask them what their role is among the people of God, I think we would be saddened at how many of them would answer with this passage and say, well, my role is to instruct and to be an example, etc. To not give in to addiction, to be worthy of respect, to demonstrate soundness of faith and love and endurance.
[00:20:24] Can I get an amen for endurance?
[00:20:27] Let me pause on that word. When we think of endurance for older people, it doesn't mean, well, did you make it to 80?
[00:20:36] Well, you've clearly got endurance. I don't know if you've run a marathon before. I have mixed feelings about telling you that I have.
[00:20:44] And I can tell you that the people that make it to the finish line, if you hang around a marathon about hour seven and see who's coming in, the people who finish don't necessarily have endurance.
[00:20:58] They just physically made it to the finish line.
[00:21:02] I don't think that we can say by default, every 80 year old that's alive on planet Earth has endurance in the faith. The way that Paul is instructing Titus to tell the old people to have endurance.
[00:21:16] Endurance means I cross the finish line with strength. That's a marathon runner. If you say I was building up my endurance and I had endurance for the race, you mean that you finished, you crossed the finish line with strength. You were striding it out at the finish line.
[00:21:35] There are many, many, many older people. They're just scraping by and they're happy to scrape by. They're biding their time, they're hoping that the money holds out and they're just kind of waiting around on death.
[00:21:50] That is not the kind of endurance that's being described here. And I don't want that for you.
[00:21:57] Every season of life has challenges that's built onto it. If you're a young married couple, there are challenges with that. Your time is a challenge.
[00:22:09] Having babies when you want them to come or having the house that you want is a challenge. Resources are often a challenge and your experience is small.
[00:22:23] You might, you know, you get into your first house and you go, I don't know what to do when it comes to a breaker box. I never had to deal with a breaker box. I've always had landlords before. Now how do I handle power in my home?
[00:22:37] You just don't have much experience.
[00:22:39] You have a shortage of resources and your network is small when you're young. I remember we were part of a gigantic church early in my marriage. But our network was actually quite small to start with. We just had a little clutch of friends and we. Over time, of course, that network expanded. You get into middle age and the question is one of faithfulness. This is the challenge of faithfulness. Do you have what Hollywood has given us as the seven year itch where you go like, I just kind of got bored with my marriage. It just wasn't, you know, this kind of, I'm going to live, I'm going to have gusto in my life and I'm not sure my marriage is really doing it for me anymore. The question is faithfulness. So can you remain faithful in your marriage?
[00:23:25] Can you continue to import life and vitality into that relationship which is supposed to deepen into something really sweet and meaningful? Can you be faithful when it comes to raising a young family? Do you throw up your hands at the third child and go, like, I think we're done with all that child training stuff, I'm out of gas, give them a screen and if they scream on the airplane, I don't care, just let it go.
[00:23:54] It's a question of faithfulness and not giving in to your flesh. This is one of the reasons that Paul says to the young men, teach them self control. When you get older, just think of for most people, I know that this isn't true for somebody who maybe has dealt with poverty spirit and so they don't have anything saved in their old age. I know that happens.
[00:24:16] But for most people, if you've kind of done a predictable or even a godly life in old age, your resources are large, you have more money than you've ever had. Now you're into where your 401ks, your retirement funds are paying out, you have the benefit of grown children.
[00:24:41] I can think of think of this past weekend I go to my mom's house, she's got a bunch of computer questions for me. She's got a bunch of needs. I want you to mulch the beds et Cetera, et cetera. And so you've got the benefit of grown children.
[00:24:55] Your network has increased over the years.
[00:24:59] Your experience is at its maximum. A guy who's spent a career in marketing, I'm thinking of a guy named Steve at our church here in Cincinnati.
[00:25:11] He's forgotten more about marketing with a career at Proctor and gamble than a 30 year old has ever come across. You could literally ask him any question about marketing and he'd shrug his shoulders and go, well, you got to do this and this. You can't do that. Oh, I didn't know that. That's because his experience is at a maximum. But I mentioned the network.
