Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I disciple a young man. He's devoted to the Lord. He goes to a local church. They did a big campaign, got to do a big campaign.
And so he and his wife sat through the big campaign. They went to the big final meeting where they turned the lights low and put on the slow worship music. And then ask you, how much do you really love Jesus?
Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. Welcome everyone, back to Abraham's Wallet. This is the podcast for family leaders who are serious about multi generational stewardship. I'm Steve Manuel. I'm here with my co host, Mark Parrott. And today we're Talking about the 4A's of godly financial health, the simple biblical framework that actually delivers freedom instead of the stress that most Christian dads are carrying.
Before we get into that, Mark, I have noted, mostly because you told me that it was happening, that the markets were taking a dip. As of the recording of this, we're experiencing dip life, or as the bitcoiners call the red candle.
So let's hand it straight over to you, Mark, for a quick word on how we should be thinking about.
How do we think about that kind of thing as stewards?
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Because most people that listen to this probably in some way or another participate in the stock market. Maybe you have a 401k at work, maybe you have millions and millions of dollars in assets in the market.
Wherever you find yourself on there. It's a thing that most Americans are going to go, huh? I'm a little bit concerned when I hear that the markets falling like a rock.
What should I do? And so we just thought it would serve you to give you your regularly scheduled when there's a drop in the stock market, reminder that we don't put money in the stock market that we're going to use soon.
Meaning it's not a good place. It's actually a terrible place to save for that family vacation you're thinking about in the summer of 2027.
The stock market is not for those types of dollars that you've got planned for the near term. So if it was, I would tell you it's fair to feel some real consternation when you see that in the past month, the s and P500 has dropped seven and a half percent as of today.
However, when we look at that, the solution to stock market nerves is almost always to zoom out.
So if we look at the last year, starting exactly one year ago today, the S&P 500, with that seven and a half percent drop is up 12.5%, meaning a month ago it was up 20% for a rolling year.
So even in a one year period, we're seeing great returns in the market.
And that may not be the case for the year ahead of us, but we're not too concerned about that. Just like I've told all of our clients that we help with their money management, I've said, you know, we have now had three years of over 20% returns in the market.
Please don't think that 20% is the floor. It is not. When we told you back when we started managing money for you, that we're going to target 8% or whatever it was that we said, that means that over time we're gonna have some years where we grow by 30%, but we're also gonna have some years where we drop sometimes by a lot and things tend to even out. And what I will tell you is that the things that are driving the market today, things like the war in Iran, that's cranking up oil prices, and you might go, well, why does that matter that much? Well, it's because everything is downstream of oil prices these days. It makes it more expensive for your grocery store to put loaves of bread on the shelves. It makes it more expensive to manufacture things and energy and all sorts of stuff. So oil prices go up, consumer prices go up.
Those guys over at the Fed go, you know, we were thinking we were going to lower interest rates this year, but now we're worried about inflation, so we might actually raise interest rates. So all of you who are thinking, well, it's going to be great, I got a 6% mortgage, but I'm sure I'll be able to refinance it to 4%.
Now you're looking at maybe you can't for the next couple years.
And all of these things end in the people who evaluate stocks going.
Those companies that we're setting prices for, they're gonna have to pay more to access dollars in order to grow, which means they're gonna grow a little less and we're gonna lower their stock price targets and the stock market declines. Now, the good news is those types of things, we're one press conference away. Whether that happens next week or in a year where they go, we've kind of sorted all this Middle east stuff out. We're gonna open the Strait of Hormuz, we're gonna let oil flow freely, prices return to normal. The stock market tends to rebound from these. The declines tend to be slow, the rebounds tend to be very fast, which is why we tell people the last thing you should do is jump into your 401k right now and switch it over to cash. We recommend that you look at it and you go, huh? That's what stock markets do. They go up and down. And over time they go up more than they go down. So that would be our advice here at the Abraham's Wallet podcast. With whatever dollars you have in markets, think about how they're allocated. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't put em all in one type of basket like the S&P 500. Put a little in international stocks and maybe if you're into crypto, a little into crypto and a little bit into the American markets and small companies and all that.
