[00:00:01] Speaker A: Last month, a few dozen fathers gathered for our Abrahamic boot camp. It had a kind of American Founding Fathers theme. We packed into some bunk houses at a retreat center between Cincinnati and Indianapolis, and we learned and discussed and prayed and played and ate and sang together. We enjoyed daily Bible discussion, talked about our own family vision, and tried to apply some concepts that hearken back to those brave pioneers who founded this great nation.
We heard talks on 250 year money, work that doesn't eat the family, and building physical capital together. And then we made commitments to ourselves and to our families.
Men have been texting and emailing since and saying things like this changed how we're thinking about our families. Today, Mark and I unpack the moments that stuck from that retreat, the ideas worth taking home, and why Abrahamic fathers are minutemen for the kingdom of. Whether you were in that room or you're listening from your driveway for the first time, welcome to the revolutionary standing army. This is Abraham's Wallet.
Hey, guys, it's Steve Emanuel here in Cincinnati, as usual, and Mark, as usual, is out there in Utah.
Welcome back to Abraham's Wallet, where we talk about running your home and your dough like a biblical boss.
We always have a multi generational mindset. We want to have our eyes on the household and our hands on the work that God's given us.
Mark, we just came back a couple of weeks ago from our annual boot camp and I want to kind of review the highlights for the guys who were there. And I don't want it to be a closed door for everybody else. I want the men who couldn't come to leave today with something that they can use.
So I'll just say this up front and I'm curious to what your window on this statement was, Mark. I was very encouraged in hearing that this weekend was seen as, from the guys that came, just impactful that it was a meaningful weekend.
Is that what you're hearing?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think I'm on the same report threads as yourself. There was one bit of feedback we got from a spouse that just was really touching.
It was super encouraging to come home and hear people talk about what feels a little different in their homes. Because sometimes you go and you're like, well, I think especially you and I, we put it on, we spoke, we did our best. And you go, I think that was good. I don't know.
There was some snafus. The meatloaf, which you loved, was disgusting.
Um, but overall I think it was good. And you don't really know if, if it's landed with the guys who came or if it's just more bro time with the similarly minded fellows who listen to the podcast. And I think it was that. We'll talk a little bit about that. But it was also, I hope, and evidence points to this kind of a catalyst for some guys to really change some things.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Yeah, you're reminding me. We had, I think, three, at least two, maybe three sets of fathers with sons going, let's walk down this road together and let's if I think of it as a driver at the front of the fire truck and the guy on the back, because we're trying to manage something that spans multiple generations and we want to change the story. And I'm always so encouraged to see multiple generations inside one family line going, how do we pull in the same direction together? And those guys have said to us, you know, this kind of focus for a weekend is changing our story. I find that wildly encouraging.
I'd like to hear from you and I'll share as well a couple of favorite moments from the weekend.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Yeah, we, we usually pregame these, these podcasts that we do, and today we didn't. So I hope that we're not just stealing each other's favorite moments, but I have a few that stick out. One of them, we had a guy come in who's got a really interesting career path and story over at the big employer of your city, Procter and Gamble. Yeah. And he had been through rough seas when it came to living out his convictions in the workplace. And he told us a little bit about that and what faithfulness looked like in a corporate America mega company job.
He kind of just shared his story, which ended up being this amazing tale of God's faithfulness. Just when he was obedient to the Lord, which didn't always look like what the Christians around him told him to do.
You know, there was times where people said, oh, you should just quit because that's, that's some woke junk that you're dealing with. And he felt like God was telling him something else and he was obedient. And that story was really cool. But he also gave us an inside window into corporate America and talked about what was being celebrated. There were other people that were being promoted and just the absolute wreckage that a large company like that will wreak on a family if it's allowed to become the God of the employee, which I think in our heads, we all know that that's a risk. But listening to this talk, it was that story and that example and then a Biblical admonition, here's what work needs to look like. And I think especially Steve, in our crew of guys, it can be very easy for guys to start going, well, you know, the, the real goal is passive income and, you know, retire as early as possible. And I just want to basically be a wealthy, stay at home dad type even if, you know.