[00:25:33] The network for somebody who's 80 years old has also been decreasing because you are dealing, you are now looking and dealing with and fighting. I would say you're fighting the spirit of death.
[00:25:46] I just want to put that bluntly. So you're finding there, if you're 80 years old, there are people around you who have passed away, you have good friends, you have family members who have passed away, your body is failing you, you are not at maximum physical strength, your mind might start failing you, et cetera. So my point in describing these different sections of life is every season of life has challenges along with it. What do you do when you're a young person and your resources are small, your experience is small. As a Christian, what do you do? Well, you depend on the Lord. You say, God, just teach me your ways, Lord, teach me how to balance my budget and teach me what your picture of marriage is. Help me to have your attitude about children. And he's forming you in those days and you don't know.
[00:26:37] Well, you get into middle age and hopefully you should know a lot of those answers. But the question is, oh God, would you train, would you help train my character so that I can be a man of faithfulness? I see my investment account is building. But you know, sometimes, Lord, I just want to pull the trigger and I just want to go on a three month cruise and get away from all of this stuff because, I mean, I'm 20 years into a career now and it's frustrating. And when do I, when's my time? The whole world is telling me that I should be celebrated. I don't feel celebrated. What do I do? Well, the Lord wants to teach you faithfulness. It's character development. And then what do you do in old age?
[00:27:16] Old age is one of those seasons when all we think of doing and this isn't wrong, it's just our, it's just Our default, all we ever think of doing with old people is to encourage them, never to correct them or instruct them in the ways of God. Well, they should be encouraged. And I've just described to you, we live in a culture that doesn't value them at all. So one way that you could immediately put yourself into God's corner is when you see an old person bless them, honor them, respect them.
[00:27:47] I think what we ought to also be doing is instructing them with the kind of stuff I'm thinking today, which is what is the challenge. I just told you the challenges for being an old person, they need instruction as well, which is in this season of your life, you need to be praying for vigor in these end times of your life. This last season, Whether it lasts five years or 25 years, you should be asking the Lord for vision and vigor. I mean, when you see the things like who Caleb was in the scriptures or you see in Acts chapter two and it says your old men will dream dreams. Well, what does that mean? It means that I have a vision for something I'm going to be doing with my life at this stage.
[00:28:36] Let me say again, like the reason for this episode, I really want you young guys to have in your mind, this is what I want to be when I get older. Because I.
[00:28:48] Stephen, I know that you're not going to have a lot of examples around you that are showing you, well, this is the godly way to be as a 75, 80 year old. Most dudes are mailing it in. They're spending all of their time in front of a television or they're out to just try to keep pleasure going for a while and find out whatever it is that I want to do instead of saying, no, no, no, no. I have a role and I have a vision for equipping younger men and fulfilling that role. So none of those life stages are to be demeaned or devalued. However, there are unique temptations with each of those life stages. And I think the temptation with the end of life stage that your elderly years is to just sort of wait around and to go, well, can I minimize my pain?
[00:29:46] And instead of going, no, no, no, the pain that I feel from my body failing me, this is my opportunity, this is what I have to fight against.
[00:29:56] And I'm going to fight against that thing while I execute on my assignment. And I just told you, God's assignment, part of it is right there in Titus 2.
[00:30:06] So I'm going to push past it. My identity is not going to be I can't tell you how many times I've heard, oh, it ain't easy getting old.
[00:30:14] I appreciate that.
[00:30:16] And it's also true, in a sense, there's no stage of life that is easy.
[00:30:21] Every season has some challenges, and we all have to lean into the Lord to overcome those challenges and to be who God's called us to be. I hope you don't hear me saying I don't have any empathy for old people. I was very interested in my dad's physical decline. And I don't mean he didn't have, like, an ongoing disease or anything, but he was an athlete, and I was very interested in him describing, I can't hit the ball as far as I used to. Now I have to be better on the short irons. Oh, that's really good to know. I didn't know that. I remember we went to Israel one time, and I'm like, come, come up here, Dad. I want you to see this. And then I sort of leap up 40 steps. He's like, son, I can't run up the steps like that. Oh, I'm going, oh, you. You can't?
