Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Marriage has to be built differently. The way that you raise children has to work differently. Your money has to work differently. Your travel and your hobbies and your church life, their education, everything has to be engineered differently. That's the reason this podcast exists.
Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. Welcome back to Abraham's Wallet and the Abraham Starter Kit series.
Quick recap of where we've been in this series. In episode one of the Abrahamic Starter Kit, we kind of expose the broken pop Christianity story and how it does not do what you want your family to do. In episode two, we talked about the primary mission that God gave to human beings. It is the dominion mandate from Genesis 1:28. To marry, to multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it.
So that mandate means that your family cannot run like what I'm going to call the standard Christian American family, the scaff.
You can't run like the SCAFF and do the mandate. It's not going to. Not going to work.
So we are today unveiling the Abrahamic Family machine that is a completely different operating system for marriage, child raising, and, yes, money. I. I could even say that this episode is sort of the manifesto of why Abraham's wallet exists at all, because of the Abrahamic Family Machine. So we're going to kind of explain to the new listener, okay, if it's true that the pop Christianity machine isn't working, if it's true that we still have this mandate from God, then what are we supposed to be building? How. How does it change the story of what. What a man of God is after in his life?
So we want to show normal, normal church dude, how an Abrahamic family man leads his home with sacrificial authority so that his wife thrives yet in submission as the Scriptures command. In submission, but thriving in submission. And his kids grow up able and eager to carry on the family torch. That's a big deal. The standard Christian American family, the scaff. The idea is this. Here's the game plan.
Delay marriage until you've, I don't know, explored life or gotten to know yourself or whatever you're supposed to do.
Then have one to two kids, max. You want that to be manageable? Let's just have a couple. Try to keep it manageable. We're going to outsource discipleship to church programs. And that's, that's for every member of your family and yourself included, that we're, we're kind of sitting, waiting, hoping that the, the programs that your local church offers are sufficient for what you feel to be the spiritual needs of your family. And hopefully those things match up. Man, I hope they, I hope we have a thriving youth program, etc. Well, we'll see. And if not, maybe we'll go shopping for other churches.
Then we live like everybody else financially. We, we want to be financial strivers. We're going to be consumers. Might, might, might do a little tithing. Probably not tithing. Statistically, you're not going to tithe to the local church. You're going to give about 1% to the local church. That's statistically what churchgoers do in America. The goal is to retire comfortably, die at zero. I've even seen this at churches promoted to die with zero so that your last day of breathing life on earth is when you spend the last dollar that you saved in your 40s and we're done.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Can we be clear?
The die with zero campaign goes really well with the legacy giving campaign that says grant us all the leftovers so that you die with zero and we keep all your money.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: It's crazy, isn't it? I mean, when you actually wealth, you.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Could say it's not a coincidence if you were like one of those conspiracy theorists.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think it's a coincidence either. I, I, when I, I just, we, we just came back from a little Mexico mission trip with our family and we met a couple of other families. And when I'm trying to walk new people through now, what's this? Abraham's wallet. What do you do exactly? What's it all about? I, I, I always say, just as a thumbnail sketch, usually most churches, what they do when it comes to training people financially is don't, don't make too much money. Because we all know that's wrong to try to make a bunch of money.
And whatever money you do make, give as much of it to us as you can stomach to give. That's basically the message that you hear from the pop church.
And when you look through the Abrahamic lens, there's a whole different story that we're trying to tell with money. So the point is, if dominion and dynasty are your goal, then every part of the family machine has to be engineered differently. Marriage has to be built differently. The way that you raise children has to, has to work differently. Your money has to work differently. I mean, your travel and your hobbies and your church life, their education, everything has to be engineered differently. And I think I could say that's the reason this podcast exists, is to try to equip and inspire guys so they'll take every part of their life and, and shove it through this particular filter of this Abrahamic framework. And anyways, that's what. Boy, what a long introduction. That's what we're talking about today. Mark, what, what do you, what's your response to all that?
[00:05:46] Speaker B: I had a conversation, I don't know, a year and a half ago with a guy, Stephen. You might have connected me to him, or it could be someone else in our orbit. But he was an estate planning attorney, and he set up these extremely kind of kooky and complex estate plans for multigenerational families with lots of wealth. And the idea was we're going to make an argument that your family and your family business and all this is so unique that you must have a certain type of person created to carry on the family business.
