Brave Men S1E3: Living a Wealthy Life

I was sitting on a plane next to a man and we started to talk a little bit. Don't always do that but this time we seemed to engage. We were on there for a long time. He was on his way to see the Great Wall of China with his wife. He told me this story. 20 years ago he purchased a small duplex rental in Fort Worth Texas. Then a couple of years later he sold it and purchased a rental house. Then he did that again and a few years later he bought a fourplex rental. Then five years after that he bought an apartment building and then another and another. Finally he quit his job as a machinist. Now he and his wife are traveling the world. It started with one small seemingly insignificant decision. To purchase a small rental with money he had earned in part-time work small decisions can lead to large results. Large doors swing on small hinges it's brave men with all Louis Cole wisdom and courage for the journey. Brave men starts now. Brave men wisdom and courage for the journey for the man who wants to leave a legacy. You see here's what we say and Christian men's network. What a man does in life becomes history but what he puts in the motion becomes his legacy. I serve an organization called Christian men's network. We are a human justice mission focused on defeating fatherlessness and ending child abuse. We do that by mentoring men with the word of God teaching them that manhood and Christ's likeness are synonymous. Out of that 40-year ministry that my father began in 1977 has come now the global fatherhood initiative dad academy.com and other outreaches that reach men all over the world. Now our curriculum is being used by men in over a hundred nations. Approximately a million men every 60 days are going through the materials starting with maximized manhood. Some of you would know of that book maximized manhood. My father wrote that about five years into his ministry as he realized that most men because most pastors are trained to preach sermons. Most men are trained to listen to sermons not how to study the word of God and most pastors haven't been trained how to disciple men. So what we do and how we serve the local church with Christian men's network is we provide the tools and the pathway to disciple men to a place where they're the men who stay. They're the men who stick. They're the men who volunteer. They're the men who stand up for righteousness. They're the men who are willing to go to war for the next generation. This episode of Brave Men is about wealth and generosity. It's talking to a friend of mine and we were talking about lion's roar and we have one coming up if you're listening to this in 2017 or any year for that matter every November we have a meeting in Dallas called Lions Roar. This year it's in downtown Fort Worth which is right next to Dallas if you're from outside the country. Lions Roar 2017.com is this year's website. A friend of mine and I were talking about Lions Roar and he mentioned something that had really struck him last year that somebody said to him and it was about finances about money and about wealth and it totally changed his perspective. Now you and I know that true wealth really is in family and friendships or following Christ or faith in God. I'll tell you something the other day I bought a $20 little plastic blow-up pool. Botted at the store it was on sale. It was half price because we're nearing the end of the summer in our area and I brought it back and put it on the back porch and blew that thing up and put water in that little pool and my grandchildren came over and they had the best fun. Just the greatest fun we used it for days until it fell over into a bush and got a whole punctured in it but it was well worth the investment. That's the true wealth. Watching my grandchildren was such a great pleasure. That's true wealth but I want to talk about money. Jesus did not condemn wealth. He talked a lot about money but it was always in relationship to our heart. Money in and of itself is the value we place on it. You get money because you give time and effort and your acumen and who you are and you get money in return. Money always follows ministry as you serve. You receive the value of that serving but Jesus always related money to our intentions, our hearts, our core values. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, two of the wealthiest men in the world did something really remarkable in 2010. They signed something they called the giving pledge that they would give away the majority of their great wealth before the end of their lives. Bill Gates has done that. Warren Buffett has done that. 80 other people of great wealth have now signed that. Why was it so remarkable to most of us because it runs against what most of us in our culture and in our world desire which is more wealth. More gaining, more getting, wanting for ourselves. You know, I had a man tell me one time he said I'm working on a big deal. It's going to be a really big deal and when I get done with this we're going to give 20% of it to the church. I have launched a church in the church that we planted. My son Brandon is the pastor of a very healthy church in Fort Worth called C3 Fort Worth. Fantastic people, amazing place, vibrant, exciting alive. But a number of years ago a man told me he said I'm going to give 20% of this big deal to the church. The deal never quite came through. We never got that 20%. But