Mastering the art of Stewardship Part 2

All right, all right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the King's Council Podcast. We're back in the studio today.

Back at it, baby. Back at it. How are you? Good. I think I say that every week.

Yes, but it's a good week every week.

It is. Yes, it is.

Yes, absolutely. Welcome back, everybody. We are back on part 2 of Stewardship today, which, man, last week, if you haven't listened to last week, I'm gonna encourage you just to push pause and go back to that because we unpacked a lot last week. Um, you guys know we are on, uh, this, this kick here of what we consider to be the Kingdom Money Principles. Principle number 1 would be ownership. God owns everything. And we, we did a couple episodes on that. We're now on episode 2 of stewardship and what does that really mean. And last week we really unpacked of, uh, it's really the effective management of resources that we've been given to us to steward. And we kind of equate it a lot to money. Uh, that's just our normal worldly brains go to that. But it's— it is on everything. Your time, your, your mindset, right?

Yeah. Language. I just thought of this though. Maybe because you're such a good steward, that's why God keeps entrusting you with more French Bulldogs.

Or I, I keep failing and he keeps like making me pass the test. Let's dive into this.

Stewardship.

Stewardship. Yeah. So again, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, make sure you do that. Um, if, if you have, then let's dive into this. You know, we unpacked a ton last week, um, and we got a bunch more for— to really examples, but we're also going to provide just some kind of practical insights here of what does this really look like in my own life as well here. And we were preparing for this, we were— there's so many examples in the Bible about stewardship, but specifically one of probably the most famous, uh, we talked about the parable of the talents a little bit last week, but I think another One of the most famous stories in the Bible is when Jesus fed the 5,000. Yeah, he turned the fish and the loaves, he multiplied those.

It was really more like 20,000 people because it was 5,000 men plus their wives, their children. So probably about 20,000 people.

Yes. But what I think a very overlooked portion of that, that story— so you can find it in Matthew, you can find it in Mark, and you can find it in John. And specifically in John chapter 6, we're not going to read the whole thing for you guys, but I do think that this is overlooked a lot in this story. Obviously is incredible. I mean, just what, what Jesus did in this. And I do, I love it. We talked about this a little bit on last week's coaching call within our private community here. I loved it because he met them where they, with what they wanted, right? They all needed to hear the gospel and they eventually heard it, but he gave them what they wanted, which they needed to eat, right? Otherwise, what are they gonna do, right? Got thousands of people here, and it's like, what do we do? And Jesus said, here, give it to me. He took the bread, he took the fish, blessed it, and then distributed it, multiplied it. And picking up in verse 11, again, we're going to dive into the stewardship principle of this here. Uh, verse 11 says—

of John 6—

of John chapter 6, sorry. Yep. Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, 'Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.' So they gathered them and filled them in 12 baskets with pieces of 5 barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. I love this. Verse 12: When they had all had enough to eat, he said to the disciples, 'Gather the pieces that are left over.' This is an example of stewardship. Like, God is not wasteful. All the remnants, the breadcrumbs, he's like, gather it. And what I think is kind of funny about this too, this is why I do know God just has a sense of humor, or I believe he does, is 12 basketfuls, right? 12 disciples. You know, each one of them is walking away with a basketful like, what the dirt just happened here, right? That had to be the reason.

Yeah, they get their own personal Happy Meal.

Exactly, exactly. But I think that's just a principle of management, of actual stewardship, that God cares about what's left over and that nothing be wasted with what he's actually given us to steward.

Yeah, anytime you read anything in the Bible, you got to look at yourself, look inwardly. God never encourages waste, right? So how wasteful are we? How much money are we wasting on dumb things? How much time are we wasting? You know, just the idea of wastefulness. I mean, God is not in favor of it one bit at all. And we waste a lot. We really do.

We do.

I mean, and if you look at most countries in the world that aren't us, I mean, they would die for just a portion of the things that we have, for just a fraction or a ration of the food that we get to eat. And we often take it for granted. I think part of the reason this country is in the shape that it is spiritually is because we are so blessed with so many things and we have abundance and we became such a materialistic country that we became too comfortable.

Yeah.

And we, we stopped being grateful for the things that we have. Absolutely. I mean, if you live in this country, first of all, if you have running water, a roof over your head, a means of transportation, you're in like the richest 5% of the whole Earth, right? And that doesn't mean a big house, that doesn't mean a lot of food every day, that doesn't mean a fancy car. If you just have those things compared to the rest of the world, you're wealthy. And we just take it for granted time and time again.

We do, we really do. And it does just come down to perspective, you know. We just got back from a medical missions trip in the Dominican Republic. You know, some people that actually I've had the ability to go on some of these trips before. This was Ellie's first trip though on a missions trip like this. And you know, if you have kiddos, I think it's just important for them to be able to go and see what the rest of the world is really like. And it just gives them a whole new perspective and outlook of, man, I do really have a pretty good life. And just because I didn't get the new Xbox game, or is Xbox even a thing anymore?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Probably.