And so we're going to create all these trusts and we're going to actually get all these tax benefits. I'm not here telling you that I even think what he was suggesting is necessarily legal. But what I do think I took from what he said was he works with these families. And it stuck with me because he was like, if the irs, if you're telling them that we're the type of family that has to do everything differently and everything is aimed at this mission. And then they came and audited you and they said, but your kids go to public school or you have the same grocery shopping habits as every other family, or we're auditing what's in your. Your home, entertainment wise. And it's exactly the same. I'm not saying that the IRS would do this, but his point was, if you're going to make this work and it's going to stand up in court, everything about your life has to look different if you're going to do this strategy. And his take was like, this can actually lead to making everything in your life tax deductible and all that. Again, I'm not, I'm not endorsing that. What I do think was interesting is kind of what we're saying, which is if you want to go down this path, it's going to, it's going to get its tentacles into everything. This is not a podcast about how to be a good dad and like good old American dad, and we're going to give you, we're going to give you 18 years of attaboys so that you can launch children off until they get into a really good college.
It's not a podcast about how to maximize your retirement accounts, because that could be really bad for you if that's all you do.
It's a podcast about what does it look like when you say, I'm trying to build a multigenerational family that is engineered to accomplish our assignments in our little corner of the kingdom of God. And we think all those corners for all you listeners are different.
It's going to really be high cost, and it's going to move into every corner of life. So I think you said it right.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
I wonder if you would be willing, just based on what you're saying, we're going to get to money later in the. In the episode. But I wonder if you would make a comment about how it's so different, why this is such a different way of thinking that you thought we needed to start our own financial planning firm because of it.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, when we started Abraham's Wallet, you and I were surprised at the fact that people wanted to hear anything that we might have to say.
Some of it. Some of it we really knew, and we had walked out for decades. And other things we talked about, we're like, we think we're kind of learning this with you guys.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: But we were surprised, and you listeners grew and wanted to hear more. And we sort of looked at each other, Stephen, and said, should we become influencers or, like, bloggers or.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: And. And I said, fi on that. I don't really want to be an influencer. I would like to.
To do something where we can actually get our hands.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: I don't want to be an influencer. I want to actually make change. Yeah.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: I. I wanted to say, like, give me a role where I can actually partner with families to get a little bit more deep into the specific tactics on this one area, which would be the money area.
Not everybody we work with agrees with us on this stuff. So I'm not saying that we're a firm that only does this. We're not. We can also just do the, The. The things that we do with excellence for somebody who totally disagrees with a lot of our worldview. But when somebody does agree, I think they often are going, I really want my closest advisors, whether that's the lawyer that's helping me structure my businesses, the financial advisor that's saying, like, this is how you should structure your money. So powers the thing.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: I don't really want to have to sheepishly look at my advisor and go, like, I know that, like, you're telling me to do X, because that will grow the biggest pile of money. And that's what everybody hires you to do. But I've got a different vision. Like, I think a lot of people are out there feeling like when I, when I look at my financial advisor or other professionals that are on my team, my accountant, whatever, I just don't share a vision at all. And it's almost like I'm not ashamed of it. But it's hard to, to communicate what I'm trying to communicate to somebody who completely looks at me like I have two heads when I try to explain what it means to be a multi generational family team.
So that's why I think that it's uniquely a corner where we, we really have a lot of successes working with families in a role where we're like, a lot of people, I think, tell us more than they tell almost any other non family person in their lives because we're seeing, oh, here's how much you made, here's how much you gave. Huh? Yes. Like, I think the average financial planner would be like, okay, you only wanted to give 1% this year. Yeah, no, no problem. Like, that's more money for me to manage.
That's how, how we approach things. And usually I think it's positive once in a while. It's like a, it's like a hard question, hey, you're not acting the way you said you wanted to act. Do you want us to call you on that or not? And so because it reaches into every corner of life, it obviously reaches into how people use their money and even all the way down to like what they invest in and things like that.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah, there's an easy segue here, which is we, we find that in, in the work that we do, we have, I, I, I've worked at a church, been around church scenes a very long time.
We have a more pastoral role than most pastors that run churches.
So biblically, a pastor is a shepherd.
It means that he knows the sheep intimately, he makes sure that they get what they need. He's thinking about their future. He deals with diseases that they're dealing with and he personally leads each of them. He knows their foibles, knows their strengths and helps them get to the next place.