And then don't sweat the waves in the ocean that we're experiencing right now because that's very, very normal.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Okay, thanks, Mark. Well, one more announcement before I get into the meat of today's episode.
As a dad, do you ever feel like you're spending your best working years building someone else's empire while your own family's vision waits?
I've known Joe Freudenberg for about 10 years, Mark. We were both right there when he stepped out from a small time ministry job and factory work to launch his own business. And back then he joined us on Abraham's Wallet to talk about getting started with pickleball courts, of all things. And now his income has skyrocketed.
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[00:07:19] Speaker B: You just said all that. Is that Abraham's Wallet sponsorship or are you just doing this?
You got to explain. This caught me off guard.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Well, I think one of the episodes that I did alone, I wrote out that copy for Joe.
He said, would you guys be willing to just throw out an announcement about my business? I'm looking for more guys to bring on. I said we would happily do that.
And so he and I worked together on that Copy. And I just told him, I'll read that four times in four episodes. So this is episode number two where he's getting that read.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Love it. All right.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
Okay, so let's get into the 4A's of godly financial health.
Here's the one insight I want you to take away today. And it is what I already hinted at at the beginning. Godly financial health doesn't start with generous giving.
I think if you just went to church, sat in on a giving sermon, you would think that's really all God wants from you, is write big checks, principally to the local church, but just be super generous. And I would even say that godly financial health doesn't even start with planning or spreadsheets or side hustles or all that stuff. It starts with of my first A, which is an attitude of total submission to God.
Without that, everything else is just.
It can be worldly money management with a Jesus sticker slapped on it. So what we believe, what Mark and I believe, is that the way that you run your finances is discipleship.
And discipleship that gets into your bank account and. And into that plastic card that you carry in your wallet. I've got a couple of them right here. There's a plastic card. This one might be metal.
It's got a little computer chip in it. If your discipleship gets into that stuff now, we're cooking with gas. Now you've got something.
God's very interested in the way that you run your money. And if you think that discipleship is getting up 15 minutes early so that you can read a couple of Bible verses and pray, which I'm all for that. Please do that. That's not where discipleship ends.
It goes into your financial health. So I'm here to say, first of all, that the first thing that you must have in place is an attitude of total submission to God and to simply say, everything that I have belongs to you.
1 Chronicles 29:16 is David's remarks as the ark of God is entering the temple. And he says, lord our God, all this abundance that we have.
So David is looking at the temple.
He's seeing gold everywhere. Holy cow. This place is beautiful.
It was made with the labors of your Israeli servants who put this place together.
Wherever you are listening to this, if you are listening to this at all, you are surrounded by abundance.
You're clothed. You got some fancy computer, digital something that you're listening to this.
If you're listening to it at home or in your car, you're surrounded by God's. Abundance. And David said, lord our God, all this abundance that we have comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you.
Everything I'm going to have, life, love, peace, hope, everything that comes my way is from you, God.
So I'm going to give you some. Some ideas as we go along about what's my call to action, what am I supposed to do? Here's my. Here's my one thought right here, right up front, is if your discipleship has not entered into your finances, I would just. I'm going to just tell you right now, you can stop this podcast right now.
You can say, done. I've got all of that I need to get. Thank you so much. Abe's wallet, Press stop and pray, wherever you are right now and just have this little prayer of dedication and say, God, if I've never done this before, I want to confess that everything that I've ever had, all the money that's ever come through my hands, all the money that I have right now, whatever's in my checking or savings or investments, whatever cash is in my pocket, all the money that I'll ever earn, will have come because of your grace. And you're the Lord of it all. You own it all. And I give it back to you as your servant.
If you've never done that before, stop this thing, do that, and you're done for the day. Thanks for being here, everybody. You can leave. Thank you.
Okay, they're gone. Now we can continue. But that's my first a.
It doesn't sound very practical. It might be a little bit theoretical and spiritual, but I think that's the first thing we have to do. Mark, do you.
Here's what I know about you.
I know that you grew up with some money around you. I know that there was a kind of a Christian.
There were crosses hanging in your home or Bible verses or something.
When did it make sense for you that my money is part of my discipleship or having to make a decision that it actually belongs to God?
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Well, I think we've talked about this before. I was.