It might be. Or didn't get whatever, you know, we're still so blessed beyond belief here, and it just puts really things into perspective. One thing that we took away from the Dominican— Ash Nellie and I were talking about this— is like everybody's just so happy. They have so little, but the joy of the Lord is so evident in those that have Christ.

Yeah.

And it's like, man, we got it so twisted here. And it's just this consumption mentality of— yeah, it's just, it's, it's a, it's a great eye-opener, a great experience for, for those that are contemplating or even considering going on a trip like that or taking your kiddos on something like that. I would highly, highly recommend it.

Yeah, well, when Jesus is your everything, you have enough.

You do.

But when you have other things in addition to Jesus, you start to make other things your idols. You start to put Jesus on the back burner. Jesus is just like a compartment in your overall life. But when Jesus is all you have, you have that joy because he is enough. Yeah, he really is. One of the greatest things, you know, thinking of just the experience Ellie had, one of the best things that Lucy and I did as parents was take our kids to a family homeless shelter consistently. And one Christmas, I think the kids— because we have, if listeners don't know, we have 4 older kids aged 27 to 20, and then we have our 4-year-old. So the older 4 They were— I mean, the oldest was probably only 16 at the time. And one particular Christmas, we got the list from the shelter of the, like, what these families wanted for Christmas, what the kids there wanted for Christmas. And we were— Lucy and I were heartbroken. They wanted underwear, they wanted socks, things like that. So we talked to our kids, and, you know, our kids have their little wish lists. Lucy told them about Santa at a very young age, but it wasn't anything anything good about Santa. I was like, no, Santa, that's divination. He's fake. He's a fairy tale. He's not a real person. Um, let's focus on Jesus.

Yeah.

So, um, you know, but, you know, especially when I came into their lives, I always wanted to spoil them and kind of like I, I was spoiled around Christmas time. Sure. And we got the— but we had this list from the family shelter, and we went and talked to the kids. And as much as we want to do for them, especially— I remember that particular year, they know if you do good in school, you do your chores, if you're respectful, if you're, you know, a godly person, you're going to get rewarded as much as we can possibly reward you. And they all had great years, and we wanted to go above and beyond for them. But then we got this list from the shelter, and we sat down, had a conversation with the kids, and we said, listen, we want to do for you guys, but look at these families, look at these kids that are your age and even younger, and look at what their wish list is. Yeah. And every one of them agreed, no, we don't want any gifts this year. Let's all chip in. Even the kids, like their little allowances, they were chipping in and we're gonna take care of multiple families there. And we did that. And it, that's only because they saw throughout the years that there's people who have less than, right? And every time you leave a situation like that, you, you just feel grateful for what you have. Yeah. You may not have a ton, but what you have, you feel grateful because you have more than this next person, more than this family. And these families weren't just like poor, you know, um, milk-in-the-system families by any means. Like, guys who had good jobs and families, they lost their job, they lost their house, they lost everything, and now they're in a family shelter, something that probably 6 months prior they never would have fathomed.

Yeah.

And here they are, and their kids just want socks. It's like, oh my gosh.

Yeah, man, that's, that's good. That's so good.

But back to stewardship, it makes you want to steward what you have, whether it's a lot or a little. I want to steward because I'm grateful for what I have, because there's so many people that have less than what I have.

Yes.

And I guarantee if they had— if they were in our shoes, in my shoes, and had what I had, they— I mean, they'd be doing backflips, right? You know, they, they couldn't fathom that's wealth. That's, you know, the way we look at Elon Musk and some of these richest people on earth. And I don't necessarily strive to have that type of money necessarily. It's not like one of my goals. I want to make as much as I can to give away as much as I can to build the kingdom and to get the gospel to people who need to hear it and to provide for those who are in need. But ultimately, they look at us like we're superheroes, right? And we look at ourselves and we're just like, oh, just throw that away, right? I mean, look at storage units. Storage units, I, I heard the number one, it's like a $30 billion like company or, or industry. Yeah, it's crazy. And people just with extra stuff they don't know what to do with, right?

Yeah.

And people are getting rich just building these little units like, oh, a little 5x3 units, stuff your crap in there.

Yeah.

10x20 unit, oh, throw a lot of crap in there that you'll never use. Yeah.

