[00:00:00] Speaker A: We can get mixed up and think, well, I have an identity at work and then I come home and then I'm Dad. I would say, no, you're dad at work. That's the reason that you're at work. Why am I going out and collecting money and provision? What's for this family? The family is my assignment.
Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. Hey, welcome back to Abraham's Wallet, where we help regular church going dudes run their home and their dough like a biblical boss.
I'm Steve Manual, joined today by my good old friend Mark Parrott from Utah. And we're in the middle of a brand new series, the Abrahamic Starter Kit, which we hope to be your concise no fluff onboarding to quitting the pop Christianity merry go round and building a multi generational dynasty God's way. If you missed episode one of the series, I would encourage you to go back and listen to it right now.
What we did was we tore down five big lies that keep most church guys stuck and fruitless and confused about what God's actual design is for their lives. And today in episode two, we're going to start building the right thing. And we're just calling this your primary mission, which is too, I'll give away the ending. Mary, multiply and fill the earth. We're reclaiming Genesis 1 and 1 Corinthians 7 so that you can see marriage and kids as God's Plan A for effectively every man on the planet. It's not a consolation prize. It's not a distraction from real ministry. It's the very center of the mission that God gave the human race his imagers. If you're a single guy wondering whether to pursue marriage or a married guy who's been told kids are optional or a burden, or maybe you're already a dad, but you've bought the cultural lie. That too is plenty for us. This episode is for you. Going to restore the vision for the main mission that is get married, have a bunch of kids, get a piece of land or something that you manage so that you can learn to steward it well. And we're going to give practical advice about how your marriage has to work differently when Dominion and Dynasty are your goal. We're going to dive in in just a second, Mark, before we do that, before we get into the stuff.
Hello. How are you? It's been a while.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's been almost four weeks since we recorded an episode together.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
But you, you woke up early this morning, is that right?
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I texted you at about 3:30 in the morning, my time, because we just got back from Asia.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: My wife, not with a. Hello, how are you today? At 3:30 it was, Here's a report that I've spent, I don't know, 45 minutes putting together. What do you think of this report?
Yeah, so when I woke up, like, wait, when did you write this? So, yeah, you have been overseas.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: I am suffering from the return jet lag right now.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: And we, we actually, today, the day that we record this is my 20th wedding anniversary. So.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Hallelujah. Yeah. Let me say something about anniversaries. I know I've said it before here, but my mother always says anybody can have a birthday. It takes work to have an anniversary. So way to go.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. It's exciting. And, and we took a trip. My wife and I by ourselves took a trip through Thailand and Cambodia and saw all sorts of cool things. And we're trying to reintegrate now. So she slept better than me last night. I kind of starting at about 2 in the morning, was asking the Lord, you know, would it be okay if I had a little more sleep? And he said no. So, okay, I've had a, I've had a full day and it's 10:40 in the morning right now.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: What was the, was the trip all that you wanted it to be?
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that document I sent you this morning was notes for a future episode on travel. There were things about our trip that were fantastic and daddy got a little bit overzealous with the, the itinerary. So I'm going to share some tips for those who travel, how to maybe avoid some of the mistakes I've made. But overall it was great.
What a crazy different culture.
Talk about here. We have to kind of go, what are the gods of the land around us? Like, Is it greed or consumer Right there. It's like, nope, it's this guy.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: We have statues of him every six feet.
And so that was really interesting.
And we had to be very aggressive as we toured and visited temples and all these interesting. We had to be very aggressive to say we don't participate in your ceremonies. That was.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Did they try, did they try to make you do so?
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Oh, they're like, hey, this monk is going to sprinkle water on you and chant right now. And it's like, no, he's not good for you. We aren't here to be disrespectful, but he won't be sprinkling anything on us. And we prefer he not chant at us either, although we can't control that.
So that was interesting. And just.
Man, we. We made out. My one fun fact is we were having this marvelous enchanted experience in Cambodia, which was, I would say, the highlight of the trip. Wow.
Incredible beauty. Jungle went to Angkor Wat, which is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, I think, and this incredible temple that has been there for a thousand years.
We did not know that while we were there, the Thai government, which is where we started and where we were headed after this, decided to begin bombing Cambodia. And so they were dropping bombs about 50 miles from where we were on hotels which were holding, I guess, the bad guys.
And we made it out again. We didn't find any of this out until we got back to Thailand, but we were about 12 hours before they shut the border down between the two countries.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: So I could be coming to you live from Siem Reap Cambodia if that had gone differently. Thankfully, we made it out.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Wow. I've never heard of Angkor Wat in my whole life, but I'm looking at it right now, and it looks incredible.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it was.