I mean, sometimes I even look back at high school, Mark, and go, lord, would you just give me more of the zealousness I had at that point in time?
Because I.
I did see in the mega church world and stuff like that, people who had a lot of money.
And my reaction to seeing that and also wanting to go, go for the Lord with everything I had was like, I'm gonna. If I get money, man, I'm getting rid of it.
And that was like what I knew, and we've talked about this a ton on the podcast, but that was, what I knew was like holy, you know, was the, the life of austerity.
And there are things about that that are still good. Like sometimes we talk against that because it's so per, I think sometimes we go, you could say, well, are those guys saying that we should just be like country club members? That's what a good Christian looks like, right? And so there are components of that instinct that I do think are actually godly. And yet it was kind of an immature first step, I would say, which was that, like having money as a sign that you're not actually sold out for Lord, I don't know that it was ever my target. I went to a, you know, an Ivy League school where people came out of school, some of whom grew up dirt poor and came out and were really, really, really rich within a very short amount of time because their goal was money. That wasn't ever me. I wasn't super driven by, I want to see how rich I can get. So I, I, I would say it was kind of from the time I was maybe first a serious disciple of Christ when I was 15, that I said, well, I want to just be as, as sold out as I can with everything. And that means if you give me money back, then it was like, I'll just, I'll give it to, I give it away, I'll get rid of it. And then as I grew, that's a constant question that I asked myself, Steve, is, is okay, am I growing in maturity to handle money and steward it for the benefit of my multi generational family, or am I getting used to some luxuries? And you know, that's a question that we should all be asking regularly because going back to the first thing you said, we're all swimming in luxury right now.
Unless you walked to another village where they had an Internet device and tuned into this podcast, in which case, please write us an email and we will
[00:15:37] Speaker A: send us, we send you some money,
[00:15:39] Speaker B: we'll send you current local currency to cover the extra 15 minutes in the Internet cafe that it took to write.
But yeah, I, I think we're all asking that question and I don't know that I can. As much as we like to talk about money being, we're, we're going to show you how to handle money.
I guarantee you I've made mistakes this week on that front, so I don't totally have it figured out and, but I've been kind of Trying to, from a very early point in my walk with the Lord.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I think some people start with money, come into a relationship with God, then their money becomes part of their discipleship. And I think with you and I, discipleship started first and then we were handed money and when we tried to figure out how do we file this under discipleship, that doesn't happen for everybody.
But yeah, it's worth saying, Mark, I think our job is to simply hold God's word up to people to give them some personal experience.
But yeah, I don't think we are ever trying to hold forth to people that we've got it all figured out. Even the things that I'm saying today, they're challenging for me. They're God's perfect truth.
And Paul says that we're supposed to look into God's perfect word and it judges our hearts, which it always does. I mean, this is one of the reasons that you and I keep going into a church house to get preached at because I like it when God turns over stones.
And there might be crusty ways in my life that have calcified into sinful patterns that maybe was okay for a while, but they don't need to be my habits for life. So yeah, we always want to be pliable when we compare our lives to again the perfection of God's word. So yeah, there's one, that attitude of submission. Now to get practical, my second A and the second and third one, I'm not sure the order that they come in. I'm happy for you to to edit me in real time, but I'm going to use the term error as my second A. I think once the attitude of submission to God is locked in, the first practical A is there's got to be error in the way that you do your money. That is margin.
So you have to live well below your means.
There has to be some room to breathe. So that means controlling your debt and never letting that thing grow.
If you come into your discipleship, you're starting your pursuit of God. You're like, well, I've got this school debt and I've got consumer debt and I've got to deal with all those things. Absolutely. And I know that that's a trial, but you've got to live below your means so that you can handle that debt. And you've got to exercise self discipline constantly and you've got to refuse to spend every dollar that comes underneath your management because debt and overspending are absolute killers for, for the two wonderful things that are supposed to be the outcome of these four A's, which is your vision and generosity.
If you're living in a place where vision and generosity are really have fuel behind them, I would assume that all is well for you financially and I would assume that you have had, had this practice of error that is adequate margin inside your spending habits. The hard truth that most guys don't want to hear is that you've said this before, Mark, I know one way. The best way to put air into your financial margin is not making more money, it's decreasing your outflow.