Building bigger barns, for sure. Well, I think that's a good kind of segue into what I was hoping we could dive into here is a little bit about specifically in money and really understanding it. Because I think most of our lives— this is again in particular to America here— most of our lives, the competition that we're experiencing is usually between God and money in our life. Or I don't know if it's competition is the right word, but The fight for our heart is between those two. Yeah, we know this in Matthew 6:24. It says that we can't serve both God and mammon, right? Or money, or some translations. And that's this— the spirit of mammon is like the spirit of money. It's like the power. It's wild that of all things, it is God and money. It's like, what? It's not like God and the devil, God and Satan? Like, it's not murder, it's not lust, but it's money? Of all things. That's what he pointed out here. And I think that's so important for us to understand whether we have a little, we often are craving money, or we have a lot and we're stewarding it very poorly in that time. And so I think it's, it's so important for us to truly, if we're in, in alignment with God and, and he is truly Lord of our life, this is now a part of our sanctification process. And how are we stewarding what he's given us, right? And if we understand what money actually is, it's a tool. I actually, I think maybe an episode past we talked about money being amoral, but it's actually in Genesis. I was actually listening to a Myron Golden snippet on this, and he's— I mean, God technically called gold good in the garden. Like, it was good. And which is fascinating to really think about that. Like, is it amoral or is it actually good knowing that anything could be used for good or for evil? But it comes back to just the position, the person's heart, their disposition towards it. And whatever God created for good, we know the enemy uses for evil. And so when we have that understanding, this is now, again, just the submission to God, number one. And then how do we make money serve us? We can't serve both of them, right? It's literally impossible. Scripture tells us that. How do we know? How do we do this thing? And most of it all boils down to just this principle of stewardship. How do we do this thing appropriately?

Yeah, only one thing can have your heart. Like, you can only truly be devoted to one thing or one person, being Jesus Christ, or money. Yes. You can't be in love with money or be devoted to money and possibly be devoted to God the way he calls on us to be devoted.

Yeah.

And it's not even just a command to be devoted to him. It's in our best interest. Yeah, that's what's best for us, right? When we're—

well, every command is basically what's best for us. Oh yeah, whether we knew it or not, right? We think it's not sometimes, but it's like, if it's in the Bible, that's what's best for us, right?

Think of the Beatitudes. First one, blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Poor in spirit means I have absolutely no self-sufficiency at all. I'm just like surrendering it all. I'm letting it go. I'm depending 100% on God. It's, it's a desperation for God to really be poor in spirit like that. Yes, you know, and like we just mentioned, the— these people in third world countries, they don't have a lot, but when they have Jesus, they have everything, absolutely everything.

Just on the topic of money too, I know last week we talked about the parable of the talents, but I really, I think it's important to even bring this back up again of, you know, our, our perspective. Remember the perspective of the dude who just buried the, the one? This is what, this is what I think it relates to us. Our perspective of our master, who is God, is in direct correlation with, with how we view money, right? And, and it's like is our devotion to, to God, or is it to money, right? And a lot of us as business owners, this is where we get to check ourselves often. And we need to put some accountability checks in our life because even though we think or we justify things of why we work so hard all the time, it is to provide well for our family, to give for our family. But when we'd really truly boil down, boil it down, like, are we truly— are we still truly submitted to the Lord? Are we still spending time with him every single day, quiet time? That's the stewardship of just, you know, you spending your time, right? Investing your time. And maybe that's, maybe that's a mindset shift, a language shift that you have to start to take into consideration too. It's like we're not spending our time, we're investing our time. Because if we don't take that time with the Lord, how in the world can we, and, you know, spend our time while we're doing other things throughout our day, running our businesses? The true investment that we have is time. Money at the end of the day is a replenishable source. Time is not. And I think it is our most valuable asset that any of us have. And so when it comes to stewardship of time, first and foremost, it should be first and foremost above anything else that we go to do to go make money.

Yeah, I mean, just the idea of stewarding your time well, that's another thing. How much time are we wasting? And with all the technology we have nowadays with social media, anybody with a social media account, you're wasting time throughout the day. Yeah, 100%.

I catch myself at night sometimes where I'm like, I'm so exhausted, and then all of a sudden I'm scrolling and it's like, dude, 20, 30 minutes passes and I'm like, what am I doing, right? Put this stupid thing down.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it sounds weird to just fast from social media or fast from things like that, technology, electronics, but you really need to do it. Yeah, you need to do it from time to time. And every time you normally open up that, that social media app, Instagram, whatever it may be, open your Bible app. Yeah, you're— if do it for a day, your day will be so much different.

Yes, we'd written this down earlier. I think we may have even talked about this sometime in the past as well, but the pers— our perspective of God is going to either empower the best of us or the worst of us, right? And, and with that perspective, that's at the end of the day, that is what is going to determine how life goes for us, how well it goes for us. If what does that perspective actually look like? Is it God is true owner of everything and I'm just managing the maybe the little he's given me or the lot he's given me, but I've proven myself faithful to continually pursue this sanctification process. But at the end of the day, God's in control. And like, if we have that peace and that contentness, man, there's such a freedom within that versus constantly kind of trying to keep up with the Joneses or, you know, trying to impress those around us, especially in the social media world. And, you know, you try to be flashy and you try to, you know, one-up each other all the time. But like, for what? It's all perishing. It's all burning up at the end. I— and then just, there's just such an understanding and just a freedom of, of that perspective of who truly owns it all, and we get to just steward what he's given us.