And I think what we got in this talk was an admonition towards work. And the value of work is. And I don't know that we talk about it enough and it's really easy, I would say, to roll your eyes when you and I talk about it because it's like, well, okay, those guys are, I think maybe they're working. I'm not sure exactly what they do. But to hear someone who was not even an entrepreneur that was at the moment, that was just kind of faithfully working in a gigantic company setting and had challenges there. To hear all of that alongside.
Here's what the Bible actually says about work. I thought it was really encouraging.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Just to park for a second on Travis's talk about work.
I was also really encouraged. I don't know what messages people hear. It's certainly a trend, as you say, the idea among, among multi generational Christian, I don't know, influencers to kind of dream about that four hour work week idea. Like just keep up with the rental properties and then, and then you can homeschool your kids around the clock.
And Travis is saying, saying, no, your work is really important. We're supposed to, this is like a main function of a father, is that you, you go out and you work and God made men to do this thing.
One thing that shocked me about his, his use of a prayer journal.
Then he described that as a major way to park the worries and stress of his work life at P and G.
And he's a big dog at P and G. Just got a big promotion. He's like a brand guru there.
And he's just saying, look, I have all of these stresses and pressures at work and I don't want those to cripple me when I come home. I don't want to be hamstrung because my mind's still half at work. And so to use a prayer journal helps me to identify my stresses. I give them to the Lord on a daily basis. I even, you know, will write out, I'm working on this project right now. I really need to get this thing done by Thursday. He writes them out, hands them to God. And I know from conversations with him, just that process alone he feels that God will give him insights and directives as he shared with us about the way that he's to do things. He described to us a presentation he was gonna give to hundreds of people. And he said, I distinctly heard God tell me, do not spend more than 10 minutes working on this.
You're gonna do fine. You don't need to spend more time than that on that. And he thought, that sounds crazy, but I feel that I've heard from God on this. So I'm gonna set my timer, and I'm gonna do 10 minutes of some very basic prep, and I' and to get tactical help from God in one's work through prayer, it doesn't seem like that intuitive to me.
He actually designed an Abraham's wallet version of his prayer journal and gave one to all the guys there and said, I encourage you to use this.
And he said something that we also heard from Vijay, which is that systems.
Creating a system is a form of love. If you can create a system, it's a way to love your family.
And, yeah, I'm with you. I really loved what Travis had to say.
I just loved. There was a group of, I don't know, 30 guys that went out with Andy, who's one of the local guys, and Andy took us to his club, the Bob White Club. I won't say what kind of club, because I hope that the algorithms don't get us. But it's skeets. You know, it's skeet shooting. And we were in this beautiful.
It was kind of a pastoral setting to be there with a bunch of guys who. Some of them are quite experienced, like Mike, who won the competition.
There's a lot of guys like me. That was my second time to ever do that sport. Shooting was not. Not something that happened a lot in Texas, where I'm from.
But to have guys shoulder to shoulder, we're all learning a new little skill. We're out there in nature. It was a beautiful day. We're talking and yucking it up together. And the guys who were waiting while other guys are shooting were just chatting, and it was just a lovely.
It was a lovely afternoon. So that's one of my favorite memories. It's just. Is that is the scene that we had out there at the. At the Bob White Club with Andy shooting skeet. It was great.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And while you guys were doing that, I was tromping around one of the parks of Cincinnati with.
With the other half or so of the guys and trying my hand at disc golf for the first time.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: So how'd that go for you?
[00:11:44] Speaker B: I had an injury that weekend, so I was, I was left handed disc golfing, trying to rest the old shoulder.