If you're living at 95% of your income, you simply cannot afford things like streaming services or a new car or eating out for lunch, much less putting money towards your vision or generosity.
You are bound by your lifestyle.
So if again, if you're carrying considerable debt, let's say somebody walks out of, walks out of a university with $150,000 of, of student debt, we, we can think, I mean, let's say it's $30,000.
We think we put that in a category in our mind that it's like a mortgage. Whereas this is 20 year money we're talking about here. It doesn't really apply to what I'm going to do today as long as I'm maybe making the minimums on this.
And I would say, because you owe, I think the Bible would tell us your desire to be generous might be admirable, but you have not earned the right to be generous because you owe money to other people.
If you get 10 bucks and you owe 80 bucks, you have to hand that money over because you don't have any money yet.
All you are is you're like living in the red. I have to hand this money over and now I can live. Now we're not saying that you are destitute and should not eat while you owe, but I would say all of your luxury spending, all of your optional spending should be at an absolute minimum. Holy cow, you shouldn't be. Somebody just shared with me this week, you got to watch this, this video where this guy goes around Disney World and he asks people at Disney World tell me what your finances are like and how much debt you carry. And guess what? They're all in debt.
Well then you shouldn't be going to Disney World because you don't have any money.
So Proverbs 22:7 puts it real plain. The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender.
That's not a criticism, it's just a description of the Way the world is, the borrower is slave to the lender. If you're borrowing money, then you owe something to the lender. Jesus said in, in Luke 16:12, if you haven't been trustworthy with someone else's property, who in their right mind would give you property of your own?
If you're an apprentice and you're working on the lathe that your carpenter boss owns and you don't take care of it, and you cause more damage than you earn for the boss, and you don't maintain this piece of property, this equipment, how in the world do you think you're going to put yourself in a position where I'll be the boss, I'll own everything, I'll run everything. That's not going to happen. And the bottom line is if there's no error and there's no margin, there's no freedom in your life. And that's, I think that's what wealth really is. When we think of wealth, it's not buying a hundred thousand dollar car and flying first class. Wealth really is this margin. It's this freedom to make decisions as we're going because we're not constrained. We're living so below our, our margins that we have the freedom to make decisions. Thoughts on having air, Mark?
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Yes.
Two things come to mind immediately. One, you made that Disney World example.
I was listening to Matt Walsh's podcast this week and I just have to throw out, I agree with his proposition that we should deploy the ICE agents to Disney World and any adults that are there without children. I saw that comment should be put into like hard labor situations for a little while because they have too much time on their hands. But no, seriously, my comment on this one, there's levels of air, right? The first level is just, do I spend less than I make?
That's a great starting place. And for goodness sakes, I guarantee you a large portion of the people listening to this, they haven't hit that level yet. But please don't stop there guys, and go, well, we spend less than we make, so we're fine. I was meeting with a family today, but this morning and they spend less than they make and their financial plan is fine, it's like on track.
But I looked at a breakdown of where they're spending and I go, you know, you guys are spending three times what we see as an average for groceries and household goods. And I showed them, I pulled all their transaction history and showed them like Amazon and they both had their eyes pop out of their head and said, well, we've been stressing so much about affording this thing for our kids and we had no idea we were blowing more than that on stuff we don't even like from Amazon.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: And so there's, there's kind of their long term plan wasn't off the rails, but they were still not being totally diligent in kind of intentionally directing their money where they wanted it to go.
The other thing that comes to my mind this week as I've been meeting with families and kind of updating them on where they're tracking, is you need to think more than just how much do I make today and what is reasonable for me to spend based on that. I think about all the people we know who are software developers as an example.
Well, that's a profession that is really, really, really changing right now.
Some people would say that profession is going away if you're just, if you're just a coder.
Those people need to be thinking differently about their current stream of income than somebody who is in their 25th year at Procter and Gamble, who probably has a pretty good chance that they're going to be able to continue their management role until retirement date.
And so I've talked to many families in the past two or three weeks who have said, when we bought this house, it was totally reasonable and it was even inside of the guidelines for what affordable and thoughtful spending would look like. But it's crushing us now because something has changed in our income picture. And so I always tell people, please play that movie forward.