Yeah. You know I'm not gonna let the word contentness pass, right? It's contentment.

Contentmentness. Come on.

And that's what a good brother does.

Yes. Direct you.

You do. With love and grace.

Regular basis.

Yes. Well, you make a lot of errors. You mispronounce Sounds a lot of words.

Well, you don't have to read good and be an entrepreneur.

Yeah, if this farm boy from South Dakota could do it, that's true.

So can you. Absolutely.

Learn the secrets. Take Dominion.

Oh, that's phenomenal.

That's great. You could be illiterate too and make a million dollars.

Is there one O or two O's on that?

Two.

Two.

Yeah.

All right, all right. I'm just trying to keep him in check.

Don't question me on my grammar. I take pride in my grammar.

Oh, that's—

I can't even— like, sometimes you send emails very quickly and they're, you know, you forget— posture—

not to forget, you just don't do it because you're trying to do an apostrophe in a text, bro, or maybe an email, right?

I can't send anything unless the grammar is proper.

That's why it takes 10 minutes to get a reply.

Is that why? Maybe. Type it out, proofread it, it's good, double-check it. Yeah. Uh, back to stewardship.

Yes, yes. So much that, that I think we can continue on. And even since we're on the topic of, of kind of money specifically on this, I maybe want to open up the, the thought or idea for people of a budget versus margin. Okay. And we did a couple years ago, we did a coaching call on this within the King's Council. And because I think a lot of us, first off, when you even hear the word budget it kind of just makes you feel like, uh, I got to be a budget. Like, you know, Dave Ramsey said I can't spend money on this or whatever because I'm living on a budget. And we've created this perspective of what a budget actually is. And in reality, a budget is a great thing. Businesses have budgets, they have marketing budgets, and it's not a restriction on what you can do, but it's money that's allocated to specific things, right? And all of us should have that within our businesses, like, right? We have a marketing budget. We have a budget to go out and eat. We have a budget for date night with our wife, a budget for Christmas, you know, whatever that situation is. But it's essentially planning ahead of time, setting realistic expectations versus like what I think the perspective has become of just like this restrictive understanding of like I can't do things, right? And again, back to every commandment in the Bible is it's not what you can't do, it's how This is how life will go for you if you actually follow these principles. Yeah, right. And so change our perspective on that. But also, I just want to even challenge the idea that, you know, I don't know if God is a— got a budget, but I think there's definite evidence that he tells us to steward well, to plan for things. I mean, there's many references throughout Scripture of— I don't even— can't even think off the top of my head the verses now, but it's like what I love about counting the costs. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What I love though about just— I want to maybe introduce the idea or concept of margin into your mindset here, because I think while budgets are going to be great for us to have, we still should operate with a concept or idea of margin. Because yeah, what I love, even God gives us as an example of the tithe, you know, it wasn't like a budget for the tithe. A margin is like a percentage, right? It's like the 10% is on your increase,, and so it's, it's, I mean, how great is it that God just didn't say you have to pay $500 every month or $500,000 every month, right? It's like that wasn't a part of the law, but it was a percentage of everything on the increase that we have, and, and it's a principle that, that he instilled. It was, crazily enough, the concept of the tithe, which we're going to get into this in, in the coming episodes, was well before the law was actually put into place. But I believe God put that into place for us to be blessed. Yeah. If we operated within these principles. And so just understanding this concept or idea of walking in a mindset of margin, whether it is your time— and we have— we should have non-negotiables in your life of, I'm absolutely going to spend time in the word of God. I'm actually going to spend time in prayer.. But the rest of it, when we get into this mindset of like, I can only do these things, it takes us out of the ability to even be used by God, right? Like, I'm busy for this meeting. I can't, you know, I'm not going to pay attention to the guy even though I feel like Holy Spirit prompted me to go pray for him. I can't because I'm operating on a budget mindset where I'm not stewarding my time well enough to be able to be even used by God. Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah, I'm trying to put this into perspective a little bit.

Yeah, that verse, by the way, was Luke 14:28. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost whether he has enough to complete it?

Yes.

So that was the verse. Thank you. And it's funny talking about budget because when Puka, who's now 24 years old, she was down with her two babies to Texas last month or the month before, and the topic of conversation came up how my favorite thing to say for like a good year when she was a teenager was, it's not in the budget. We had just done Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. Yeah. And everything was budgeted like to the penny. And if anything came up, like, you know, yeah, at the time I had 4 kids. Yeah. You know, you spend a lot of money on kids, stuff comes up, you need to create a budget, right? And I'm like, it's not the budget. Yeah, it's not in the budget. And it was a fun conversation. It's fun when your kids grow up and they like just tell you things that you did when you're a parent. Yes. Like some great things, some things that, that we could just laugh about now. But I remember it was like, nope, it's not in the budget, it's not in the budget. Yeah, constantly.