you know what's interesting. He actually never gave anything of what he did have to the church. He didn't even give five percent or two percent. You see I believe for some of us the giving starts with what we have. We think well you know Bill Gates he's got 80 billion dollars or whatever the number is now. I'd give 40 of that easy to give half. I'll give 40 to keep 40. I could live on 40 billion. But here's the point. It's about our heart. If you won't give part of the hundred dollars of your income then you won't tie it on a million dollars of income. It always comes back to our heart and it comes back to this love or lust. Love Jesus taught is the desire to benefit others even at the expense of self because love desires to give God so love the world that he gave. Lust is the desire to benefit self even at the expense of others because lust desires to get lust is about me. I want what I want. You know what resonates in our hearts no matter who says it. I want for us. We want for our tribe. We want this and resonates somehow why because it appeals to the lustful nature of man. I was watching with with great delight recently. There's a football player American football gridiron as some of you call it parts of the world. His name is Derek Carr. He just signed the largest contract in football history. Okay an American football. It got a lot of money for what he does very well. One of the sportswriters said to him he said what are you going to do with the you know with all that money? What are you going to buy? What's the first thing you'll be purchasing? Derek Carr said I mean said well the first thing I'll be doing is tighten. The first check I'll write is a check to my church. See that comes from disciplining our spirit leaning our heart into and giving our heart to the things of God. Discipline disciplining our lives to love others. Discipline is always the result of love. You show me a child that is undisciplined. I'll show you a child that is unloved. Why? Because discipline is always because of love. God the Bible says that God disciplines his children. Why? Because he loves us. Why do I discipline my children? Because I want their lives to be positive and full of hope. So I've got to cut away the negativity. You know that's why we discipline our health. That's why you know I'll tell you why I do my pushups every morning and I do the health things and Judy works out because we would like to be around a long time for our beautiful grandchildren. We discipline ourselves and we do the things we need to be healthy in because we love our grandchildren. I said that to a great friend, Deilo Shields recently because I had learned it from a pastor Gary at Hillsong Church in London and Gary had told me one time he said, you know the reason I'm doing this is because I love my grandchildren. He was eating very healthy. I was watching. I said, man, everybody else is eating comfort food. What's up with you? He said, I love my grandchildren. It's my gift to them. I said this to my friend, Deilo Shields, who pastors in Gathersburg, Maryland, and I said, Dale, I'm really working and disciplining my health as a gift to my grandchildren. I learned that from pastor Gary Hillsong Church in London. He went, Paul, that shifted my whole thinking on working out and the things I eat. You see, we don't discipline ourselves because we hate ourselves. We discipline ourselves because we love being alive and athlete doesn't discipline themselves because he hates himself. He disciplines himself because he loves winning. He likes being healthy. He likes being ready. So we discipline ourselves towards love because lust is selfish. Selfishness has to be disciplined. We're selfish by nature. We're negative by nature. We are stingy by nature. So generosity is something we have to learn and it has to be disciplined into our lives. We become generous when we start with the very first thing. I remember our great friend, Robert Kalachin, who came 15 years ago now and came to our church and talked about what he was doing in Vietnam and he talked about these young men and women who were getting operations and it was changing their lives because they were being born with terrible, disfiguring of their limbs and my youngest son Bryce saw that went home because he asked him how much is it cost for one of those operations and Robert said $200. He went home. He was a waiter in a restaurant at the time and he grabbed every single dollar he owned to his name. He brought it. It was $220 and he gave it to Robert and said here I want one of those children to have an operation. See that's not normal. That's not normally how we are. We're stingy by nature. We're selfish by nature. Generosity has to be taught. It has to be learned. But when we're generous it changes our lives. Bible says in Isaiah 328, a generous man devises generous things and by generosity he shall stand. What that means is generous people plan to do what is generous and they stand firm in their generosity in a crazy world where stuff is shifting and changing and moving and then hurricanes of negativity are hitting us. If you're a generous person you stand firm. Proverbs 24 says this, the world of the generous gets larger and larger. The world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. I love I love the area around Lake Tahoe. I've always loved Lake Tahoe. It's a beautiful place here in California, northern California. It is this beautiful