And I will tell you, we were with one of the guys you spend time with on a pretty regular basis, young guy, and he was an expert at this. So it was like if you sent a bunch of dudes out on the golf course who had never swung a golf club, they'd hit it 80 yards and go, wow, I got it up in the air. It stayed in the part of the golf course it's supposed to stay in. That would be a win. And then you watch some semi pro next to you put it six feet from the hole and you're like, oh, there's that totally different level. That's how we felt, I would say.
But we had fun and we didn't have any overly negative encounters with the hippies that were roaming around playing forgot.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: It's a big risk when you go play disc golf.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: That's right, that's right. You're going to run into a van, you might get hacky sacked to death. Somebody could ambush you and hacky sack you.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: At very least you will leave smelling like patchouli just by proximity.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: That's true, that's true. Okay. Another favorite memory,
[00:13:06] Speaker B: maybe my favorite memory of the whole trip was the night that we worshiped together.
And you know, I told you after we were, we were getting ready for bed and I was like, that was great. I loved the, you know, I took home some of the songs that we sang and have been singing them with my family. You, you first said, listen guys, this song we're about to sing was written in 1719 because at Abraham's Wallet.
If it. One of our mottos, I think you said, is if it's new, it's not true. And we're going with old. And so we were singing some hymns and you know, there's just something, I've experienced this when we went camping with a bunch of dudes before, but there's something about all male loud worship that is not possible to replicate in even the greatest church service setting. It's different. And I told you, you know, the only regret I have is that all these guys are super into it and they're singing their guts out.
Some of them, they, they got, they, they just got like, I got to close my eyes and raise my hands. And normally we would say, I know you're a worship leader, Steven. I think you'd say that's a good sign. I'm like, people are into it. They're really going for it.
I wanted everybody to open their eyes. I told you. I felt like.
I felt like we were. We had just won a big football match, and we were all a bunch of bros singing pub songs together. It was, like, so rare that you get kind of that brotherhood in a room.
And it was. It was a big winner for me. And I was standing next to our buddy Paul, who was just.
I thought I could sing loud. I can't. I can't sing as loud as Paul. And it was encouraging, and it made me.
I was thinking about it yesterday when I was in our Sunday church service. I was like, I'm gonna sing as loud as I freaking can. Because when I was standing next to Paul and he was singing so loud, it was. It was a little bit, like, made me nervous. I liked it, and so how could I. And so it's stuck with me.
And that was maybe my highlight of the whole weekend.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it's always a rare privilege to be in a room like that. And you say we should have eyes open, looking around.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: I would like to have a little bit more.
Like I said, the pub vibe.
I see these videos, and maybe this is pure romanticism, because I've never experienced it. I'm not British. I don't spend time in pubs. But I have this image in my head of men.
Maybe even to keep with our theme on the retreat, maybe they're American revolutionaries and they're in the pub and they're singing to steel themselves for the battles to come. I don't know. But it's not a thing in the United States where men get together and just sing.
And when you add the coolness of that in general to the fact that we're worshiping the king of the universe together, who receives our worship, man, that's a fun time, and I feel like we got to taste it a bit.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it was great.
That was definitely a highlight for me.
The other moment that came to mind for me was we split up in the mornings, and we did a Bible study, a midrash on both the mornings that we were there. And I just loved it.
We were with some old brothers that we've known for a while. You know, Doug Cushion was in my group, and then there were guys that I did not know previously.
Ryan and Brian. We're in there.
Kind of have new friends and old friends in the same circle.
Bible's open. Nobody's performing.
We're just working the text. And when we started planning this retreat, you said we got to do Jeremiah 35.
So that's what we did on the first day. And that's just one of my favorite environments.
I guess it's kind of like Dad's worshiping is having a group of fathers who are honestly coming to a passage and asking questions and kind of collectively refusing a thin reading of the passage and going, come on, there's more to it than that. And then looking at each other and say, okay, now what do we do about this?
It was great to hear the kind of naive's the wrong word, but just honest reaction questions to the passages that we were looking at.