It was pretty awesome. And like, our hotel room was two buildings. There was a living room, bathroom, TV area outside, we had our own courtyard with a private pool. And then we had a big bedroom suite.
Two different buildings, our own little private walled area.
And this was like 150 bucks a night. And we had six people. If you just like peeked your head outside your little wall, people are just like, what can we get you? So I think per capita GDP there is $2,000.
Meaning, wow, if you pay somebody US$5 for a cab, like, we. We would take a little motorcycle towed Tuk Tuk into town to go to a restaurant, and it was like $2 was the cost for that ride. And he would go, I'll just wait for you so I can get the ride back. And we're like, it's gonna be three and a half hours. And he's like, yeah, that sounds great.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: So totally different world.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Speaking of your two, two packed itinerary, with that kind of a setup, I would just think, I'm gonna spend two days just enjoying this room.
And then I'm gonna extend my. I'm extend my time here by a week because it's such a sweet setup.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I could have. I could have vegged there for a long time.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: But maybe you're gonna talk about this when you. When we do the travel episode. But you had told me before the trip came about one of the reasons that you decided on the, on your itinerary was because you, you found such a great deal travel wise and accommodation wise while you were there. Is that, is that right?
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah, we got really cheap plane tickets. We got some free hotel rooms, all sorts of stuff. So it turned out, I'll, I'll say this too. It was a blessing, but also kind of sad. I threw my back out the day before we left. Like terrible. I could not walk hardly. And this was the first time I've ever gotten plane tickets on Delta 1, which has the full fold out beds.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Yes, Lord.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: The negative is speak Lord. I could not enjoy it because I was in pretty intense pain.
The positive is I don't think I could have ever gone on a 20 hour flight if I had to sit in a.
I, I don't think I could have gotten on the plane. So it was the Lord's will and that was, that was cool. But I laid flat on my back for the entire ride.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Awesome.
All right. Well, Mark, I, I know I kind of said this in introduction, but we've had so many people ask us.
I've got a buddy, I want him to start pursuing the Abrahamic path with me and what do I, where do I send him? That's kind of like the starter, you know, this, this explains what Abraham's wallet's all about. It helps to kind of baptize a guy into this worldview and then we can go on all sorts of deep dives. What's the starting point for a guy? So that, that's this series. It's the answer of the Abrahamic starter kit. If you, if you can get your head around these basic things, then, then we're off and running. So as I, as I said, we're going to talk about the, the main mission, the primary mission of men. So Mark, you and I have said many times that when we want to answer a basic question about the way life works, God's relationship with mankind, how do we feel about Israel, what was God thinking when he invented the family, etc. We must go. Well, first of all, we have to go to original sources. Not, not hearsay, not somebody's second opin opinion. We got to go to original sources. And we're going back to the beginning of the story, back to Genesis, chapter one, the creation of man.
And I, I'm going to read these, these famous verses, Genesis 1, 27 and 28. It's the very first command God ever gives to mankind. And it says God created man in his own image.
I, I Have to, I just have to put that into the context of he's made everything in the heavens. He's made animals, he, he's made fish and birds and plants, everything that's on the ground, the ground itself, planets, stars, the cosmos. And then we get to this verse, and then he made man in his own image.
So suddenly there's this representative of God in the middle of his creation. He set the stage and, and now he puts the star of creation, mankind. Because mankind is his imager. We represent him in a way that nothing else on the planet does.
The image of God, he created him.
Male and female, he created them.
That's where we get the idea that both men and women are imagers of God. We both have the imprint of God on our souls and we have the ability built into us to communicate with the invisible, eternal God. And God blessed them.
You were blessed to be a blessing.
We have a brother in law who's constantly telling me, you are blessed, you are blessed. And that's important for us to remember that. I, I live under God's favor because I'm his imager. And God said to them, this is verse 28, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion.
That's it, that's the headline.
So we can fill in the blanks and go, how does that, how does that work? How would you, how could you fill the earth? I don't know. Well, yeah, we, we do know you. It would be marriage, sex, babies, and then dominion over all of creation. Everything else that he made, he said, I want you guys to have dominion in my name. On my downline, I want you to fill the earth and subdue it.
This is the, this is the dominion mandate. It's what image bearers do. It's not a suggestion for farmers in the ancient near east. It's the perpetual mission for humanity. Be fruitful, fill the earth and rule it. I have to say on this point we can fast forward to Genesis 9.