Most guys that run religious institutions that call themselves pastors, they're just, they just run an organization and they might be a charming, good presenter publicly. And that's not what a pastor is. Biblically, is somebody that takes care of people. We find that we get to do a lot of that in our work pastoring, which in my segue is that's Also what's required of God's man, God's man in his home is that he is a pastor, that is he is a shepherd of his family. He knows every member of his family very well. He understands their foibles, he understands their strengths and he's trying to lead them to the next place. So I've got to say again, if the Dominion mandate is still standing, it demands a different kind of machine than the one that we're currently executing on in pop Christianity.
And it demands a different kind of leader.
So my, the, the first point I want to make today is that the Abrahamic man is God's chosen leader for what God wants to do and there's no substitute for it. We, we ended the last episode with Genesis 1:28 ringing in your ears. This Mary, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it thing. That's the mission never rescinded in any of New Testament. It's still the mission. But here's the problem is that the standard Christian American family runs on completely different software.
So the, the if you want to meet the model of what the leader looks like, God gives us the profile when he first talks about Abraham in Genesis 18:19.
To me this is the verse that should be tattooed on every dad's heart which is I have chosen him. This is God talking about Abraham. I have chosen him that he might command his children and and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. There's other translations that make it sound like God's saying this is the reason that I chose Abraham because I knew that he would command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. Like this is what God likes. It's why I think it's why God picked Abraham.
Not because he was a great evangelist, not because he was a great tither. Although he did that because Abraham would lead his home well. He would command his children and his household to walk in God's ways long term.
Fast forward, that's really early on in the beginning of the story or beginning of the Bible. We can fast forward way to the end of the Bible and guess what? Those exact same qualifications show up among God's leaders for his people. In 1 Timothy 3 it says he, this, this leader that God has chosen must manage his family and household well with all dignity. And now he's going to describe it. Keeping his children submissive. Because if someone doesn't know how to manage his own household, how will he care? Care for God's church. This is repeated in Titus 1. There's also descriptions of the way the marriage works in these passages. So at the very beginning, God's going, I chose Abraham because he manages his family. Well into the story, God goes, I want my leaders to manage their households. Well, that's super important.
And I'll say for myself, we, we've tried to tell on ourselves in this series already, Mark, but for myself, when I was a 20 year old man, I just thought, if I can personally be so super pious, not a bad goal in itself. I just want to pray. I'll give everything away. I'll have zero. I'll be super spiritual.
I didn't. I would never qualify for elder under, under these first Timothy 3 descriptions because I, I never knew that I was supposed to learn how to run a household.
I thought if I could eat on ramen and live with Ba Hong in Addison, Texas, and us share the cheapest apartment that we could find, and I can spend all of my time sprinkling love and happiness around me, then I'd be set.
It's not the story.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: I think you're wildly mischaracterizing your days of singleness. I remember walking to your apartment at lunch break when I was in high school and splitting a can of soup with you, which we microwave.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: And then I don't know if there's a whole lot of people who would have said you were at that time in your life sprinkling love and happiness.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: What was I doing?
It was a spicier version of what you did a little bit of even earlier in this podcast where you kept referring to pop Christianity and the, the, the pastor man. I, I think you had an even a slightly hotter take on some of the church stuff and you like to, you like to fire off once in a while. So. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I, I think that the, Everything you're saying is true. It's interesting to me that people recoil so much at that whole elder thing. We have a whole series on eldership. I think it's almost completely stuff you and I would both go back and just completely re. Endorse today. I think people recoil when you say this is required to, to, to kind of attain that role is that you prove your ability to be a good manager and a good householder. And it doesn't mean that you're not a good Christian, if that. Like Paul, I, I love this line. I think you taught it. Jimmy Paul excluded himself from eldership in the local church.
If you want to start a fight with your local church employees. You can say that and they'll go, what?
But he, he specifically said, this is the guy that has proven the ability to lead in this setting and these are the requirements. And that's the same guy who said it's great if you don't get married your whole life and you're a celibate, kind of dedicated to the church monk type who goes around and has total freedom. But, but as you always say, we better see that, that person laboring in digging wells in Botswana, not having brunches in Houston.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Have you ever met one of those guys?