Yep. Yeah, that is good. And, and so we mentioned that the concept of time, but even in, in the money that we're, we're making, it's, you know, we'll create a budget for vacation, a budget for things that serve us, but are we creating margin within that to be able to as you mentioned even earlier, of like those kids that needed underwear and socks. Like, what if we started to operate on a— with a margin mindset? It's like, I don't, I don't know when God's gonna actually call me to use this, but I'm intentionally setting funds aside to be used when I know that prompting is of Holy Spirit, whether it's $100 or $100,000. Uh, what if we allocated money for that? We built in margin to be able to use.

But well, explain that. What exactly is a margin mindset?

A budget is again back to just like our perspective of this. Like it's like a restriction that we have to— we don't get to spend things on versus margin is going to be more of like the definition specifically. It can refer to the difference between the cost of a product of how much you sell it for. Like we make profit margin, right? We don't— we understand that. But it, it, it can also mean the amount of which revenue from total sales exceeds cost. In a business. And then if you take it out of the non-business world, it refers to the blank space around the text on a page. Duh, right?

Right. Yeah.

Oh, I know. You know that right now, your little notes. Um, the amount allowed beyond what is necessary. That's my favorite definition of it. It's the amount that's allowed beyond what is necessary. So we need to allow for a margin of error, right? If we can, you know, understand put that into perspective for us, but means a limit in capacity, the margin of sanity. It means a limit of incapacity beyond which something deteriorates or ceases to exist. To break it down, like, for us to truly understand, I love this because our buddy Caleb Williams introduced this concept to me a few years ago. Uh, betterwealth.com, by the way, incredible organization of how to steward money appropriately. He's done some stuff here with us within the King's Council, but he introduced this concept to me just around money, that it can— money can really in itself only do two things. It can be controlled or it can be spent, right? And, and so controlled, let's just think of it, it can be invested or it can be wasted, right? It can be controlled or invested, or it can be spent and wasted. And so when we build margin into our lifestyle, when it comes to money, it's being controlled, right? It's not that I'm spending it on something, but I may be setting it aside. I'm building in that margin to be able to— I'm allocating it for a specific use at some time, right? But at the end of the day, this is so many times, I'm sure some of our listeners right now, you'll hear of somebody that is just in need or a heartbreaking story where it's like, man, we even do this at some of our events. I've asked the question of people in the crowd. It's like, what breaks your heart? Tell me something that breaks your heart right now. And, you know, sometimes it's for Ashley and I, it's, you know, human trafficking, child sex trafficking. It's like the gnarliest thing on the earth, in my opinion. And I ask the question, you know, who in here would like to give $1 million to fight child sex trafficking, to put an end to it, and which would be a drop in the bucket of what's actually needed to fight that evil. But everybody's hands raised like, yeah, they would love to. And it's like, well, why don't you? Well, because you don't got it, right? It's like, well, that's pretty simple, right? So if we don't become intentional with setting aside funds to be able to be used for the advancement of the kingdom, we control those funds. Instead, we're just spending it. We're wasting it on things that— and this isn't an episode to like make us feel bad about enjoying the things of life, because I believe God wants us to do that, that he takes joy in those things. But it is something that can go too far at times, right? And it's not that we don't— we don't— we shouldn't be able to enjoy those things, But it all comes back to just your heart's disposition of like, man, do I want to truly make an impact for the kingdom of heaven here on earth today? And the reality is it's going to take a lot of money to be able to make that true lasting impact. Amen. Yes. Yes. So, and actually, even on those lines, it's kind of fun. We talk a decent amount about things we've done and like some of our coaching calls and things like that. But I've always asked our coaching, when I was doing a lot of one-on-one calls initially— I don't do them too often anymore just because of time and margin that I've had to allocate, um, but I've always— I always would ask these two calls or these two questions when I would get on a call with somebody. And one would be, if there's one thing that you know that you wouldn't fail at, what would it be? Which is kind of fun just to think about. And I would— I set it up a little bit. I'm like, I don't want you to be thinking about this, just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. And What's one thing that, you know, you wouldn't fail at? What would, what would you do? And then if you woke up with $10 million in your bank account tomorrow, what would you do? And those are always fun answers. Yeah, I've gotten everything from I'd go skydiving to the ones that it's like, well, I'd give it, I'd give it all away. And I'm the first to jump down their throat and ask them, well, are you giving everything you have away right now? Like, well, no, like, well, don't act like you're going to be some, like, saint now. First off, I think that would be very poor stewardship. If you just got $10 million and you gave it all away, you are not— that's not stewardship. That's— yeah, you may help somebody one time for a period of time, but you are called to multiply. Like, we need to be looking at vehicles that we can put this money to work so it can continue to multiply, because that $10 million should be turned into $20 million, should be turned into $40 million, should be turned into $80 million. And it should continually multiply.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned Caleb Williams because if I woke up tomorrow morning, $10 million was in my bank account. He's your first call. He, I'm calling him. I'm not just calling him. Me and Lucy are flying to Nashville and we're gonna sit with him. I'm gonna pay him to gimme a whole day with him. Yes. Because with what I have now, I've implemented what he's coached us within the King's Council on. Yeah. And it, it's phenomenal. Yeah, and he's a Christian, which is big. He's not just a money guy who, who knows how to handle money, store money, and grow money, but he's a Christian guy, so he's kingdom-minded. Yeah, but I would— I will pay him whatever you charge me to sit with him for a full day and help me figure out how to grow this successfully. Yeah, grow this, increase this, so we could I mean, put it to work. Yes. Like, like you said, money is a tool. Yes, money is a tool. Will I buy some fun things? I'll run it by Caleb. Hey, can I buy this? Right. You let me know. I'd really like this, right? Or my wife really like this, but you tell me because I don't want to blow it all and now it's gone. Yeah. Let's figure out a way that we could sustain this thing. Yeah. And not just sustain, like, because we talked last week, the difference between managing something and just maintaining it. Yeah. You don't give a— you don't pay a financial advisor to just maintain your money. And every quarter when you check in, it's like, yep, you still got $67,000 in that, uh, Roth IRA.