[00:31:09] No. It hurts me to run it, so I have to take it slow. Oh, okay. I want to hear all that stuff. I have empathy for sure. I'm. I'm. I want to be patient, but I simply, again, want to set your expectations on where you're going. One thing that I want to coach you in as I never want to hear my young men say. Say something like, I hate being old. That's not a godly statement. That's like saying, I hate being young. I would ask you the question. If you said, I hate being old, I would ask you, who made you old?
[00:31:41] Is God in charge of your life or is he not who made you old?
[00:31:47] This is Acts 17. God chose the time and places that we would live.
[00:31:53] So if you were born in the 40s and you're alive in 2026, are you blaming God for the date of your birth?
[00:32:02] Was he a good God in the 60s and 70s when you were a young man? And now he's not a good God in 2026?
[00:32:10] No, he's still a good God, and he chose the date of your birth.
[00:32:14] So do you resent him for giving you the length of years that he's given you? You better not. You're not in agreement with him if you feel that way. So I never want to hear my guys.
[00:32:25] For as long as you live, I want you to watch your mouth and not say, I hate Being old, we have the Lord to thank for all of our days.
[00:32:35] He chose you to live in this age, in this body, at this time. So pray for wisdom and faithfulness as you steward what God's given you. Whether you're 25 years old, you need to pray. God, make me wise to steward what you give me. If you're 85 years old, you pray the same prayer. God, make me wise to steward what you've given me.
[00:32:54] So you might know these things. I just want to throw out the value, the biblical value, which is the glory of old age.
[00:33:04] There are core passages, such as Deuteronomy 30.
[00:33:10] There's a whole section starting at Deuteronomy about chapter 26. It goes on for several chapters. And the theme of these chapters is Moses turning to God's people and saying, I hold out before you life and death, blessings and curses. And then he gives them this command, and I'm commanding you through the airwaves. Choose life.
[00:33:35] I hold before you life and death. Choose life.
[00:33:40] And one of the things that Moses says, it's certainly in chapter 30, where it says, one of the blessings of following God is long life, extension of years.
[00:33:54] So I want all of my guys. I want everybody that's in my community, certainly the guys that I disciple. I want you to want long life. I want you to have the ambition of being an old guy.
[00:34:07] I want something in you to say, I can't wait until the first part of Titus chapter two applies to me. I can't wait until I could qualify to be a Titus 1 and first Timothy 3, Elder.
[00:34:21] I can't wait until I could be one of these men at the gate. That's described in Proverbs 31 and in Ruth chapter 4. I want to be one of these old guys. I think that's what the Lord wants for me.
[00:34:35] Again, long life is seen as a blessing. Scripturally, do you see it as a blessing, or do you say, like, oh, I don't want to be so old that I'm in a wheelchair.
[00:34:45] I'll speak for myself and say, I want long life.
[00:34:49] If that means that at the end of my days I'm in a wheelchair, even if that's for 20 years, that's okay with me. I'm going to fight it as long as I can.
[00:34:58] I'm not volunteering for wheelchairism. But I'll tell you this, I'll take long life with a wheelchair over a short life period, because it's part of God's blessing package that you'd have a long Life. What I wanted to point out to you guys, it was something that was taught to me by Michael o', Shields, a friend, years ago.
[00:35:20] Ephesians, Chapter six. I don't know if you know this. A lot of us are very familiar with the end of Ephesians chapter 5. It talks about marriage. But of course, Ephesians is a letter that when Paul wrote it, it wasn't broken up into chapters.
[00:35:35] It just went from one idea to the next. Well, the end of. However they chose to break through the breaks for chapters, it goes from the discussion of marriage at the end of Ephesians 5 right into more discussion about the family at the beginning of Ephesians 6.