And this is where a little bit of margin, just spending less than you make is a great starting point.
But it's wise to think, okay, what if things change? What if I lost my job? What if my business took a big downturn? Or, you know, for goodness sakes, this is why we hear about sports. People going broke so often is because you know when you're making $5 million a year, you can spend a whole lot of money and you're not going to outspend what you make often. But that stops and the stopping is like hitting a brick wall for some of the those people. So don't just think about, do I have margin today? Think, have I created margin for the long term?
And like you said, Steve, the feeling of I've fully funded the big rocks in my financial life by the time I'm 40 is so freeing that you go, well, now we get the permission to think about generosity way beyond what we would have ever been able to think if we were still living paycheck. To paycheck or family goals or all those things. That's when you get to have, like, fun with money. And it doesn't have to be because you made a million dollars when you were 40. It could be because you were just diligent up until then. And the magic of compound interest and wise financial management meant that you were in an awesome spot by the time you were in the second half of your life.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: That's right, yes.
So godly financial management is about this attitude of submission. It's about having error, having some adequate margin in your spending, in your income, just the way your money flows. And next one you're going to love, Mark, and that is that your money is allocated.
That is, there is a. Let's think of the margin that you've got. Let's say you're operating at 80%. 80% of everything that you've got. That's what it costs for us to live on, including our debt, our mortgage, everything. We. We can live on 80%. We've got 20%. We've got some air there. Okay, good. Now we can. We can kind of make things happen with that. We can invest or we can give or we can do neat things. Well, let's talk about that 80%.
And as you said, Mark, a lot of times there's room for that 80% to be shrunk even more, which creates even more freedom.
But even if you'd say, well, I don't think we can cut any of those things that we're already doing, okay, that's fine. My question for that 80% is, is there a clear path for every dollar?
And that plan, that allocation plan would get reconsidered at least once a year, laid before the Lord anew and submitted as the outworking of a vision that you believe lines up with God's purposes for your life.
So you and your wife agree on the goals and the methods, and saving becomes a discipline, not an afterthought. Ecclesiastes chapter 11 says, Ship your grain across the sea. After many days you may receive a return. So here's an idea of someone sending their grain out, saying, I hope it sells. At the next port of call. We'll see how it goes. I've sent it out with this guy. I hope he's a trustworthy guy. I hope it sells, and we'll see. It says, in many days you may receive a return.
And then it says, do something bolder. Invest in seven ventures. Yes, in eight. You do not know what disaster may come upon the land. If clouds are Full of water, they pour rain on the earth. Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there it will lie.
And God's word. I should say that Jews have historically understood Ecclesiastes 11 to say that we're supposed to be investing our money, part of that allocation. What I'm saying is that 80% should be some kind of investing going. I'm putting my money in that. I want it to work for me. This is one of the parables that Jesus told in Luke 19, the parable of the Minas, where the boss says, put that money to work.
So we don't believe here at Abraham's wallet that it's responsible, that saving means, I have a stack of $100 bills in the corner or in a coffee can somewhere. The Bible does not like that. The Bible likes you putting that money to work and earning a return on that money somehow. That's a skill. I know that is a whole field of study. How do you invest? Well, how do you guarantee the greatest returns on your money, et cetera? I'm just saying that the allocation of your money is part of financial maturity, and it's what turns good intentions into abundance. This allocation, and I consider that to be. If the attitude is like your discipleship and if the air is what wealth and freedom really are, then I would say that this allocation is faithfulness and diligence to God. It's just.
It's just the grind, if you will, of every month. I want to be faithful with this allocation. And I know it leads to good things.
I've got one more big a. What do you say about allocation before I do it?
[00:31:53] Speaker B: I mean, I think you've covered it. You know, I could go on a diversification talk for a whole series, but, yeah, I talk about this when people ask me, you know, when we think about financial allocation, it's not just, did you put your 401k into five different mutual funds?
I said it today in a meeting. I said to somebody, you know, when you're 21 and you've got no financial assets or wealth of any sort of.
You're actually in a bit of a tricky spot because your real valuable thing you've got is an income stream. You can go sell your work for income. And then once you've been diligent, like we said, and created some margin in that, now you're going to start generating some stuff that you can place into different spots. And those piles of.