Congratulations, it's now worth about $47,000 in today's money. Yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely. We're called to increase everything that we've been given, and that really is stewardship. Stewardship is not just maintaining it and keeping it in good shape, uh, uh, we are called to to multiply it, to continue to increase it. And I think that's— that goes even— we're talking money specifically, but even with your time, right? How do we make the best possible use of our time, right? How do we— and that's not like multitasking, because I would argue that nobody could actually truly multitask well. Um, you're, you're, you're poorly managing your time if you are a compulsive, like, multitasker in getting things done, because we're called to excellence in everything that we do. And I get, you know, I unfortunately do a lot of that multitasking, juggling different businesses and things. But it comes— it's, it's how do we steward that time and allocate, okay, focus time on, on these specific things. And even how we kind of time block these podcasts, it's like we prep, prep, prep, prep, prep, prep, prep, and it's like, all right, record for 2 days, and then we have to go on and do what else that needs to be done for other businesses and things.

So what would you do with— I mean, I know that's not as much to you as it is, well, little old me, but it—

$10 million is $10 million. Yeah, I would, um, great question because I actually haven't even thought about that.

You ask everybody else but you don't.

Yeah, better for yourself. That's true, that is true. I need to eat my own cooking. Yeah, um, yeah, I would certainly— I think with— I would increase our, our business marketing, um, and put it into some, you know, really just again, increasing the cash flow businesses that I know work well. Right. I wouldn't— here's 3 things that I've— this is the only thing that I really choose to invest into. Again, money could be controlled or spent or invested or wasted, and that's cash flow businesses, cash flow banking, which is a concept that Caleb Williams talks about at Better Wealth, and cash flow real estate. Those are the only 3 things I don't dabble. I don't do crypto. I don't do any of that stuff because I don't know enough about it. Now, if I took the time to actually learn about it, then maybe I would put it in there, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't get out of my wheelhouse.

Do you need to know much about it or just trust somebody that does?

Absolutely. You'd find a great advisor on it. But to me, most of that right now is still gambling. I don't see a whole— but I don't know enough about it. If I had enough if I had some true experts in my life that would teach me a little bit about it, maybe I would. But I wouldn't— I personally just do not throw money. I used to do this, bro.

I would—

somebody come up with your business idea, sure. And, man, I've had a car dealership, I've had a rubber ducky company, some stupid stuff, and none of them worked. Yeah, that don't work because I was foolish and I did not steward those funds appropriately at all. And so I think coming back to just controlled, I was not controlling that time or controlling where I was, you know, because it was kind of like throwing things against the wall because I had it and I was like, well, if one of these hits is going to be great and ain't none of them hit. So unfortunately, I would love to have all those funds back to be able to put them to use to what I know works well now.

Yeah. So I just saw a guy post how he had to explain to his wife how the $10,000 charge on his credit card for DraftKings— speaking of gambling— was, was the foam insulation company that sprayed his attic. DraftKings? No, he said they might have to come back around playoff time.

Hilarious. Yeah, that's funny. Poor stewardship.

Poor stewardship. We talked about that last week.

Did we? Gambling. Oh yeah, gambling, but not that DraftKings. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's funny though.

Well, DraftKings is gambling. Well, yes.

Yeah, I know, it's probably, uh, a better form of gambling actually, where the odds are—

you got to be a little bit knowledgeable and— oh yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.

Yeah, even the best, like the guys who you pay to get their picks if they're winning at a 55% rate, like, they're legendary, right?

It's crazy. Yeah, it just has to be more than 50% if you're betting appropriately.

But, well, a little more because the house always has the edge the way they make the odds.