This is after a couple of falls. There's the fall of mankind. That happens in the garden with the serpent who deceives Eve. And then Adam falls, follows her into that deception. We also have the, the fall of mankind that happens in Genesis 6, where some freaky angelic beings come down and procreate with human beings in a way that God never intended. It gets bad. And then we get to this place on planet Earth where God says all of their intentions were for evil all of the time. And he speaks to Noah, he says, I want you to take your family. I want you to protect and save your family.
He does so. And guess what God says when they come out of the ark and we're getting ready to effectively restart planet Earth? He says to Noah and his boys, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
So this is the reiterated command of God for human beings. Jesus never rescinds this command. Paul never rescinds this command.
In fact, Paul assumes it in 1st Corinthians 7 when he gives this famous, singleness is better teaching. And we'll get to that in a minute.
The point is, your primary calling as a man is to find a godly wife, marry her. We say young. I will get to that and comment on it.
Make lots of babies with her, raise them into disciples, and together take dominion over some chunk of God's earth, whether that's a land, a business, a neighborhood, an industry.
Kids are not a hobby.
Taking ground and managing it is not optional.
Dynasty is the goal. It's the same for every biblical man for all time. You work to provide for this group.
We can get mixed up and think, well, I have an identity at work, and then I come home and then I'm Dad. I would say, no, you're dad at work. That's the reason that you're at work. It's not because I don't have an identity. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. Maybe I could be a graphic designer and I could wear a T shirt that says, I'm a graphic designer.
That's fine, you can wear that T shirt. But your primary identity, why am I doing this work? Why am I going out and collecting money and provision? Well, it's for this family. The family is my assignment.
You pray and fast and study and spend time with God so that he will form you more into the image of Christ. And you can be equipped for this job so that you can know him. And in knowing him, you can do the things that God does. Well, what does God do? He multiplies himself. He did it with you. He made me to look like him. And so I'm going to do the thing that he does. I'm going to multiply myself. You might get some significant engineering or charity work or graphic design along the way, but this is the main job of mankind. What we just read, I submit to you, if I can hearken back to the previous episode, that I think churches are famously bad at reiterating that this is the main job, that this is the job of mankind.
I have even Been in churches where they have said this is optional. Multiplying and filling the earth and subduing it. That's all. That's all optional. I don't find anywhere in the scripture where that's the case. So that's my first main headline. That's kind of the main point of the whole episode, Mark, is I see this as the mandate for all people, for all time. Doesn't matter what technological age you're. You're living in. It doesn't matter if you have easy access to clean water or medicine. This is the mandate. Do you see it that way?
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Well, I, I don't know how I can say no. If, if this was the, the first command that was repeated, it seems like I have to say, yeah, it probably is the mandate. I think the question that jumps into my mind and maybe you want to hit this later though, is okay, so this is the mandate, but definitely it's not enough, right, just to, to do this. Even on this trip we made a stop in South Korea and South Collapsing because they're not doing this right. Yes. I think the average couple has.07 kids and they say it will be half the current population within 50 years.
You know that that's how like a whole people group vanishes off the face of the earth. But you know who is having babies like, like there's no tomorrow is the, the Muslims. Our, our buddies over at the Just Thinking podcast. I just listened to their entire four hour podcast on political Islam, which was really good. I, I commend it to you. Yes, but, but there's people having that are. I guess if the only goal is like go out and make babies, they're doing it and I don't think they're advancing the purposes of God or the kingdom of God. So what do you say to that?
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Excellent, great question.
I would say that if we look at the, at the passage that we just read, verse 27 and 28 of Genesis 1.
I don't think that we can divorce the, the mandate to fill the earth and subdue it with the supporting first verse that we read which says he made man in his image and he. And he made the. I think there's an insinuation there that this work of multiplication and dominion is about doing so as his imager.
So how do I rule? Let's say I. Let's say you have a place of authority in your church. You're. You're on the board. What do they call that Elder board at your church?
I just have all of these synonyms for that going through my mind.
You're an elder at your church. That's the biblical term for it.
What do you, what are you doing there? I think that's a dominion move. You're trying to manage some piece of territory. And how do you do that? Under what auspices do you do it? You do it as an imager of God. You're. You are a son of God. You're representing his interests. What if you're in, as your wife is Mark, and you're in the medical industry, how do you, how do you execute your responsibilities in the medical field under the auspices of being an imager of God.