And I remember I blessed him specifically for we were talking about money at some point and the building of wealth for the generations. And Ryan, who was new to me, just said, now, guys, hold on. At what point are we talking about being greedy here?
Which is a great setup for your talk.
Anyways, I love the Midrash setup, and I loved the spark of interest that kind of just sit this controversial passage in front of us and go, what do we do with this? And how can we work that out together?
I just love that scene.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: I think a lot of the guys felt this when they come to, whether it's Abraham's wallet retreat or just hang out in Cincinnati. It's like, man, I wish that I could do this every week. And we've talked about building a midrash and how to do that, and I'm out here trying to put one of those things together once in a while when I can.
It's pretty cool, though, to have. What did we have, 50 guys that wanted to midrash together all in the same spot. I think that that was a unique privilege and the fact that we got to talk about jonadab.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Extra fun. Yeah.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
One of the challenges of kind of emceeing a weekend like that is, is that, you know, when we're. When we're all together in an open discussion, it can just. It could just go forever because it's so nutritious. And you're trying to go, oh, we try to get to the got to get to skeet shooting on time, et cetera.
I want to give our listeners a little insight into your teaching. Marcus. Mark, you taught on 250 year finances. Kind of looking at the.
We're in America's 250th year. This year, we looked at some of. What were our founding fathers thinking? They were thinking well beyond their lives, and it's a good template for us to go. How are we thinking beyond our lives? And our years. When it comes to money, you turn that into, to a kind of a household question. Would you give us a, Would you give us a little window into what you taught?
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So it was hopefully something that I would say. People would go, well, that's kind of the shtick in Abraham's Wallet.
But we were framing this whole weekend through the lens of what does it look like to be a 250 year family thinking about the United States, the fact that it has now existed for 250 years.
And so I looked at the preamble to the Constitution, which, you know, we the people.
And that sentence that says, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty.
To who?
Well, it's to ourselves and our posterity.
So the founding fathers of our country wrote their generations into the plan for the system that they were creating. These guys had long vision and that's something that I think we often forget.
And so what my talk was out to do was to just give guys a shot in the arm to say, if you hear us talk on Abraham's Wallet about multi generational wealth and you kind of, maybe you could, you're like, I love that idea. But deep down you're like, I don't know if it's really possible. For me, what I wanted to do is just give you both some encouragement, but also some math that would help you say, hey, this is a real possibility.
And so we looked at a few examples. We talked about Deacon John Adams, we talked about Abraham himself.
But I think one of the things that maybe was a little more surprising for the guys is I talked about, when we get down to the mathematics, it's both super encouraging and it's a tall order for a family man who wants to build assets that might last for 250 years.
I talked about the type of assets and again, I think it's very popular to say, well, the, if you want to have multi generational wealth, this is what you should invest in. But we did say there are differences in types of assets. So if you have cash, a dollar bill in 1776 is worth 3 cents today.
Thank you. Inflation and the printing presses that won't stop making more dollars.
Gold, a dollar's worth of gold has actually increased to $4. So. Well, we're getting a return now. Government bonds, a dollar of bonds in the very first year of our country is now worth $5,000 if you kept rolling them over into new bonds. So that's starting to, that's quite a return.
But equity, that's to say productive ownership, held over the long haul, a dollar worth of that in 1776 is today worth $13.9 million. Okay, that's the difference in a three and a half percent government bond return and a 6.8% equity return.
Not that big of a difference, right? You're like, well, 3.5%, that's not even double. But it ends up in a different universe.
And so we talked about what is the implication of owning equity and things like that. I showed a chart and I said, okay, if you want to save and build wealth generationally, it's not that hard in terms of the math. You know, we looked at a family that's putting $15,000 a year away for a long time, and it ends, spoiler alert, it ends in $125 million in 250 years.
I think that the thing that was a little bit of a challenge to the guys is that I showed the curve of that wealth building and it was like, okay, here's the first generation. And at the end of their life, the curve is, it looks like it's still flat on the x axis. It hasn't moved up at all compared to the big wealth curve that happens later in the plan.