[00:35:52] The beginning of Ephesians 6 is the famous passage about, honor your father and mother, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
[00:36:00] I don't know if you know that verse, but it says, honor your father and mother, that it might go well with you, and you might live long upon the earth.
[00:36:11] Then it doubles down and says, this is the first command with a promise.
[00:36:16] That's kind of a cool, kind of a mystical. I see fog machines turn on and I get a kind of a tingly feeling because I'm not sure what all that means. But it says, this is the first command with a promise. God gives a command.
[00:36:29] He does this so often. He gives us a command and then he chases the command. If you'll just do what I say, which you think, well, we have to do what you say. You're the king of the universe, we should. And he says, well, if you do what I say, I'll give you a blessing. And I always think, you shouldn't give us a blessing. If we do what you say. That should be like table stakes. As we do what you say. Ah. God says, ah, if you do what I say, I'll also throw a blessing at you. Okay, that sounds great. So I'll tell you the way of life and then I'll bless you for doing it.
[00:37:01] Okay, this is a great deal you're offering here. He says, honor your father and mother, for this is right.
[00:37:08] It's right for you to do this.
[00:37:10] And the blessing is, you'll live long upon the earth. It's the first command with a promise.
[00:37:17] So again, here we see that one of God's blessings that he wants to give to people is long life.
[00:37:25] And occasionally, by the way, you'll see 105-year-old on the local news and they'll put a mic in their face. I just want you to see how many times that Person one is a believer, and two, when they ask this old timer, how'd you get to live so long? Any tips on. They always laugh at them like they're mascots.
[00:37:46] What do you. Any old tips on how we can live as long as you. You tell me how often that person says, well, the Bible says, if you honor your father and mother, you live long upon the earth. And that's what I did. I've seen that many times over. It always strikes me to go like, well, God's word is true. I would expect that to be the case. I simply want to make the point. One of God's blessings is long life.
[00:38:08] And how dare you, man of God, to say something like, eh, I'm not sure I want that.
[00:38:13] Excuse me. The king of the universe has said, one of the blessings that I give to people is long life. If you honor your father and mother and you would look at him and go, number one, I'm way smarter than you are, Eternal God.
[00:38:30] I know what's valuable. Eh, that's not really my bag, so I don't know. I don't think so.
[00:38:37] What a foolish, stupid attitude to have towards any of God gifts. I would make the same statement about him saying in Psalm 127, children are a treasure from the Lord. They're a reward from Him. How dare you look at him and say, eh, I don't know. That's not really a reward I want. Could you offer me maybe stock options?
[00:38:57] Can you imagine how offensive and how much hubris you'd have to be as a person to say that to God? So whatever God offers as a reward, you just nod your head and say, yes, thank you.
[00:39:10] I encourage you to want what he offers as a reward.
[00:39:14] Long life is one of the things that he offers as a reward, and I want you to want it. Okay, so I want to throw this study out at you, which I think is shocking. There was a study done at Yale University by a lady named Becca Levy, which makes me think she's a Levite.
[00:39:34] Becca Levy. It was a study that found that having a positive attitude about aging adds an average of 7.5 years to your life.
[00:39:48] That is stunning. If you simply have a positive attitude about aging, you'll probably live seven and a half years longer.
[00:39:58] Well, I'm here to tell you that that's a godly attitude, having a positive attitude about aging.
[00:40:03] And it seems like simply agreeing with God, there's this blessing that goes on with longer life.
[00:40:11] A godly family would never sideline a godly patriarch.
[00:40:17] So I Want young dads to counter the whole cultural story.
[00:40:22] If you are a young dad and you want to have an ambition for long life and the patriarchal role, I want you to understand that biblical patriarchy requires old men to be active.
[00:40:35] Most of us, the vast majority of us, have not grown up with the benefit of having an older guy looking over our shoulder, giving us encouragement, saying that's the way to go, that we could talk to about our marriage problems. And he would go, I understand. I know it's that way. And you know what? You just got to keep being faithful and be an encourager and listen to your wife and bless her. These old guys are obviously supposed to be advising. They're supposed to be teaching and declaring God's power by, like, by their testimony.