That's. That you're walking around going, I'm representing his interests. It doesn't matter what your field of endeavor is. In Isaiah, it says, blessed are the feet of him who brings good news, meaning wherever our feet go, we are dominioning that piece of real estate. I just met with my wife at a coffee shop before recording this. When I was sitting at that table, I was dominioning as an imager of the living God.
So if some were to approach my table. This isn't what is. Let's see, let's have an interface with Steven's personality. That's really not the goal. It's that I'm going to represent God to this person. Which gets me back to our fashion episode, by the way. I want to represent him when I'm talking to a stranger on an, on an airplane everywhere I go. I'm specifically an imager representing the king. So what does my dominion look like? Can I be a tyrant? Can I lead people around by the nose, demanding, etc. No, that's outside the boundaries of these tight boundary lines that are, that are created for me because I know what my king is like. I'm imaging in his name. So let's go specifically to your Muslim example. These people, they are also pursuing a God. It's not our God. Their God also commands dominion.
So they're. They're doing that thing in his name. This is one of. Can I just say this is one of the reasons that Abraham's wallet exists is because the church of the living God in, in the time that we live in is not doing as good a job as the Muslims at just telling people, here's what your God wants of you.
It's such, it's such malpractice to me that you could have a pastor who wouldn't tell people, this is God's mandate for human beings. Go pursue this thing.
So anyways, these guys are there they are following their God, who is not our God. So when you see them acting out dominion, I want you to see this is a rival God. This is the worship of a rival God.
They are doing the thing that our God commands us to do, but they're not doing it in his name and they're not being imagers of the creator God. This is a created God that they worship and they follow. So that's my long winded answer to that challenge.
I'll also just throw in here on this point. We talked, we talked before we started recording about the fact that Paul never married and never had kids. Well, if this is the point of life, well, well, how, how could you. How could. I mean, a constant befuddlement to me is that the guy that wrote to us the most about how the New Testament, what I would call evangelical church operates, was not himself married. And he said that one of the requirements for being a leader in this church is, is managing a family. Says that in, in 1st Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
So what's the deal with Paul? Well, I think that Paul, I'm getting this information from Jeremy Pryor. He turn light bulb, formula, thought. Oh, that makes so much sense.
The main revelation that Paul was living out was in God's, in God's economy. All of the Old Testament, we get family builders. It is the story of family builders, specifically in the line of Abraham.
In the New Testament, we get primarily the story. I mean we get the story of Jesus in, in the first four books. And from there on you'd have to say Paul is more or less the main character of the New Testament from, from there forward. And him talking about Jesus, both of those guys are single guys who, who didn't, who didn't have families, natural families. So what's going on? I think the revelation there is that you can have children that are this multiply and rule. You can have children which are spiritual children.
So you get Paul referring to Timothy, who's Greek, Paul's a Jew, Timothy's Greek and he calls him his son in the Lord. Well, what are you talking. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, timeout.
We've just spent a thousand years following a family line. And the protection of Noah's DNA is obviously very important. And now you're saying, oh, we're, don't worry about the DNA. You're my spiritual son. So that's the revelation. Jesus has 12 sons.
By the way, just a little, little tip here. It's really cool.
We've got the sons of Jacob, the sons of Israel. How Many are there? There's 12.
So we're seeing, oh, this is Israel. This is God's people. This 12. Everybody knows this 12 son story. Well, Jesus himself has 12 sons. Isn't that interesting? What's he doing? Well, one of the things.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: Sorry, go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt you.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: No, no, go.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Like the church and Israel might be the same thing. I don't know.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: There is definitely a reiteration of that story, of that picture, and there is a new story being told that is of a spiritual nature.
So that was a revelation to me. I had spent my 20s not building a family, not having babies, but making disciples.
And when this dawned on me, this story of this Abrahamic story on me, I felt like such a massive tool.
I felt like I've been had. I've been serving the institutional church machine with my life in so many words. I don't mean I was on a church staff always, but I was making disciples. That's what I was doing with my time. Well, where's my babies? What's going on here? And I believe that in the Lord there is something like spiritual sonship that counts. I don't know exactly how to do the math, but it counts.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: I. I want to kind of ask another question here because I do think there's. There's the Pauls, and that's just. Anytime you talk about this for me in like a institutional church setting, you get the immediate retort. Well, Paul didn't have children, and he was the greatest Christian ever to live. And I.
I think that the example of Paul, which is. Is held up as better, is an example of lifelong celibacy. Okay. It's not just childlessness, and it's not just.