And I think this is where we get tripped up in the United States as we go.
The culture is, I build my million dollar retirement fund and then I enjoy it and I spend it and it goes back down to zero. And that's just the pattern that people get into is build, spin down, build, spin down. But if you want to be a 250 year man, somebody who has multi generational aspirations, you have to be willing to basically have three generations of dudes that put the future ahead of their own wants and comfort and pleasure and all those things.
And they don't have to completely deny themselves, but they have to have a longer view that goes, I know I will never taste the fruit of this tree I've planted financially. And if you get those three guys in a row, it's really hard to then break what they've built. So the last math I did for everybody was I showed them some common objections. Well, what happens if I have a dum dum in my generations who comes and blows a bunch of money? And I showed the squander rate and I said, well, what if 30% of my family wealth is squandered every single generation?
So let's say I have three kids and they have three kids and so on and so forth. And one of those kids just blows all of it. Well, I still have a fourth 114,000 times return over 250 years. And that's every generation, 30% of the money is flushed down the toilet. The break Even point is 86%, meaning 86% of the money can just get flushed down the toilet and it still stays where, where it began.
So that was, I think maybe shocking to folks.
And then I also said by the same logic, what happens if I have a bunch of kids and I split up my money across all my kids? Does that ruin it? Because biblically, you know, they just hand it all to the firstborn.
Well, the answer is no.
You can have up to six kids per generation. And if you think about that visually, that's a very wide branching tree fast. Meaning we're not saying you have six kids and then they go back to having one.
All of them have six kids and all of them have six kids, and then you will still have every single kid, starting with more than you started with and so on and so forth with six kids. Now does that mean, hey Mark, we're those righteous beausjeurs and we've got a lot more than that. Have we ruined it? No, it's only saying on average, if every single generation has six, you still have growing wealth.
And so I think that that was maybe a little bit of a shock to the crew is to say it's not about asset return.
You know, we're not using here's the secret way to get rich in commercial real estate, or it was just a average rate of return.
And here's all the common objections, and I hope that that was eye opening. So all of that data to wrap it up, pointed to the fact that this, this whole thing hinges not on your financial savvy, honestly, or even your income level.
We use modest savings rates. It hinges on the passing of a baton between generations.
So I showed everybody a video of the American 400 meter relay. It was in the Beijing Olympics. We had the fastest team of sprinters in the world. We were supposed to walk away with the gold medal and we didn't because we dropped the baton in the, in the preliminary qualifier, which means we were done. And the point which all of this math goes, okay, it's not that hard to build fantastic multi generational wealth.
Why aren't people doing it? It's because they don't create cultures that foster this type of 250 year, if you will, money mentality.
And so then we, we went back and said, how do you do that? Well, some of it comes back to Travis's talk on work.
Some of it is about living below your means. Now, you can't build wealth if you can save zero, and you will save zero if you spend more than you bring in.
We talked about it on this podcast recently, but I talked about the fact that your marriage is critical to this tree. If you want to just chop all the branches off and have everybody start over, try divorce, that would be a ticket to doing that.
And then we even talked about how to protect against some of the big externalities that would cause batons to drop, like if you die when you're 30 and you haven't had a chance to do this, so you can, you know, take steps to protect against those scenarios.
And that was my goal, is really to give guys a chance to think like the first faithful builder in that pattern of three faithful builders. Once you get to number three, you start to see that hockey stick. And what might sound like a pipe dream to us today becomes reality. And you see it taking off.
And honestly, Steve, even if you told me, hey, you're not gonna. There's gonna be some shock from the outside, I'd go, I still think this is actually the way you build a strong family, regardless of their financial situation in 200 years, is you focus in on culture, training, serving the king. And. And it just so happens that those things tend in normal circumstances to produce multigenerational wealth as well.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I was so equipped and encouraged, I think I could say from your talk. And one thing I loved you profiled, as you mentioned, they called John Adams father, Deacon John Adams. They're a good family to look at because they produced two US Presidents, massive amount of senators, all kinds of professors, and they were worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
And you said that Deacon John passed on something like 1300 pounds shilling to his.