Basically the result of having traded your time for money can do other things for you. They become assets and they could be financial or real estate or businesses, all sorts of things.
That puts you in a very different place than somebody who has one option going to sell their time. And so I think even as AI and all that stuff starts to worry people, what am I going to do? Those who have just generated some margin and use that to place the wealth that is the result of margin into different places, they're in a better spot even regardless of what happens with kind of AI in the future. So I concur with your third point that allocation is important. And it's not only about what you're formally investing in. It's about where you put time, where you put all the resources you've got.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Great.
All right. My, my last A is, is the one that people enjoy the most. They don't enjoy allocation and putting error in your margin, et cetera. They like this one, the ability to act aggressively.
So finally and only now you gain the ability to act aggressively. And this is the beautiful outcome of the first three A's. So that means that disciplined giving can now become part of your world. And not just disciplined giving, but I would say spontaneous giving as well. Sometimes we leave that out. But Jesus regularly gave spontaneously. He would see a need and he moved immediately because he knew that he had enough capital to cover others needs.
And he built up so much spiritual capital, so much healing capital, so much deliverance capital, for instance, he could just give that away.
When I love the story of the feeding of the 5000 is is Jesus references the fact that there will be plenty. And he says, let, let nothing be wasted. Let's gather up all the leftovers. Well, as you know, 12 baskets left over, there's this abundance.
Jesus had this, this confidence that we can give generously and we know that there will be plenty left over. Well, why is that? Well, it's because he was so faithful. He did the thing that we see scripturally. He was faithful in a small thing. He was given charge over much that happened in his lifetime. That's what's supposed to happen with us financially as well.
Deuteronomy 15, verse 10 commands, Give generously and do so without a grudging heart. Then because of this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.
This is the exact same passage. The next verse says, there will always be poor people in the land.
Therefore I command you to be open handed toward your fellow Israelites who, who are poor and needy.
I just got to Make a couple observations about that passage. One is that God says, if you believe what we're saying today, which is this ability to act aggressively and generously happens on the tail end of doing these faithful disciplines on the front end and committing your stuff to the Lord and being faithful and disciplined in your self control, the way that you spend, if this happens on the back end, you could easily see that God's plan is to bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. Why? Because you're learning lessons about self control, about deferring pleasure, et cetera. And God looks at you and goes, I think I can trust a guy like this. And then he starts entrusting you with things like the eldership of your local body of believers. And he says, I think I could trust him with other people's souls. He's not a greedy guy. He doesn't demand that he gets all the best of everything right. He's willing to put off that. You can see how if you understand things that way, God says, give generously. He's going to bless you in all your work and everything you put your hand to. And he makes this interesting statement right after that, which is, there's always going to be poor people around you.
So if you're like me and you drive downtown and you see beggars on the side of the road and something in you goes, I want to be generous. I have money. These people don't seem to have money. I might could give them some money.
And you understand that actually the ability to give generously is the result of faithfulness.
This is an interesting reminder from God saying, poor people will always be there. They'll always be there. And it should be one of your ambitions. It's an ambition of mine that at the end of my life I will have earned the right and have the ability to be much more generous than I even can today. And I can say for sure I have the ability to be much more generous today than I was 20 years ago.
And that should be on our minds. And God says the poor people will always be there in the land. So have this open hearted attitude that I'm going to give to my fellow Israelites who are poor and needy.
I just thought of this thing. I'm going to give you another possible call to action here. If you think, you know, we have money allocated for giving.
All we ever do is, is the predictable giving we do.
I don't know if you do like an automatic thing to the local church or you might give to the Red Cross. Or you might give to the Bible League or any of these other wonderful places where you can give diligently and in discipline. I think that's great.
I also think there's a blessing that comes uniquely from giving money live to people and looking them in the eye. So here's a thought for you. Just, just a little thought. If you think. I think we have $300 that's not spoken for that we could give. I'm going to throw a little exercise for you. Get yourself three $100 bills, put them in three separate envelopes, seal the envelope, write on the front of the envelope something like because of the love of God. Or you could put a Bible verse on there. You could put 2 Corinthians 9, 6. Whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly. Whoever sows generously will reap generously. Put anything you want on there. God bless you. We love you.