[00:19:34] Speaker B: I bet I have met one. I can't think of people like that come straight to the top of my mind.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I've known one guy in my life and I'm, and I met him on the mission field. I bet he's still on the mission field.
His name is John Robinson. He was a missionary in Wales.
He's the real thing.
Like I'm giving my life to serve the Lord and the kingdom and that's what my life is, period.
I'm not spending time on anything else. Like you got, hey bro, you have my endorsement. But what we have talked about is most people who kind of talk about this singleness, jib jab nonsense is what they mean is I would like to run under the COVID of seeing Pauline singleness while I maximize my vacations and have a life that's all about me. And I go to the church house twice a week.
So no, that's not what Paul was talking about for sure. And it's not what Jesus was talking about when he talks about being in a eunuch for the kingdom of God.
Your life does not look like Jesus's life looked. That's not what's being discussed.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: I bet that John in the mission field. Yeah. Can and will die with nothing. And we would high five him for it.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Oh man. Yeah. He's going to get so many rewards.
So this Abrahamic profile, this is the profile of the man that God is looking for today. Still. If you're listening to this podcast, I'm talking to you.
God is still recruiting Abrahams men who will build little civilizations through their family line of faith filled dominion takers right in their own living rooms or at the local coffee shop.
I have to put in this little caveat.
Paul has opened it up that you can have children who are spiritual children.
So I think God's plan is that you learn these tools of parenting and disciple making under your own roof out of children who emanate from your loins, and then you can go make, you can go make disciples at the local coffee shop. I can speak for myself. I know how to father men way better now after having raised children of my own than I ever, ever did as a single guy. I was trying to spend time with younger people, younger dudes then, too. But I certainly know how it works now. Way better. So three things we're going to hit. If you, if you're going to be this guy, you've got to run your marriage differently, you've got to build children differently, and you've got to run your money differently. So real quick, we'll hit those and we'll be done for today.
If you're going to run your marriage as an, as an Abrahamic machine, headship is non negotiable. We can read Ephesians 5, where Paul, the unmarried guy, gives us the passage in the Bible that's the most explicit about the way the family works. It's in Ephesians 5 and it's modeled on Christ. Sacrificial love and Psalm 23's Good Shepherd.
A good shepherd leads to leads. The word is leads. Leads to green pastures and still waters. That means he has a vision. There's provision there, there's peace. And he restores the soul of his downline, which, which first is his wife.
That is, he is emotionally and spiritually nourishing for her. He provides as a shepherd what I would call rod and staff comfort, which is protection. And yes, correction, that feels safe.
Not correction, that makes her shiver in his presence, but a loving arm around you. Correction, that goes, honey, we're going this way. This is what God's word says. We're just going to make a little, we're going to make a little trajectory change here, and we got to keep walking God's way. I'm encouraging you in this. You know, the Lord has a vision for you and where you're going to be 40 years from now. And you, you bless her with Proverbs 31 at the Shabbat and go like, this is, this is where you're ending up. This is the goal of where we're going. By the way, that's where we're going to end up in this series as well, is what, what is the good life? Where do we end up?
He. He prepares the table. Again, Psalm 23, what? He. He prepares the table. He says, the Lord is my shepherd. He prepares a table for me. He anoints my head.
That is honoring and blessing privately and publicly.
So there is something about the marriage in the Abrahamic model. That does not look like pop Christian marriages where it's, hey, we're in this 50, 50.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: We're.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: We're walking down the road together. Okay, yes, we are. But headship is not optional in, in God's description. Again, I could go back to first Timothy 3. It doesn't say that elders in the church are the men who lead their families well and also the women who lead their families well and they have a nourishing relationship with their husbands, et cetera. That does. No, no, that's not in the Bible.
God designed men. We can go back to Genesis and see this. God designed men to be family leaders and he designed women from the time they were created to be helpers and to be the, the vice president, if you will, of the organization that the man under God's direction is leading. So we've got to understand.
And I hate having to. I love the people of God. I love the church. I love the bride. I would die for the bride right now. And I hate the fact that I have to repeatedly describe the church as some kind of enemy for what we're trying to do. I don't mean to say that. I mean, there's a present version of popular Christianity that will lie to you about how God wants a family constructed. And in so doing, it lies to you men about what your role is and what your responsibilities are. And I want you to be so baptized in what the scriptures have to say about a man's role that you can listen to truth and have a big smile and thumbs up. I love this. This is good. I need this. This is encouraging, even correcting for me.