To his sons when he died.
And I loved that sort of meager inheritance because my. I can tend towards the thought, okay, I need to pass on $20 million to my kids. And am I. Is that. Am I set up for that? And what you really stressed is, well, of course we want to pass on something, but the most important thing that we can pass on is the training.
You can pass on how you set up generations in the future to follow in this belief system.
And to me, it underlines the need for there must be some patriarch who sees the vision and then writes it down and describes, this is the vision for the family. So I'm speaking to My great grandson that I assume I won't be there when he's 20 years old and be able to put my arm around him and talk him through. Now, this is why this family fund was started. Here's what we're.
No, I've got to create.
There's a couple of things I can do. One is work with my generations now so that everything that I believe and understand about how to be wise with God's money, I put that into the generation that I'm leading directly.
And then I see the need for creating some kind of manifesto that's the family constitution that can be handed down as well. And that when this money transfers, this is the kind of deed to that money as it describes what our family's about. And I felt, walking away, I felt I looked at Deacon John's money and go, well, I'm doing it. I think I'm going to hand off more than 1,500 bucks to my kids.
I think I'm doing it.
And it reinforced to me what I've got to stay active and engaged in is the training of my children. And I've got to continue to pour vision into this thing. If I want to be Abrahamic, I have to give this caveat. Doesn't mean that you don't know Jesus. It doesn't mean that you're not a believer.
We just happen to believe that one of the assignments of the Kingdom of God is to produce families that produce families that produce families that are going to follow him long term. And it looks like the way that we read the scripture, that faithfulness with money is one of those things that we're to be faithful in. And again, our example. Abraham did this magnificently well.
So anyways, loved your talk, felt encouraged by it.
I want to give a little profile real quick for people as well about Vijay's talk. And he talked about physical capital. And his talk was called we the Fit People.
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Family. Physical capital.
And Vijay, you know, I was thinking while he was talking, I was totally encouraged and educated by his talk. And I was thinking, I wonder. I wonder what Mark thinks of this. If he thinks that, he thinks that it's all too elementary for him. But I thought there were some basic principles that Vijay went over that I thought, that's excellent. I really need to hear that. One thing he said up front was he talked about the importance of strategies and habits.
He recommended the book Atomic Habits and talked about how we often set the bar too high.
And when we set the bar too high, if it's, I'm going to work out for an hour a day, well, then we can just guarantee that you're going to fail. And when you fail, your whole system is going to fall in on itself and you're going to be back to zero because your standards were too high, your goals were too ambitious.
So how do we create systems and goals that are manageable, that can build on themselves? I just thought, hey, that makes a lot of sense when I write this down. And then he again talking about rudimentary stuff.
I think I was the most impacted in Vijay's talk with what he said about sleep and water.
And I just thought, nobody's talked to me about this since, I don't know, I'm 20 years old or something. It's like, be sure to get your sleep. And then we just kind of hear that over. Yeah, yeah, you gotta sleep. And he showed us a little science behind sleep and water. And he was like, you're basically wasting your time to try to go grunt it out at the gym when you are under rested and dehydrated. Your body needs these things as pillars for building family capital.
And I left, like, newly convicted. Definitely. I think about it every day. I think about some of the basic things he said. Get to sleep at the same time every day, have the same window of sleep. Well, I just screwed that up last night. I was traveling.
But I think about it. Get into bed at the same time, get up at the same time, protect that time.
And sleep is an important thing. Like me winding down at 8:00'. Clock. We think, oh, I need to be setting my body up so that I can get good sleep tonight. And he talked about magnesium and he did all of that stuff, but just the basics of water and sleep as the foundations for physical capital. And then, of course, he went into how to include your family and gave some great tips on all that. But for me, the very basic things, I was thinking, these are the things that you. That should be reviewed when you go see a doctor as he should be talking to you about, let's talk about your water. Well, I was.