[00:41:06] So I want to read to you Psalm 92. You might not know these verses, but if we're going to pursue longevity, I want you to hear this blessing from God in Psalm 92, starting in verse 12. The righteous will flourish like a palm tree. They will grow like a cedar of Lebanon planted in the house of the Lord. They will flourish in the courts of our God. I have to interrupt myself and say so often in the Scriptures, a family is described as a garden, as an orchard.
[00:41:39] What we're talking about is, I can mention Psalm 128, which describes your family like being a whole group of olive trees. Olive trees grow very old.
[00:41:52] You can go to the garden of Gethsemane right now in Israel, and you can see trees that were there when Jesus was there.
[00:42:02] These are old, old trees, thousands of years old.
[00:42:07] So Psalm 128 says, that's what your family will be like. So we're talking about multi, multi generational old fruit bearing trees. And here's the theme again. We have it in Psalm 92. The righteous will flourish like a palm tree. They will grow like a cedar of Lebanon planted in the house of the Lord. They will flourish in the courts of our God.
[00:42:28] Here it comes. They will still bear fruit in old age.
[00:42:34] They will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, the Lord is upright, he is my rock, and there is no wickedness in him.
[00:42:45] I contend that when people complain about being old, they are saying that there is wickedness in God.
[00:42:53] How dare he let me get this old? How dare he let my body fail me in some way? Why aren't I at the peak of my powers at age 85?
[00:43:03] No, in a righteous home. I'm going to read 14 and 15 again. They will still bear fruit in old age.
[00:43:11] How would they do that? By the Titus. Two kind of things they're doing, they're there are building into younger people.
[00:43:18] They will still bear fruit in old age. They will stay fresh and green.
[00:43:23] How do you stay fresh and green?
[00:43:26] I'll give you the secret right here on Abe's wallet.
[00:43:29] The way that you stay fresh and green is that you stay obedient to God. You stay a learner toward God. You stay seeking him. You stay confessional. You stay repenting.
[00:43:44] One of the things I love about my mom, who's about to go 82, is that she is still asking God to judge her and deal with her. She's still trying to grow in her faith. She's still asking people around her, what are the sins that you see in me? How can I grow as a person? How can I be more like Jesus? That is a way to stay young.
[00:44:07] It's a way to stay again.
[00:44:10] Psalm 92:14. Fresh and green. And they proclaim, the Lord is upright. He is my rock, and there is no wickedness in him.
[00:44:19] I want to just start of round third and head for home by saying, fellas, I want you to have in mind physical fitness and physical health that lasts. I mean, I would love for you to shoot for 100.
[00:44:37] It was said of Moses when he was 120. This is Deuteronomy 34.
[00:44:42] Moses at the age of 120. His eye was undimmed and his vigor unabated. Oh, I like that. I want that said of me when I'm an old guy.
[00:44:55] His eye was undimmed and his vigor unabated.
[00:44:59] So, guys, when you're thinking of physical fitness, I want you to keep exercising. Your bodies are going to weaken without it.
[00:45:06] I want you to eat for longevity, not just for pleasure. That becomes more and more important when you're like me and you get into your 50s.
[00:45:15] I remember being able to eat anything that I could imagine in my 30s. And I was so physically active that my body would just burn through it. And it was great.
[00:45:27] I'm not at that place anymore, so I have to be a little more thoughtful about what my input is. And I would still say, the Lord is upright. He's my rock, and there's no wickedness in him. I don't resent God for the changes in my body. It's fine. I can deal with it. I have new challenges at this age. So keep exercising. Another thing is that you need to keep mental and emotional health. Did you know this? I just learned this recently that when you have anger as a part of your Life, whether it is anger at youth culture, anger about what's on tv, oh, that Netflix. Oh, if you have anger as a regular part of your life, it raises the regular cortisol level that's in your body having more cortisol, which is like a stress alarm that goes off in your body.
[00:46:19] You have poor sleep and your memory goes. Because sleep is a way to restore your memory.