alpine lake 40 miles across majestic mountain surrounding it. I went there as a little child in the early 60s. I learned how to ski there. It's a beautiful place. My children, my family and I we love the beauty of Lake Tahoe and I was sitting with my friend Wes. We were sitting out on the deck of a restaurant. We were talking about some of the things that had happened in our lives. Wes began to talk to me about what had been doing and how God had blessed him and then how be out of that blessing he began to help orphans and he began to send the gospel around the world. He had learned as a younger man that giving is the external evidence of love. Giving is the testimony of generosity and we begin to talk about these things and how God had blessed him. How he felt so large and so so wonderful in his life because he had given to help others and how it had changed him and how he felt his giving was why he was blessed in his business. Reminded me of the account in second Kings of 4th chapter and it says one day the widow of a member of the group of prophets came to Elisha, cried out. She said, my husband who served you as dead. You know how he feared the Lord but now a creditor has come and their threatening to take my two sons as slaves. Well what can I do to help you Elisha asked? Tell me. Before she answered Elisha says tell me what do you have in the house? Nothing at all except the flask of oil olive oil she replied in Elisha said, borrow as many empty jars as you can from your friends and neighbors. Go into your house with your sons, shut the door and pour olive oil from your flask into the jars, setting each one aside when it's filled so she did as she was told. Her sons kept bringing jars. She filled one after another and soon every container was full to the brim. Bring me another jar she said to one of her sons. There aren't any more they told her and then the olive oil stopped flowing. When she told the man of God what had happened he said to her, now sell the olive oil and pay your debts and you and your sons can live on what is left over. That's in second Kings of 4th chapter and here's the beauty of that story and here's what it said to me and here's why I thought of it when I was talking to Wes about the generosity of his life and he and his beautiful wife Jan. It's this. Here's this issue problem. This woman's about her boys are going to be taken away in slavery. She doesn't know what to do. She asks you like and he says well what do you have? That's a curious question. Well obviously I don't have anything. He says what do you have? You see what Elisha knew is that God could take what she had in her hand and make it part of the solution. God can take what's in your hands to fulfill the dream he put in your heart. She said all I've got is some oil. Well that's something. See God can use any something you have. We think we have nothing. He takes us something we think is nothing and produces life. Elisha said borrow as many jars as you can so she did it. She poured the olive oil and the oil was valuable in that culture. Very valuable. She all of her debts are going to be paid. Olive oil is flowing like crazy. She's going to be she's going to have all the money she needs. Now this is around 850 BC before Christ. Now think about this with me for a moment. Jars you're in a Middle Eastern village. It's 850 BC. Jars are everywhere. That's like bags or baggies for us in our neighborhood. How many people would have bags or baggies? You could get hundreds of them. The village is full of jars but the people stopped giving their jars. The children said she said there must be more. They said why we can't get any more. See the people stopped giving. Here's the principle. When the people stopped giving the oil stopped flowing. Oil is often a biblical symbol of God's presence. When the oil was flowing it was symbolic of God's generous nature. David and other kings and leaders were anointed with oil at pivotal times. For the presence of God to be on them to date. Sometimes we annoy people with oil to ask God to release his presence in their lives or situation. It's a symbolic gesture of the very real expression of God's love in a generous heart. You see generous people plan to do what is generous and they stand firm in their generosity. I told Wes about this and told him we started talking about this story and I said you know when the people stop being generous the oil stopped flowing. I believe that you and I need to give so the oil flows in our lives. When the people stop giving the oil stop flowing. The word of God says let me go back one more time. Word of God says in Proverbs 24 the world of the generous gets larger and larger. The world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. Live a large life. Live a bigger life. Take what's in your hand now. Give that to God. Say father here's my life. Here's what I have. I don't think it's much but God can take what we don't think is much and make it a place of blessing and make it a place of increased capacity. God can take those things that we believe are nothing and make them into something beautiful. I believe your life will be larger as you learn to be generous. I believe in you. I believe in us. I believe in Jesus and I love my wife. God bless. You've just experienced Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Global Fatherhood Initiative. Connect with Paul like Brave Men. That's Brave Men. God Men.