Then take those three envelopes with you to the church house this weekend to the church house and look for and have, and ask God as you walk in. You could give an envelope to every person in your family and say, we're going to give one envelope away to all of us are going to give one away. And let's just ask God who's the needy person that needs money, that needs encouragement. And clearly God's mind. This is so obvious with the reading of scriptures. God's mind is that God's people would give first and foremost to God's people.
God's people would give to God's people.
And by the way, the least of these passage of Jesus that's often taken out of context. Jesus says, whoever gives to the least of these, my brothers gives to me.
So we're not thinking of who's the person on earth that is the most victimized. That's not the question. Jesus said the least of these, my brothers, you've done it unto me. So let's look around at God's people and maybe give some money away to God's people.
So the warning I'm going to repeat for the third time, the warning is that the popular church cheers only this part, the acts of aggressive giving.
And that's irresponsible. I think you cannot skip attitude and error and allocation and jump straight to the fun part. These first three A's have to come first or your generosity is actually just financial recklessness with a spiritual veneer put on top of it. And then they make a video about you. And then you feel great about yourself while your family's still drowning in debt. That's not a W, that's an L.
So what do you. What do you say, Mark, about the ability to act aggressively at the end of this little story?
[00:41:41] Speaker B: I completely agree with what you're saying.
So I'm not. However, I'm not trying to unwind any of that.
I think my. Maybe it's a question because I.
I have felt what you're saying personally. Where I go, wow, when there is a need around me today, I can meet it in such a bigger way than I could have even dreamed of 10 years ago.
And yet I'm like, well, what if I just keep cranking? Maybe then, you know, our kids go to a Christian school. That school desperately needs a place, a building. Well, I don't have the kind of generosity resources that can accomplish that goal, but maybe I will if I keep grinding for 10 years. So I've always told people from a financial planning standpoint, like, obedience is kind of the trump card. And God could call me to empty the coffers at any point in time. And that goes back to your first A.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: You're exactly right. That's why it goes first.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that what you're kind of speaking against with this aggression, a. Is that a slow dribble of giving or even a big gift that's a big flourish, but puts your family into hardship.
It probably wasn't even a thing a hundred years ago when people showed up at the church house and the pastor said, we need you to give.
The worst you could do was give all your money away.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: You're right.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: But today you can give a whole bunch of money that you don't have away.
[00:43:26] Speaker A: That's exactly right.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: I'm willing to bet your church house has a little slide they flash up at the front that says, here's how we accept gifts. And one of those options is on your credit card.
So, I don't know, I think maybe I answered my own question there, Steve,
[00:43:42] Speaker A: but
[00:43:44] Speaker B: I.
I think it's a balance between checking our hearts that we are being generous. I thought when you were talking about the envelopes, you're going to say, you're going to take these three envelopes, you're going to seal them up, you're going to put a stamp on them, and you're going to Write Abraham's wallet, 123 Main Street, Cincinnati, Ohio. Send your money away.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: Now, that's a heartwarming story of family discipleship for sure.
But no, you know, Mark, I disciple a young man.
He's devoted to the Lord, he goes to a local church. They did a big campaign, got to do a big campaign.
And so he and his wife sat through the big campaign. They went to the big final meeting where they turned the lights low and put on the slow worship music and then asked you how much do you really love Jesus?
And they're thinking, I think I really love him.
They think, how big is that check? Now? What is a step of faith that will stretch you? There'll be an aggressive move to say, I really believe you for the future, Lord. Well, the answer to that question, duh. What they want you to say is what's a number that I can't afford?
That's what they want you to put on a number that's unreasonable, then that's, now we're talking faith. I think this family's ready for a miracle. I mean, it's the most irresponsible kind of glad rag televangelism. It just happens in a normal church service. And it happens all the time, Mark. It happens all the time. And this sweet couple, young couple, one little baby trying to make it by on a small salary. What do they do? Mark?
Of course they commit a gigantic number.