I'm out there on. On the dating apps, and I just haven't found anyone yet. So I'm calling myself someone with the gift of singleness. That's right. Biblically, there's no, no such thing as the temporary.
Sort of like, I'm trying to get a wife, but I don't have one.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: So that's one thing. But the other thing is I have talked to buckle your seatbelt missionaries who have taught me, a married couple who's looked me in the face and said, you know, we're just so excited about ministry work that God doesn't want us to have children.
And I would say we. We know that biblically, that's not the case. Now, you and I were talking before this episode. We might do a whole episode on the types of challenges people face when they Desire children and don't have them. So that's not what I'm talking about here.
But to say we are going to elect not to pursue children, that to me is, is not an acceptable category in the scripture. And when you choose marriage, so most, most of us, even Paul says this, most of you are going to choose marriage because you have biological desires that can only be met there.
Some of you will have this supernatural gift where you go, I'm actually able to say no to those, those things. It's not going to bother me and I can wholeheartedly full steam ahead for the gospel.
But for most of us we're going to choose marriage which means choosing sex and choosing the natural, the outcome of that which is. Yeah right.
And, and I just wanted to kind of throw that out there that we, we are saying if you're married then normative outcome of that is, is children, offspring.
Now some people are going to struggle and there's, there's things we can talk about there. We're not at all condemning those people as having a lesser marriage, anything like that. But I think it's important to say if you're choosing marriage, you're choosing parenting of children and not just spiritual children. Now you might have spiritual children too. Yeah, I just think that the, the, the, the big church house is going to go well. We would love it if you, you know, 28 year old couple just hold back for a few years on babies because we like it when you're leading the young adults group or whatever.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: Not all churches are like that. I go to a church that doesn't talk like that, praise God. But I've seen it and so I thought it was worth calling out.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Yeah, it's super common. Okay, on this topic, about this main thing, I'm going to move on from this topic but I just want to give three little pieces of Big brother advice for our, for our newcomers.
I'm, I'm just going to glide over the surface with the statements and then we'll move on. But one, one piece of advice would be to marry early and marry well.
We have done entire episodes on this topic about what how does a young man, how does a young man build his life? What are the steps towards what we call Abrahamic greatness?
Marry early and marry well. So most, most guys today, including church guys, they treat marriage like it's a capstone.
Something to you to do after you've got a degree and you've just. Careers seem solid. I think of the 401ks got started my Travel bucket list. We've kind of got that, got the big things out of the way. That's backward.
The biblical idea is marry while you're still moldable. So you go from a young man to a young married man and you grow to maturity inside marriage.
You get married before your bad habits harden into calluses. You marry and you start a family early.
Why? Well, because as, as our, as our friend Mark Douglas often says, marriage itself is formative. It teaches you to lead and to sacrifice and to work hard, to budget and to pray and to put off good now for better in the future. A single man can ask me how. I know a single man can get by on almost nothing.
Takes very. You don't have to work hard, you don't have to work consistently.
Get married and suddenly the, the needs are regular.
And you can't say, well, I'm, I'm just not going to eat this week.
I could say that as a single guy. I couldn't say that as a married guy. So waiting until the world says that you're ready usually means waiting until you're selfish and financially comfortable and set in your ways. And you have.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: You.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: You just figure, I guess this is the next thing that we do. I would agree with you, Mark, that the sexual urges that are in a young man, they're like a homing beacon that God has put into a young man that goes, ding, ding, ding, ding, and it's time to start looking for a wife. I don't mean that the first time you have any kind of lusty thoughts, you should go run out and get married. It just means that you're. I'm. We're entering into a phase of life where you should be looking for a wife. That's my first.
That's my first little big brotherly advice.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Can I interject on this one?
[00:31:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Let me just say. Say one more thing. Court a woman who wants the same vision.
If you're dating, talk about vision early. Talk about kids and maybe land and legacy. Don't waste years on someone who thinks, well, one child, max, in a condo downtown is the dream. Just don't, just, just, just have these conversations early. This is what I want out of life. This is what I think God's word says. So now, go ahead. Mark.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I know you. You were off doing missionary work and all sorts of things and trying to be the best Christian you could.
I got married when I was, like, right after I graduated from college. And I was, like, patting myself on the back, what a Christian guy? Like, because I was on the east coast. And people thought we were absolutely insane for doing that. And I felt real self congratulatory. I guess if I had been in Texas, that would have been actually pretty normal what I did. But I remember growing up, my, my dad always would say to me and my sister, and I'm not condemning him at all. I think this was totally normal thing to say. But he would say, yeah, you guys get married as early as you want, because I'm looking forward to that day because you're off my payroll the day you get married. And I, I, it made me think about Jeremy Pryor. He was at the Abraham's Wallet retreat sharing with us, and he talked about the way they manage family money. And he said, our family money is available to any of our kids for a few purposes.