That's true. That's true. So, yeah, again, that's why, uh, don't do— do it. I mean, dabble in the DraftKings, like, $5 here and there.

Yeah, we do. We have a little cohort where on any given Sunday, Rylee will send— we'll get a text, join this contest where we all throw $5.

Yeah, which is like you, my dad, Joe Geraldo, who doesn't even like watch football.

I hope he does it. He feels like you made him feel obligated somehow, socially obligated.

Like, give me your $5, Joe.

Yeah, he's like, I can just sell you $5 every week. Oh, that's true.

You do win a lot. Well, uh, yeah, I don't know what I— I think I would only play like certain time periods. So the only reason I would do it is because if I'm like, well, I've got some time, I'm gonna watch this game, I want to actually give a rip, right? Not that I have any control over it at all, but it just makes it more fun.

Yeah, for $5, it's worth having a rooting interest.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Plus competition, it's fun. You get bragging rights for the week, mostly.

Yeah, yeah. I don't— $5 isn't going to make or break any of us, so. Yeah, but anyways, Let's wrap this thing up with, you put together kind of what I thought was a cool list here of, what are these going to be called, points or characteristics?

Yeah.

You want to call it that? Of what good stewardship actually is.

Why don't you walk us through it? Yeah, we spoke on some characteristics of a good steward last week. You know, someone who's trustworthy, you know, all really good characteristics of just a human being, quite frankly, of a good steward. Yeah, I put this list together. So good stewards, they're committed to selfless service, right? And you know that you've been entrusted with something, right? That there's somebody who owns it. And we established this in those episodes on ownership. God owns everything and he's entrusted us to manage or steward whatever that thing may be. It could be your wife, your kids, your house, your career, your business, your money, like we've been talking about, 100%. But some things that, that a list of what, what, what are the marks of a good steward? So good stewards, they believe in sustainability. They understand that they are building value not for themselves but for their customers, members, perhaps shareholders or future generations. So in the business world, um, it's sustainability. It's being able to look ahead. It's not blowing the, the budget on, you know, getting this thing up and going, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh man, most companies fail. You ever see that guy on Instagram? I forget his name, but he's got a pretty big channel now. He finds people who are somewhat wealthy. Sometimes he just walks around like New York City and find somebody with a fancy car and he asks them how they've made their money. Oh yeah, I've seen that guy. Yeah, yeah, I enjoy watching it because the things he posts, it's good advice from these people who've made money. Yeah. And the most recent one I saw was, you know, most businesses fail because they run out of capital too soon. Yeah, like make sure you're funded. Yep. So a good steward is future-minded and thinks about sustainability.

Yep. And the best place, in my opinion, to get, uh, business for money for your business is from your customers, right? Yeah, yeah, you've been good at that. Just not—

don't—

you don't have to take on funding unless you're building an app or something crazy like that. But that's good. Good stewards believe in sustainability.

What else we got? Yeah, good stewards embrace innovation and change. They understand that while the organization's principles are unchanging, like every good company should have its core values, that the means to achieving them are not. They welcome new ideas and fresh perspectives. Yeah, you have to be willing to, um, take input from other people. Yeah, if you're a good steward and you realize my, my job is to add value to whatever this thing is, if my job is to add value to this business, I don't know everything. I have to be willing to, to take on other ideas.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and as an entrepreneur too, just having wisdom to look in the marketplace of where are we heading, you know, the recession's happening. As Wayne Gretzky— I know we've mentioned this— like why he was so successful, he was skating to where the puck was going to. And if you can be that in business, you will forever be able to sustain that business.

Yeah. 3: Good stewards are team players. Quick to give others credit, quick to build them up. They unify the team. You have to be a team player. And that, that's another one of those Instagram posts that I saw, like, don't do it alone. Alone.

Yeah, don't do it alone. That's good. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you've got to go together.

Absolutely. Number 4: good stewards believe in communication and being transparent. That's huge. I mean, that not just for a business owner, but in life, period. How good is your relationship with your spouse going to be if you don't communicate well? Oh yeah, that's— I mean, that's the, the number one downfall of every relationship is lack of communication or poor communication. So communication, be transparent, and then seek advice from other people. If you don't know, admit that you don't know, right? There's really no stupid mistakes, right?

Uh, stupid questions. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. The mistake is not willing to ask the question.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. Because— and but that's where pride and ego, they, they are the demise of most entrepreneurs. It's when they think they've got it or they think they can do it on their own, um, when all they really need to do is just ask for a little bit of help, right?

That number 5, good stewards always acknowledge and thank the master they serve.

Yeah, always.

Yes. Yeah, yes. Know that you're not doing it on your own accord. You're doing it with, with God's grace, by his mercy, right? And we always acknowledge him. We always give gratitude to him. And if he's not your master, that's really what him being Lord over our lives means. And we're, we're essentially a bond servant to him. Yes. Like, and if we're not, if we don't take on that role— and we talk about like the, the upside-down kingdom where it's just counterintuitive, where to live you have to give up your life. Yep. Right. If you hold on to your life, surely you will lose your life.