And you might be in a place, one of these weak, pandering, numbers gobbling churches where they just want huge production. We want big budgets and as many butts in these seats as we can possibly cram in. And you could sit in there and hear them talk about marriage and think to yourself, that's not what my king says.
I'm going to flush this one. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Popular Influencer, so called Pastor Man. Thank you. Next. You flush it. You go back to God's word. You go back to your crew of 2, 3, 4 or 5 dads who are walking in the same way. Go. We're going to keep walking the narrow path of what God wants for Abrahamic family leaders. So I think that's all I want to say to the, the kind of new listener about the fact that our marriages, they have to be different if we're going to seek a different kind of outcome.
What are your thoughts, Mark, before we move on to kids?
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that we, we could talk about how this, this is probably the thing that people are going to. If this is the first time you've ever heard somebody talk about this type of thing, this might be the one that makes you bristle a little bit. Like, well, what do you mean? Like, yeah, the male headship that sounds like this oppressive.
You know, you just do what I say and my wife is my servant type thing. We've swung so far as a culture over to the coddling of not just women. We, we actually want to revel in the goodness of, of what God made when he made women.
But the culture will tell you that they're, they're elevating women. They're doing all this when really what they're doing is praising feminism instead of praising God's design for men and women.
And so that's, we've sung so far that way that like you and I say, hey, we, we want you to really focus on when you're thinking about your marriage, think about what are the roles God designed for you and your wife and how do you flourish in those roles.
And yet, if you're hearing this and maybe you're coming to us from the, the far right field of things, we would also remind you that Christ paints a very clear picture of what it looks like to, to take care of a wife. He's. He is. Describes his relationship with the church in the same terms and says that it's, it's a laying down of one's life. So this is not some sort of caricature of dominant male crap. That's not what we're out for.
And if that, like I said, if you're not coming from some totally different world, which I occasionally run into those people here in Utah. I've talked to people in the last few weeks who came to Christianity from fundamentalist Mormonism, where they're just horrible treatment of women. I've, I've listened to guys talk about coming out of Islam, which is a religion that hates women, and it's characterized by that.
So I guess I, I just wanted to say that please take your cues from the scripture and not from what the godless culture would go. Well, we're okay with it if you say it that way. If you say servant leadership, we're okay with that. Just don't say headship.
We're not down with that. And we'll just use the terms the Bible uses.
But it's also important to say we actually believe this is the way that both men and women partner and team up together to accomplish God's plans.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Hallelujah.
Yeah, it's good. Okay, second thing, raising children is different in the Abrahamic machine.
So Ephesians 6:1:4. I'm going to give you a couple of passages as references describes the raising of children. Ephesians 6:1:4, Deuteronomy 6:4:9, Proverbs 22:6. These all. I mean I could give you a long list, but I'm just going to give you a couple as references for what is a New Testament, what is the Torah, and what are the wisdom books proverbs have to say about growing children. They all line up with each other.
I'll come back to Genesis 18:19 Abraham, command your children after you so that they voluntarily keep the way of the Lord into adulthood and beyond. That's.
It's funny as we're, as we're kind of trying to lay out this like rough framework for our people. I. It's keep keeps coming to mind. We've done not only entire episodes but an entire series on almost all of these because they're so important.
And I know that people listening right now, they're like, yeah, I don't want you to do the deep dive. I want the 30,000 foot view of like, what do you guys do? This is it is how do you raise kids in such a way that they will voluntarily and joyfully keep the way of the Lord into adulthood and after you're gone.
And the Bible tells us how to do that. So training your children, training them not reactively, but but strategically training them. Jesus tells us to teach people how to obey. That has to start with our children. We have to teach them how to obey. We have to show them that submission to dad isn't onerous and doesn't lead to like a depressive lifestyle of being dominated by a tyrant. It's actually, oh my goodness, it's so joyful. There's so much life there.
Submitting to a good dad and submitting to a good king is the best kind of life that there could possibly be. I want to enter into my dad's joy. I want to enter into this good life that he has envisioned that he's leading our family toward. And so with our children, we don't believe in permissive chaos where they get to live however they want and we endorse it.
Nor do we believe in like an angry drill sergeant tyranny.