And I think he said those purposes were education if they need to get education if they need to start a business, or if there's anything out there that would stand in the way of them growing their families. And so I was thinking about these two things, and I sat down with my oldest daughter and I said, you know, I think I've repeated to her what my dad said to me. Like, yeah, as soon as you get married, you're his problem financially. And I said, I think this is totally whack what I've said to you. I, I think if you found a husband and were in the middle of like, getting education and that made sense for what you were trying to do with your life, I would be delighted to continue helping pay for that education. And I wouldn't tell you to, to postpone marriage until you've got a bachelor's degree. I think that's kind of crazy to even think about doing that. I would say you could have a baby while you were in college. I was hanging out with some college guys a couple weeks ago, right before my trip, and they were telling me about these girls. It sounds like they're, they're finding Christian women who, they're like, I think maybe we could start a family, and this could be the one. And they're sophomores in college. And I said, are you going to marry her? And he's like, well, you know, we'll date until were done with college and then make that decision. I'm like, that sounds awful. Like, and what kind of weird stuff is that gonna do to your relationship? Being like, if you're, if you're godly with your physical relationship, then by three years from now, you're gonna have learned to be sort of platonic friends? That aren't allowed to touch each other. That's weird. I was like, marry that girl if she's the right one. Now I'm like, you said Steve, a hundred percent matters a the right one.
We're not telling people just pick whoever and go that this decision, as much as it can have great impact to do it early, it can have total disaster impact to do it flippantly or marry someone who's not aligned. So we're not saying that, but it blew all these guys brains to go like you should just marry them as soon as possible. What's actually what's really stopping you?
And usually the answers are mostly cultural, like oh, that would be weird.
So I'm not pushing my kids to get married when they're 18. That's not like a goal specifically, but it's also something I've gone like if the Lord brings you your husband when you're 19 years old and it's obvious and that guy is in relationship with our family and we're like, yes. I'm like, go for it dude. Why not? So that's my, that's my thoughts on this one.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: I'm with you great big brother piece of advice. Number two, have lots of kids.
They are your crown. They're not your burden. And if you're thinking of that them that way, that's worldly.
Here's Psalm 127.
Children are a reward from the Lord. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are the children that born in one's youth.
Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.
We have had entire episodes on this just recently as a matter of fact, in the fall we did one about have a bunch of kids. I just have to say, if you're new to the podcast, this is a big thing. If you really believe that your heritage and your legacy and dominion is the having of many kids, then have a lot of kids. I think we've been sold the lie that kids are expensive liabilities that wreck your fun.
And the truth is that they are the only eternal asset that you get to you could produce by doing something you really enjoy. They're an absolute joy in life. They're your army for dominion. And biblically, we think that they're your retirement plan and a multi generational vision. And I don't mean that they're going to pay for you in your old age. You can take care of that yourself with planning. But they are the plan of what am I going to do? I can speak for myself. What am I going to do?
What will be my main vocation when I'm 80 years old? I know the answer to that question. I'll be a grandfather and perhaps a great grandfather. And I will be taking that vocation very seriously. It's what I want to be doing. They are the good life.
Have a bunch of kids.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I think both you and I have talked about this, but if you're the outside observer and you go click on our biographies, you go, well, you guys have three kids and two kids.
What the heck? You're telling us to have kids and just, hey, my sister lives down the street from me and has six kids. The oldest one is still pretty young and so she is in the thick and my brother in law too, in the thick of the physical parenting stage. So it's not like I think somebody could look at you and I, Steve, and go, easy for you to say, you've never sort of waded through that mud puddle. But I think this is part of why we say it, guys, is because.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: I look back and go, like you, Steve, you know, different. I got married young and then I, like a jack wagon, waited for five years before we even opened to the possibility of having kids. And, and I look back as, as that being one of the biggest mistakes of my life. If I could redo it, I would have been like, maybe we take a year to establish our marriage, but we're going to start having kids as soon as possible.
Yes. And the, the fun thing about the way God designed us is that if you follow his, his prescription for sexuality, you at least have nine months before you have any kids when that's true. So.