[00:46:27] So if your sleep goes and your memory goes and you're angry, guess what? Tomorrow you're more irritable because you didn't rest and I can't remember anything and that makes me mad. And now you're in a cycle of anger.
[00:46:40] And one of your jobs is I'm not going to make any friends with any grudges. I'm not going to make friends with any unforgiveness. I'm going to just live a life of release, blessing, forgiving those around me.
[00:46:55] That kind of the world now calls that mental health. I would just call it spiritual health. Like you gotta be, you gotta be somebody that walks in forgiveness and blessing.
[00:47:07] One more thing that I would just say about, I want you to envision your life 20, 30, 40 years from now is that being with the young makes you young.
[00:47:16] So I understand that when your youngest child like turns 6 or 7, you're like, whoo, I'm so happy to be done with that era. I understand that.
[00:47:28] And do you also not welcome toddlers in your house because they're going to break your valuable glass baubles in your house?
[00:47:36] I think you ought to remove the glass bobbles from your house and I think you ought to have toddlers in your house and I think you ought to have 15 year olds in your house and you ought to have 20 year olds in your house.
[00:47:47] Being with the young makes you young. Those are the people that you should be spending time with.
[00:47:53] I mean not, I'm not saying if you're 85, go find a 20 year old, you should just be spending time with younger people. That's your influencing. And guess what, they're messy and they break stuff. They don't know what you know, they don't have the experience.
[00:48:06] I just simply want all of you listening to have determined already.
[00:48:10] I'm going to be spending time with my grandchildren and with their people. As you know by now, we're like an hour in, you know that I really just kind of want to change your beliefs and I want to stick this into your worldview, this whole thing about having an ambition towards age.
[00:48:29] But in the short term there are Some things that you can do so that you can be feathering your nest so that when you walk into old age, you're kind of ready for it. And by the way, by the grace of God, unless we all hear a shofar on a random Tuesday morning and he puts his. He starts coming down in the clouds and puts his feet down on the Mount of Olives, you're all going to get old.
[00:48:52] So here's what you can do in the short term.
[00:48:56] One thing that you can do is to honor the elderly and look for ways to bless and serve them. Because not only are you reflecting the kingdom value of honoring the aged, you are establishing a pattern in your family.
[00:49:13] So as I honor, for instance, this past weekend, my family knows I left them by, I'm going to Houston to spend the weekend with my mom. They know that I was serving my mother in her 80s. I was giving her practical help. I was giving her time, giving her respect, I hope, and being a blessing to her. I am also modeling that in real time to my kids.
[00:49:37] We love babies. Yes, we do. In our home, we love babies and. And we love old people, particularly old people in our family. We want to honor them. They are resources and blessings.
[00:49:51] Their stories and prayers and wisdom are coveted by us.
[00:49:55] We want those things. We value them. So by showing that to my, giving that to my mom, I am setting a pattern for my children. And by the way, in the passage that I've referred to, Ephesians 6, where it says, honor your father and mother, there's no caveats for whether you think they deserve it or whether they've treated you well or whether they're godly people.
[00:50:20] There's no caveats. It's honor your father and mother for this is right.
[00:50:27] There it is.
[00:50:28] And there's nothing that makes me want to take my shoes off and go, like, this is holy and you are righteous.
[00:50:37] Than seeing somebody do their darndest to honor their parents when their parents have not always been godly or righteous.
[00:50:46] God loves it. And I know that that is the description that many of you are in, which is, it is you have to grit your teeth to honor your parents. And maybe you've had to even have boundaries with them over the years because your relationship has been destructive. And you think, how do I honor them? I don't know.
[00:51:06] I can give my wife as an example. She had a very problematic relationship with her dad. And when he was declining, she just felt God was saying, I have to write him a letter that blesses him, that thanks him for everything. He's been in my life.
[00:51:22] Yes. She had to sort of be prayerfully creative to go, like, what's going to go in that letter regarding thanks?