Those are two ditches and there's a middle way, which is something more like a Psalm 23 Shepherd. It's kind of like leading the wife, which is, we're training our children in these good ways that will preserve their soul.
Proverbs actually says, if you don't deal with your children's rebellion in their younger years, you hate them and you're going to lose their soul.
Wow, strong words.
So we believe that that's what God envisions for an Abrahamic family. And so we endorse that, we champion that, we try to, as I, as we always say, inspire and equip people to do those things.
So the tools of that are like consistent calm discipline, consistent instruction and relationship. The Deuteronomy 6 passage insinuates, or it takes for granted that fathers are spending gobs of time with their children. So it says when you walk with them, when you sit down with them, when you lie down, and when you rise. We're supposed to be explaining God's good laws to our children and helping them to really apprehend them. I took a plane ride with my 16 year old yesterday and I was talking through current events, I was talking through news stories and trying to help her understand how the scriptures come to life today.
What the pot I died. We actually spent time describing what does the pop church say about these news stories and what does the word of God say about these news stories? Because I don't want to lose her to the pop church.
I don't want to just throw up my hands and go, well, I hope somebody leads her well. No, that's my job.
I'm supposed to be leading her and equipping her.
So there's this constant instruction and relationship that go together and modeling joyful obedience to God yourself. So that's an important thing that, that dads have to, to show is like, I'm submitting to God also.
And it's not always easy. It's a hard road to follow him. But it's also joyful. It's where, it's where the good life is. And the outcome is kids who honor their parents, that's in Ephesians 6 because they have seen Christ like authority up close. And they end up trusting God because they trust their fathers and their mothers as well. But I'm not talking to mothers. This isn't called the Sarah's Purse podcast. It's Abraham's wallet.
So that's kids, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to throw you, I'm going to give you plenty of latitude. When it comes to money. Anything else you want to say about kids? I see your. I just champing at the bit.
[00:35:07] Speaker B: I just. We're. We're reading Deuteronomy as a family right now before we eat our meals. And it's rich. I. I just. I've been so excited by Deuteronomy lately, but Deuteronomy 13 comes a little bit after Deuteronomy 6. Deuteronomy 6 is like, oh, okay. I think we all read it and we're like, wow. Yeah. When I'm walking, by the way, I've got this image of my. My little kiddo holding my hand and saying, dad, teach me about the ways of the Lord.
Those of us who have kids know that's not necessarily the accurate picture of how it usually goes, but Deuteronomy 13 paints a picture. We read it last night of what happens if you don't do this?
What is the outcome? And I think we either read this and we go, well, that's just a different God. Which is. That's a lie. And it's actually probably a heresy to say this is a different God. He's changed since then.
But God says, if your son or your daughter or your wife that you embrace or your friend who is like your own soul entices you, secretly saying, let us go and serve other gods, which neither you nor your fathers have known. Some of the gods of the people around you, what are you supposed to do with them if they do that? Well, you're supposed to take out stones and stone them to death, and you're supposed to throw the first rock.
Whoops.
And I think that the modern idea is even for people who get really excited about a godly household and raising their kids in the fear and admonition of the Lord, they still kind of go. And from, I'll do my best. And from there, you know, if they walk away, I'll just love them. And. And yeah, it's. At the end of the day, it's their decision.
Well, yep. The word of God seems to suggest that the consequences are as dire as anything could ever be if this doesn't go well. And I think sometimes we lose that. We lose the.
It's the American thing. I referenced it earlier about just firing kids off into the universe when they turn 18 and going, you know, my work is done here.
So I think it's important that we understand both God's.
The importance he puts on the cultivation of children's hearts and the consequences for you, for your children, and for all of your Generations. If you punt on that responsibility, it's something that I think God takes about as seriously as anything you will do in your life.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: Don't stone your kids, though, because of this podcast.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: Yeah, don't. Yeah, that's. Well, that's a big L for the family.
Yeah. So we talked about marriage, talked about kids, and we have to talk about money. I, I really, I don't know. I've never made this statement.
I'm going to try this on, see how this goes. At the end of your life, I think you might could say there are two things that you should have built for your family and for your generations.
You should have built kids and you should have built money.
And when you're supposed to hand those things off to the Lord on your deathbed and go, lord, I raised kids that can handle this money, and I raised money that can furnish the, the vision that was built into these kids. That doesn't mean that you have to have $10 million when you die. No, it just means that I'm supposed to hand off something.