But that's true. But I think that that's kind of why we harp on this is because, you know, whether it's waiting to get married, waiting to have kids once you're married, we have not operated from the time we were young in the way we would advise a younger guy to operate. And we kind of both look back and go praise God for what he's given us and do it better than we did.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. I did not know this stuff. I did not hear this when I was 19. I wish I had.
I think that boomers in the greatest generation kind of intuited this because they were closer to that kind of agrarian society that the farm, the farm life that used to typify Americans.
I grew up a suburban kid and I did exactly what you did, Mark. I got married and thought, well, let's hang around for a while.
And again, I had just come from the mission field. And I thought, well, I'll go on another mission journey with my wife. We could do that for three years and travel and have ministry experience again. This idea of, like, ministry is the most noble thing that a young person can do. It's crazy. It's crazy in retrospect.
And then we thought, well, maybe it's time to have kids. Well, then we didn't have kids immediately. So now we're, Our timeline is even further behind.
We, we, we had two kids. We didn't stop more happening, but that's all that happened. If I could snap my fingers and say, I have four more kids that are in their 20s right now, I would absolutely do it. That would be amazing.
I do have. I didn't. I wasn't sitting on my hands at all time. I do have a whole bunch of disciples that have generated over these decades. And the one thing I guess I would say, if somebody was pointing at me and going, what. What did you do? I would say, let's just look at my downline of the men that I've discipled and how many kids they've had. And that once I got it, I was, I was preaching this and they produced a lot of kids, the guys around me.
But no, I didn't. I. This is, yeah, this is why we're. We're hitting this gong is because we, we didn't get it. We didn't know it.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: Yeah. It's such an affront to God, I think, when a couple goes, this is when we will have kids. It's like, I, you know, like you said, my wife is, is an obgyn, so she, like, helps people with the whole baby thing. And more and more this is on the rise that people think they're going to snap their fingers and get pregnant and then they go, that's not happening for us like we planned. Well, the scripture says from the beginning of time that it's the Lord that opens and closes the womb.
So I think if we say this is under our complete control because some technology allowed us to prevent pregnancy starting about 50 years ago, then it can be a really rude awake up when you go, oh, I. While I can kind of put. Put a block to pregnancy, I certainly cannot just make pregnancy happen. And so that's another thing I think a lot of times people don't consider when they finally get around to being open to kids is they think, well, it'll just happen immediately. Not true.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
And I'm happy for us to take a deep dive in that in the future. And we know that, we know that because of our fiddling, I, I, that's a technical term, because of our fiddling with the idea of, of fertility.
We know that our bodies, human bodies, have reacted in all sorts of not good ways. And, and we know that infertility is on the rise among the young. And so, yeah, it would be very appropriate for us to address that. I would just, let me just say infertility is a problem.
It's a problem. It's, it's never a blessing. It's a problem.
We can, we can prove that scripturally. And again, it, it would be an opponent to the main mandate that we're talking about. I'll give one more piece of advice and we'll close it up for today.
Big brother advice number three. This is just a result of that dominion mandate is that get land and learn how to manage it.
So part of subdue and have dominion is dominion. What are you going to manage? So a piece of property, and I'm going to put big flowy brackets around that. A piece of property is something that you can improve and pass down. And you could gather the family around this thing.
You can start small. You can start with a little starter house and manage that thing, whatever you can steward. But grow, grow in the things that you, that you manage.
Your, your ground that you manage could be a business.
It's certainly your family that's part of the ground that you're working on. But I've got to go back to this thing.
In the very early years of Abraham's Wallet, we talked about land. I remember talking to Justin Wolfenberg about land and the, the, the things like gardening and repair skills and animal husbandry. Those kind of skills teach work ethic. They, they develop the character of your family. They create, they create the home and family as a place of production that everybody comes back to. And it gives us margin from the system as opposed to we have nothing here, so we have to go out and get all the stuff.
I would just say, I'm not going to say everybody needs to own 10 acres of land or you're not a real good American. I would just say let's be the kind of people who want to take response, growing responsibility for stewarding something.
And the, the sort of lie, the modern lie, that isn't it great that you could be a young married at age 25, you could live on your computer. You guys could be totally portable. You could go anywhere in the world. You could have these extended trips and vacations because you're not in charge of anything. Isn't that great? And obviously we've got people like the World Economic Forum who are saying to us, yeah, why don't you just lease your computer and lease your car and have no ownership at all of anything? And I would say the biblical mandate is the opposite of that. We are going to be people who own stuff and we're going to manage stuff.