What are they saying when they write that number? What they're really saying in their heart of hearts is, God, we want to believe you for everything, we want to follow you even when the path is unclear, etc. I would like to jump into the scene, Cut, record, scratch. Stephen jumps into the scene, turns all the lights on and goes. I think you're just getting over emotional right now. I think these people want your money. I really like your faith and you should use that same faith to develop allocation err in your finances and put off the big gift until you can actually afford it. I think that's God's plan for you. Now, do I think God was mad at them for writing the check? No. Do I think he saw it as a faith? Yes. It's a good work. It's counted as a good work. Was it wisdom for them? I'm here, I'm standing here. I've said this to their face. No, it wasn't wisdom.
And I think we have these things mixed up. And do you think that the local church gives a flying rat's butt about whether they can afford their number or not or how much is going to put their family vision back 15 years? Couldn't care less. Just keep the checks coming, baby, right here. Anyways, I think that kind of mindset gets into us. I think of them when I talk about this Kind of stuff.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: If you want to get a window into how I think about it. Same idea. I'm sitting around a table with a bunch of people going, how are we going to afford a building for this Christian organization?
[00:47:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: We don't have any of these families that can make these huge gifts. And I kind of go, well, maybe that's where we should start. As opposed to a giving campaign and writing grants to the Cathy family running their Chick Fil A empire. Maybe we should.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:22] Speaker B: Start to figure out. Because I. I'm gonna guess I could be wrong. I'm gonna guess if we walk down the street to the synagogue where, you know, they don't even know the truth, but they have a money culture that we would not. And it's similar number of families. We would not find families going, well, we could maybe scrape together a 500 gift. We would find a whole bunch of wealthy families.
And it's a little bit to our shame in the Christian world that we haven't built a culture that says we know how to steward wealth. And honestly, Steve, that's why we're here. That's why we exist at Abraham's Wallet. And we're kind of on this journey. And I'm sure there's graybeards who could listen to this and go, you cute young boys, you don't know what real wealth even looks like yet. And they at some level, true, we're on the journey, we're just trying. But that's what I want is for us to go, you know, throw what you need to add us. We know how to handle and grow wealth to the glory of God and the benefit of his kingdom.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: I so agree. I mean, amen.
When I think of what the church should be and how we should train our young men to think of family and finances.
Holy cow. Yes. I think we ought to be a community that, like, we can. If we sat down at a table with five of us and we made a decision about, well, this needs to be. This needs to happen in our city, we go, well, then, okay, let's do it. Let's all write checks. Who are we going to hire? Let's make it happen.
That's wonderful things to fantasize about. So, dads, that's the framework. Have an attitude of submission, air so that your margins have room to breathe. An allocated plan and then the ability to act a aggressively. Get the first three right and the last one becomes natural, joyful and powerful. So here's another action step for you this week. If you didn't bite on the first two, I don't want you to just listen and agree. I want you to do something.
So if margin is your thing, which it is for a lot of people, I would like for you to pull out your bank app. If you can do it right now at your desk, great. Or if you're driving, do it later when you get home, maybe pull over and take three minutes and do this. It'd be great. Pull out your bank app, calculate your current margin. That is, how much of what comes in a month do we have to have to live on?
Just do a little math, figure out that current margin, and then maybe cut one thing that's robbing you of some breathing room and tell your wife, talk to your wife about it. Say, I think this is the move for us and why.
Either way, whether it's the prayer of dedication I talked about or the idea to give generously, which I talked about, or growing your margin, identifying something to put a little more air in. Take one concrete step before the sun goes down on this week. Your kids are watching how you handle money and the legacy you leave them is being written right now. This really matters and I want you to end up in a place where you have massive generosity and where you're able to really put money to your family's vision. Mark, I have a silly finish for us today.
We've been talking about AI. We did an episode recently where we talked about AI in your home. And Google, who is not sponsoring this podcast, just released two days ago, something called Lyria 3 Pro.
And Lyria 3 Pro will help you write songs if you want to and make up songs. So I decided I would just try it out as so a little fun finish today.
So I told Lyria 3 I worked with Lyria 3 to write a 30 second song that summarizes what we've talked about today. So I thought it might be a fun finish. So get ready for a little Latin music that summarizes the A's and I'll see you all next week.
With the right attitude, I'm taking flight. Yeah, an adequate margin makes everything bright. My every dollar's allocated feeling so right and the ability to act aggressively.