I just have to say, when we get together and we do these Abe's Wallet gatherings, I want it to be a mix of things. Whoa, that's a really interesting concept. And wow, that's really useful. That'll change my life immediately.
And that's kind of how I, I felt about Vijay's talk. It felt very useful and foundational to me. I, I did. Did you have similar thoughts or what? What did you think? About Vijay's talk.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: No, I thought it was great. I think one of the things he said that I came home and kind of laughed and told my wife about, they want their kids to eat what they eat.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:38:11] Speaker B: Which is healthy whole foods.
And anybody who has small kids knows, you know, you get those, those wines at some different points of the day. I'm hungry, I need to.
And in their home, they, they have what they call the carrot bucket. And it's named that because it's a bucket of carrots and it just lives in the fridge. And I, I didn't ask. I think it's like full size big.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: It sounds in my mind's eye, it was full sized carrots with, with stalks attached.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: And the idea is if you're really hungry. He said, if a kid comes up to me and says, I can't make it to dinner, I'm so hungry. Well, go have a carrot. Prove that you're hungry. And so he said, often the kid will go, okay, great, I'm going to have the carrot, eat it down and then go, I'm still hungry. Now give me a granola bar or whatever. And Vijay goes, actually, if you're still hungry, I have good news. You can have another carrot. And they just.
That's one of the little tricks of raising small children who have a relationship with food that says, food is here at mealtime. If I'm truly hungry, there's some options, but it's not going to be, I think for most of us, we all struggle to stay on track with the things we eat and say no to some of the tempting foods that are engineered to make us addicted to them.
And so Vijay just gave some, some tips, not just for us, but also for families who are trying to do this together. I thought that was great, and I really thought it was great that we didn't get into the dogma of one path. So I could be guilty of this and going, everybody should do what I do. Vijay, I've had like debates with him about different stuff, but he didn't get into this. You must agree with me on the minutiae of some health program.
I was a little bit wondering, are we gonna, are we gonna have like a debate about the best way to do weightlifting or whatever? Yeah. And Vijay really focused on, we're so far before those conversations. It's like, I want to encourage you guys to take steps and set goals that are very achievable. You know, he, he kind of reiterated something I always told back when we were really into rock climbing and had little kids. Somebody told me, don't ever, ever say that. My goal is to take my kids out and go rock climbing with them. Today that's a fool's errand. Instead, say, my goal today is to leave my home with all my rock climbing gear and my kids in the car. And they're like, if you get to the end of the block and then something happens and you have to drive home and you still achieved your goals and got to drive a little bit. And so Vijay had a similar encouragement to guys, which is like, set the bar so that you can clear it and then raise it up. It's the same strategy we use in weightlifting. The way you build strength is just slight increase in the, in, in the resistance that you're facing. So make, make goals that are very attainable and give yourself wins so that you can just build on that success. And don't say, say, all right, I've had a life change and I'm going from fat slob who never exercises and eats junk to fitness guru that's going to fail. And I think Vijay did a really good job of encouraging guys who were all the way from never even thought about this stuff to probably thinking about it a little more than is healthy in the room. And gave. Gave a good encouragement to every single guy there.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And I was encouraged by the basic idea that he started with, which is, this is the only container that you're going to get that you're going to move around in for 85 years and lead a family. So you need to take care of the container that God's given you. And that's part of our duty. As much as going to work, as much as training the kids, as much as putting money aside, as much as going to his word daily is, I've got to take care of this suitcase.
Second, Peter 1 talks about the tent of the body.
I have this one tent and I will soon put it aside, writes Peter. And that's true for us as well. But it's the tent that I've got. And so I have a duty to my family as well as to God to take care of this body. So all of that was great.