Proverbs 13 says a godly man leaves an inheritance for his children's children. Well, there's the two things I just mentioned there. Children's children. That's my kids and their kids. And there's the money.
And so of course, prayers and Bible knowledge are more important than money. All you Christians out there, yes, I know that, but I'm insinuating that when I say I'm, I've built kids, I didn't just build people that are 20 years old or hopefully they'll be 60 when I'm dead. But I, I raise godly people who understand what we're describing today. They understand God's ways and they're walking in them. So Psalm 127 and 128 describe children as a reward and a heritage.
Heritage being important word. A heritage is something that is stewarded by a present generation, then handed off to a future generation. That's a heritage.
Malachi 2:15 says that what God is looking for is godly offspring. Did I say Micah earlier when I was talking about God in divorce? Because I should have said Malachi. Okay, so the, the, the current Christian American family. This scaff guy thinks, be a nice guy, tithe a little to the church, save a little for retirement, and maybe I could help the kids with college. I think that's, you know, what more could you ask? I have got a 70 inch screen and a really great sectional that I really can lounge out and we scholar streaming services. We want. So you know what, what more do you want? The Abrahamic man thinks build a faith filled multi generational family ready to contend for our culture.
And I mean the culture of your family and that be an expression of the kingdom of God against the dying pop Christian culture in the world.
So money serves that purpose. It serves Dynasty. So we believe in things like you're going to hear this if you kind of hang around Abe's wallet for a while. We believe in things like get debt free as soon as you can. We believe in building productive assets which include land. It's not only land, but it's part of it. It's in the Bible.
If, if you have a wife whose career is competing against the family, we believe in turning it down. Turning down all the energies on that. The wife's, the wife's career thing. That is if it's competing against the primary role which is family. Now could be, here's a big caveat. Could be that the wife working out in the world in some way helps to serve what we're trying to do with our family. Okay. I'm open to that possibility. We've said many times when we were saying this to our friends on the, on the mission trip we just got back from God has used my wife's business that she's still doing now 15, 20 years later.
Absolutely. To help fund our family and what we're doing. Yes. And we've also done the dance of now that thing can't compete with what God's doing in our family. We got to figure out a way to make those things work together.
So those are the kind of things that we're going to be talking about that we like to check, chew on and, and work on. We believe in funding those arrows, funding those kids to do, to do things like start businesses and get their education, blah, blah, blah. We believe in creating margin for generosity that lasts centuries, not just propping up institutions that, that are going to be fly by night, be gone in 50 years. We believe in, in creating a family that has strategic generosity and we believe that that generosity is supposed to last for generations. So Mark, before, when you finish this, I'll, I'll shut us down for this episode. But I, I would love to know any of your other thoughts on how.
What is the uniqueness of what we have to say about money over and against what the. What, what a listener who's just parachuting in is going to hear at their local church about money or, or on this going to be advertised to them during the commercials of college football playoffs.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
I think that the way I might rephrase what you said about the two things that you're trying to pass along, children and money, you could also say, I think the same thing in many ways, by just saying we're trying to build successful households.
And a household is an ecosystem that produces healthy offspring. It cares for, first off, the. The family at the center of it, but usually a whole. As it gets more and more successful, it's caring for a whole lot more than just the mom and dad and four or five kids or whatever it looks like. There. There's a whole.
The reason we're called Abraham's Wallet is because that guy was running this massive organization that, you know, he had an army of Navy SEALs that walked around with him. He had servants. He had a humongous cattle operation. We just. We know this guy was a billionaire in. In terms of. Of kind of adjusted wealth. Yeah. I would say that the cool thing about building a household is that all the research, if you look at kind of financial planning, says you can. You can have a billion dollars, you know, well stewarded. A billion dollars should just grow and grow and grow. It's very hard to outspend a billion dollars.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Within three generations, usually a fortune like that is virtually gone.
And I would say building wealth is almost of zero value if all you're doing is building wealth. I think people know this who have no idea what we're talking about when we talk about biblical anything.
But if you build a household that's capable of stewarding wealth, I promise you, you can take all their money away. We could have World War 3 and they imprison every Christian in America and gas half of us, and we're starting over from scratch.