[00:51:30] Because what comes to mind in our flesh, of course, every way that we've been wronged or slighted, that's really easy to come up with. What about the ways that we're going to bless them?
[00:51:42] That's not quite as instant. I have to spend time with the Lord on that. Great. You do that. Because again, there's no caveat for. What do you think of them? Do you like them? It's simply honor your father and mother.
[00:51:54] For my family, that's going to be a value.
[00:51:57] And I know that I'm going to be on the receiving end of that care and that Blessing in about 30 years. 30, 35, 40 years. I don't know, maybe sooner, I'm going to be on the receiving end of that care for the elderly. But it's going to be part of our family's culture.
[00:52:18] The interesting irony about what I'm describing is just think Back to Ephesians 6. If you honor your father and mother, what is the reward that you get for it?
[00:52:30] Old age, you get a long life.
[00:52:33] So if you honor your father and mother, biblically speaking, you guarantee that you will be in that same position.
[00:52:42] So it's interesting the way that the Lord works that out, which is if I model care and respect for my father and mother, I'm going to be on the receiving end of care and respect.
[00:52:54] I got to throw out this Leviticus 19, which says, Rise in the presence of the aged and rever your God. I really like that when an old person is around, we are to rise in their presence as honor and respect for them. It's just one of those cultural things that we've completely jettisoned in the modern age is we all wear pajama pants everywhere and act like, honest, everybody's a bro.
[00:53:20] Everybody's not a bro.
[00:53:21] Old people, we're supposed to rise in their presence and show them honor and respect.
[00:53:27] If you do that, you'll probably be the only guy in your church that does that with a gray hair that walks into the room. But this says, rever your God. That's Leviticus 19:32.
[00:53:39] Rever your God with this kind of activity. Why? What are you saying? Well, I'm honoring all of the Lord's truth that says that gray hair is a crown of glory, that there's something noble about age, that there's something to be honored there, and that in old age, there's something about the image of God that can be seen in an older person that cannot be seen in a 20 year old.
[00:54:05] So I throw that out. The payoff is that you have this legacy of patriarchs shaping families and I want you to envision great grandkids in strong households. There is a blessing that says you will. This is at the end of Psalm 128 that says you will live to see your children's children.
[00:54:26] The idea being there's a blessing in seeing your grandchildren and in your great grandchildren and you want that blessing.
[00:54:35] Couple of calls to action for all of you. One, if you want this kind of equipping, this kind of training given to other families, we would love for you to kind of join our support team. Go to abrahamswallet.com support and be part of our team. We would appreciate it and we would covet that. Secondly, we would love for you to grab our free financial transparency guide at the website. It is a practical tool that that will help you start family family money conversations with grace and with truth. We'll put a link in the show notes to that guide.
[00:55:15] It's set up as a six week study.
[00:55:18] It's a study that you can do with your buddies. If you got two or three or six buddies that you go I want us to all talk about finances together.
[00:55:28] I have always thought it's, it's crazy how rare this is but this might be something that you can could start with. This is a wild idea. Your dad and your uncle you could actually pull out of this family transparency guide. Start walking through biblical principles and then just start talking about where you are financially.
[00:55:50] I'm always amazed when even 40 year old sons don't even know the financial shape that their 70 year old dads are in or vice versa. The 70 year old dad doesn't know the shape that the 45 year old son's family's in. That seems unwise. That seems crazy to me.
[00:56:09] A godly family. These would all be conversations because we have the same goal. And the goal isn't just to have a vacation house in Florida by the time I'm 60. The goal is multi generational wealth in all five capital, spiritual wealth and relational wealth and physical wealth. Yes. And financial wealth. That is a family project. It's not a one man project. So we make that available to you.
[00:56:37] If this stirred ambition for legacy for you, share it with another dad. Share it with an old timer that you know to encourage him.
[00:56:46] It'll help us if you would rate or review this episode if you'd subscribe to us, whether it's on Apple podcasts or Spotify or on YouTube. And until next time, run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. May you live long, bear fruit, and live to see your children's children.