Yeah.

In order to receive, you have to give. Yeah. Right. Things— in order to— you have to acknowledge your weakness to be strong.

Yeah. Right. So it's gonna be first, you must be last.

Right. Yeah. Think about that every time I pass those jokers in first class. Although again, coming down here, I got bumped in first class.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes, favor of God, it chases.

I know, I'm, I'm getting up there.

Yeah, it chases you down.

Yes, it does. So always acknowledge and give thanks to the master you serve. And doesn't matter what you're stewarding, right? You're giving thanks to your master because he's the master of your business, your family, your household, everything, you know. So you may be a manager at your job, and you may be doing a good job, but your master isn't the owner necessarily. You give, you give thanks for all the opportunities that he gives you, the owner of the company, but ultimately the owner of everything, the owner of that owner, yeah, he's the one that gets all the praise.

Yeah, we hit that last week, didn't we? Colossians 3:23. Yep.

Like, yes, everything we do or work unto the Lord. Unto the Lord. Unto the Lord.

Okay.

So that was good stewards. Now some marks of bad stewards: they perpetuate the status quo only for the sake of preserving it. They resist change and are afraid of innovation. And it's really— if you're really resisting change or ideas or thoughts of other people, that's a pride issue. Yeah. If you think you always have the, the answer, you may have the last say because of your position But that doesn't mean that last say is always the right, right?

It's unfortunate people won't even take advice, or they won't even choose— maybe the greatest idea, but they will— their pride will prevent them from actually doing it just because it wasn't their idea, right?

Yeah. Bad stewards don't share information. And that's one thing I love, you know, being involved in this coaching world. There's so many people like you and Scott who— Scott Thomas, who's one of— who's your business partner and one of the coaches that we have. You so willfully want to bestow all the knowledge that you have to others. Sure, you do. Like, you don't want to— you can hold on to the secrets. I remember when I was a hospital maintenance guy, I remember we had two electricians, and the, the senior electrician would never teach the younger electrician everything for job security. Really? It's like, you're not— they're not getting rid of you. This other guy, like, right, like, you're, you're legendary here. You're, you're the best electrician anybody's ever seen. It's like, pour into this guy a little bit. Yeah, right.

Like, what are you afraid of, right?

That's interesting. Yeah. Bad stewards develop an ownership mentality. They want to control the situation. Again, a pride thing. Yeah. If you start to think you're, you're the owner, then you got to go back and listen to our, our two podcasts on ownership. Yes, God owns it all, baby. That's right. Bad stewards let selfishness creep into their organization. They seek to preserve their department or committee, perhaps at the expense of others. So you become selfish. Yeah, it's all about— it's about you. If you're selfish, it's about you. Yeah. If you're a steward, it ain't about you at all. You're managing something that somebody else's, and you've been blessed and entrusted enough to do so.

Yeah, or even they're just afraid of change, you know. They would be— they don't— they just— or maybe even just have become, uh, complacent, or just like they like how it is, so don't change it. It's just—

let's—

the status quo, right?

And it's like, no, that's poor stewardship, right? Yeah, right. Bad stewards— I should say poor, poor stewards rather than bad stewards, right? Sure. Poor stewards have lost sight of the organization's founding principles or core values. And instead they substitute what's going to work now. Yeah, like, we're in a jam. It's like, I know our core values say this, right? Our— where to— our yes is to be yes, our no is to be no, we're to have integrity, you know, all these things. But we're in a jam, that goes out the window, right?

Can't be stewardship.

Yep, that's a tough situation. Yep. Then finally, bad poor stewards are no longer accountable. They've amassed too much power to be challenged, and they are beholden to nobody.

Yeah, a lot of things that differentiate a good steward and a poor steward is pride. Yes, really is. Absolutely. Which, on the antithesis, would be being able to be humble in those situations of, you know, again, acknowledging who the true owner is in that. And hey, we don't necessarily know all the right things, and so providing wisdom, feedback, you know, counsel of others is a great accountability tool for us to have in place as well. Right. So, right, these are good. These are good little nuggets here, bro.

Cool.

Yeah. So that all being said, this is part 2 of stewardship and, and how do we— understanding these— this principle here, hopefully you guys have gotten some, some nuggets out of this here, understanding what it really truly is. God owns everything. We're just his managers. But with that comes an incredible responsibility, not just to maintain, um, uh, and, and keep the status quo, but to actually increase this, to continue to multiply this, because that's what we are called to do. We are called to be fruitful, to multiply, to subdue the earth, to have dominion. And this is what needs to happen, especially today in the kingdom economy, in the culture of the world today, now more than ever we need more Christian entrepreneurs stepping up and truly walking in that original succession plan of taking dominion. Amen, amen, amen. See you guys on next week's episode.

Peace.