And the households that were well constructed by great grandpas a hundred years ago and have. Have cultivated the culture that leads to productivity as a household, whether that's children or wealth or spiritual capital and disciples. Those households, I would place a lot of bets on them that they're going to be back in the wealthy driver's seat within a generation or two.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Yes. Let's go. That's right.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: The reason that we like talking about this stuff at Abraham's Wallet to.
We know a lot of our listeners are like, I don't have a billion dollars, Mark. I don't have a million dollars. I would love it if I had $15,000.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: I'm getting started here. What?
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: What are you talking about?
This should take a little bit. We want it to add weight in the right places to kind of what you feel your responsibility is.
And we want you to know you got so much time. The goal is not some sort of escape velocity wealth. That is not what a biblically healthy household looks like. It's just faithfulness over long periods of time. And I tell people, you know what three generations of faithfulness and a totally normal average American income leads to? Well, it leads to wealth.
And so that's what we mean when we say these healthy households produce at least two things.
Children. You talked about that. You know, and there's obviously biological children, there's also disciples and spiritual children, all that good stuff. It also produces wealth and the type of wealth that can just.
You can. I tell people all the time, I'm like, I want you to build a family that we know. Whether it's in two generations, it's your grandkid, I hope it's not. Or in 10 generations, somewhere in the line, there's very likely to be a chucklehead that comes and does something really dumb, whether it's intentional or totally accidental. There's very noble people who have made terrible financial decisions. Sure.
And we want you to build the type of family that can go, that's okay. We're constructed to be able to continue pressing forward through something like that. And we're creating values and a culture that leads towards God's plan for healthy families.
And we're not, we're not trying to insulate ourselves for, well, we'll, we'll never lose money. And we've created the right trust structure so that we can't, we can't ever have an idiot great, great grandkid that blows all the family fortune. That's not what we're about here. We're about, yeah, build the culture. And the rest tends to take care of itself. So, yeah, maybe you wanted me to talk about how to leverage the right types of accounts here.
I don't, I don't actually think that's even the primary objective of what we're trying to do.
I will say, I will say one thing tactically here, which is that a lot of families get rid. Or dads. You hear what we're saying. You're like, I want to be an Abrahamic family leader.
And then we start mentioning some of the tactics, and we're like, will you make $80,000 a year?
And you have two little kids, things are going to be a little tight in your home. You, you better be on a budget.
That budget should feel like a plan for funding your Unique family vision. And you're going, okay, back up.
You're telling me I have to have a family vision. Yeah, that would be something we would really recommend spending time on. And then you're telling me I have to budget. Like, I have to track how much I spend on, you know, coffees each month. That's to have something to do with my great, great grandchildren's culture. And I'm saying that if you want to stick around here at Abraham's Wallet, you. Our goal is to kind of get you on board with the big vision and then help you see how even little things like the way that you decide what portion of the money that comes into our home are we going to use for groceries. And how could it be okay that one family chooses 20% and one family chooses 4% of their income for that number? What? But those things matter. And so it starts at the big ideological level, and it shakes all the way down to my wife checking an app and going, are we having tacos or steaks this Friday night? Because I want to see if we're kind of on. On plan for what we're trying to build as a family.
[00:49:51] Speaker A: That's so good, Mark. I'm thinking of Peter Drucker's famous statement that culture eats strategy for breakfast, meaning that the culture of your company will motivate people more than. Well, we've got a Q3 strategy, and that might get done and it might not, but culture will win. It's the same. True in your home, is that your culture has to outweigh the family fortune, whatever that is. If you have a. You present your fortune to your kids and you go, like, I don't know. I hope they can handle it. It's going to dominate them and destroy them. Wealth will destroy them. But if you've got a very strong culture, you can hand them a very little bit amount of money to him, a lot of money, and go, this is what our family is about and they can make it. So that's super exciting. That's great. We established that if the Dominion Mandate from Genesis 1:28 is still in existence, then we've got to do something other than the. The scaff out there, the standard Christian American family thing.
And we talked about the fact that you, you. We're going to have to change the way that we run our marriages, the way that we raise kids, and the way that we handle money. The Abrahamic family machine runs on sacrificial headship and joyful submission and deliberate child training and money aimed at multi generation, generational dominion. All because God is still looking for Abrahams. That's you guys.
I bless you until we can meet again next week. Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss.