Let's bring this home. I've got just a couple of thoughts for listeners today with regards to these, these smattering of ideas we've thrown at you.
One is, whether it's the work issues or physical capital or your finances, thinking down the barrel of generations for your finances, here's a thought for you. Ask the wife if we thought in terms of 250 years instead of. In terms of the next five, what would we stop doing and what would we start? Would there be any changes in what we're doing?
And I'd leave it as general as that. If we thought in terms of a 250 year generational legacy, what would we change? And just write down the answers.
I think that would be eye opening. I think that'd be great. The second thing I'll just throw out is if this kind of work matters to you, I know it does. Or you wouldn't be listening to us. The kind of things we're talking about are ringing with you, man. That matters. Wow. That's incredible. To get a group of family leaders together and in one weekend be able to affect the direction of those families just by virtue of being in the same place at the same time and having some great content thrown out there. If that matters to you.
We want more weekends like this.
That was our third annual trip.
We intend to do more.
More Midrashes, more fathers standing together and opening the Bible, mining for gold and. And hearing what God's putting on their hearts. And it doesn't happen on fumes. So I want to give you two ways that you could be part of future gatherings. One is to get on the list for the next gathering. Maybe you can't make it when the dates come out, I don't know. But you could get on the list and say, I want to find out about the next thing that's happening.
If you go to abrahamswallet.com retreat, there's nothing specifically being promoted there, but you can get on the list.
We will be doing this again. It sounds like.
Mark, I know you've heard the same things that I have.
It sounds like the powers that be are closing in on Washington D.C.
for next year. It sounds like a likely candidate and I would like for you to come and like for you to bring a brother.
It was also discussed. I don't know if it'd be happening in 27 or not. Probably not in 27 because we want to give people plenty of time to plan. But it was also discussed our great dream, Mark, that we've talked about for years, which is doing an Abraham's wallet trip to Israel and actually looking at original sites where our father Abraham and our Messiah actually lived and did some of the things that we read about in the scriptures. So those things both sound super exciting to me.
If you want this scene to keep going for yourself and for men who will never be able to write a big check. But who could show up and change their family line forever. Would you join our support
[email protected] support.
That's how meaningful getaways like this stay possible is. We have a war chest that we are very careful about.
We don't spend that money willy nilly. We really appreciate our support team and the support that comes in and it makes things like this possible.
We're not.
Every time we mention money or a support team, I just want to say we're not collecting fans of Abraham's wallet. That's not the point. We're gathering an army of fathers who intend to be found ready like minute men, which was my talk and we might revisit that in the future. So any closing thoughts about the weekend Mark before I wrap it up?
[00:47:02] Speaker B: No. I mean, I left feeling like I was ready for another one as soon as we can make it happen. That's true.
The only thing that makes me kind of sad is that we. We can only pull off so many of these in a given time period. True DC man. I want to bring my whole family. I want them to experience the joy that is a Stephen Manual tour of a metropolitan area.
But I also kind of want.
I kind of want another one of those worship nights with the bros. So we'll see what happens next. But I'm looking forward to it. And I'd say job well done to you and to all of the people who were involved in this to pull it off. Because it was not just you and me by any means.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: No, no.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: Abe's wallet team.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Guys.
The lead or the clay pigeons, as it were. The lead's going to keep flying. The texts and the emails are going to keep coming.
And the hour for readiness in your home is going to keep arriving at inconvenient times. That was one of the points of my opening talk.
Readiness.
So we. You've got to stay dressed for action. And you got to keep your powder dry and you got to care for your body on purpose. And you got to handle your money like it's going to be in your great grandson's hands someday. And we have to work as unto the Lord and give God the stress that results.
You are not a mere passenger in your generational line. You are a minuteman for the kingdom stand standing ready to answer the call of God at any moment. For your family's sake, I bless you in that endeavor this week.
May you be encouraged. And we'll see you next week. And until then, run your home and your dough like a biblical boss.