[00:45:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it's important to say we're not advocating some sort of TRADCON vision of you must go raise chickens on the farm in order to fulfill the biblical mandate. I think there's a lot of ways to steward sort of quote, unquote land like you just said. And yeah, different families. This is part of the fun stuff about finding a wife and aligning a vision and figuring out what your assignment is in the world is. Different families are going to have totally different fields. They're supposed to go plow.
And that's, that's really cool.
So some families are going to manage, I don't know, crypto empires and other families are going to manage businesses. And I do think that, you know, there's something to productive assets that kind of bear the culture of your family, whether that's a piece of property or business or whatever. That is very different than just, hey, dad died and he left me some stocks. He left me some mutual funds.
We're not opposed to that at all. We think financial assets can be really important piece of the puzzle. But.
But what.
What is it that you're building that you actually have to steward and go out and work to make it produce? That's. That's kind of your land.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: Yep.
In closing, I'd like to just review real quick the rotten fruit of avoiding this mission. This isn't a mission that, oh, well, we Christians think that we do this. And you people that don't believe, you think this.
No, as I said, this is the mission for humans. If you're human, you were born as an image bearer of the creator God. And this is the mission for. For humans.
So the. Here's the rotten fruit. If you delay marriage, look at the stats. This might not be you, but statistically it means fornication is going to happen. It means prolonged adolescence is going to happen, which means a kind of a calcifying of a selfish lifestyle.
We know that there is an outrageous loneliness epidemic happening right now. This is all the fruit of delaying marriage and undervaluing marriage in our society. It's bad fruit. It's bad for us.
If you limit kids in Your life.
Mark's telling us about what's, what's like in parts of Asia. An aging population, weak churches, no arrows in your hands for the culture war. That's bad fruit.
And if there's no land and no roots and no managing of any stewarding things, families are blown around by every economic wind. If you do the, the American deal, which is, I'm trying to have enough money for me so that I get to zero on my dying day and maybe there's $3,500 left to buy a casket there, Peace out, next generation.
And you think that that's all that money's for and you want to minimize the things that you're responsible for, et cetera. There's bad fruit from that. Families blown around and blown apart. Divorce becomes way more common in that scenario. There's no inheritance to pass down and you haven't developed the work ethic in your children so that this multigenerational thing happens. We've spent entire episodes talking about when inheritance is given to unprepared kids, it invariably destroys them. So we have to do the work. If we believe in this multi generational story, we have to do the work of preparing our kids. And management of something is, is one of the ways to do that. So bad fruit if you avoid the mission.
So I just want to say that this is your primary mission. It's not optional.
And a couple of, couple of therefores for you as we close. If you're single, please start pursuing marriage this week like it's your job. Take it very seriously. If you have any sexual desire in you at all, go like this is God speaking to me through my body. I have a homing device built into me that's telling me to go find a wife. That's straight out of First Corinthians 7.
If you're married without kids, please pray about opening your hands to life asap.
If you're already in the thick of it, by God, double down on shepherding your family towards a multi, multi generational 200 story vision.
Now, do you have something to say, Mark? You really look like you're just ready to say something.
[00:50:27] Speaker B: I just want to chip in my, my huzzah. That's it. I think that we, sometimes we do episodes like this and maybe somebody feels a little bit like, are you, are you coming after me? We might be giving you like a firm slap on the shoulder like we would a brother.
But, but really it's. It's two guys who have made some good choices and some bad choices, sort of calling you and saying, we've, we've walked, maybe for some of you, not all of you, we've walked a little further ahead the road and can, can tell you this is what we've experienced that's really good. And we've learned from the word of God and from other brothers.
So, so I hope what you hear, guys, is that you are the man for the job. This stuff, wherever you are on that spectrum that Steven just mentioned, it's for you and, and it's available for you to walk in. And I think there's a lot of blessing when you say yes to God's plan for how we're supposed to, to steward the world.
[00:51:28] Speaker A: Great.
Well, right now, while this is fresh in your mind, I'm going to invite you to come join our email
[email protected] Tribe I'd love for you to get our summit retreat guide. We put together a goals summit guide every year so that you and the wife can start setting some goals for the year.
The guide walks you through a weekend away and you will come home with a mess of goals and you'll have a sample week that's plotted out that will work and will help you build capital every single day in your home. So I'd love for you to do that. So run over to abrahamswallet.com tribe and join our email list if you haven't Next episode we're going to continue the Starter Kit series and we're going to discuss how the how the biblical family unit works and that it's basically you guys against the world.
Until then, run your home and your dough like a biblical boss and we'll.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: See you next week.
