Have you ever pondered the fact that we are all born with an innate moral code?
Even before we learn about the Bible and other religions, there is a moral standard woven within our inmost being. We're peeling back the layers of how this gift serves as our compass in a world spinning in chaos. Be prepared to deep dive into the concept of the American Dream and the shift it's taken over the years.
Let's navigate the tumultuous terrains that the millennial generation and younger ones face in comparison to their predecessors. We're going to dissect the startling increase in home costs, the hike in household income, and the towering debt mountain that has grown in the last 20 years.
In the end, it all boils down to discipline and the grit to push through adversity. We'll let you in on our personal journey of staying motivated and on track, revealing the morning practice of faithful Bible reading. We'll also borrow wisdom from Jocko Willink and Andy Frisella, who champion the idea of taking the next step and enduring the hard things to stay on course.
As we grapple with the spiritual warfare hinted at in Ephesians 6, let's reflect on our current struggles and how to wage war against them by mastering the basics of life & tapping into our faith in God.
Stay tuned for future discussions on manhood, hospitality, taking back our families, and intentional living. This is your call to action. Are you ready to join the force?
Episode Highlights:
Links Mentioned in Episode/Find More on A Force to Be Reckoned With:
This show has been produced by Adkins Media Co.
Have you ever pondered the fact that we are all born with an innate moral code?
Even before we learn about the Bible and other religions, there is a moral standard woven within our inmost being. We're peeling back the layers of how this gift serves as our compass in a world spinning in chaos. Be prepared to deep dive into the concept of the American Dream and the shift it's taken over the years.
Let's navigate the tumultuous terrains that the millennial generation and younger ones face in comparison to their predecessors. We're going to dissect the startling increase in home costs, the hike in household income, and the towering debt mountain that has grown in the last 20 years.
In the end, it all boils down to discipline and the grit to push through adversity. We'll let you in on our personal journey of staying motivated and on track, revealing the morning practice of faithful Bible reading. We'll also borrow wisdom from Jocko Willink and Andy Frisella, who champion the idea of taking the next step and enduring the hard things to stay on course.
As we grapple with the spiritual warfare hinted at in Ephesians 6, let's reflect on our current struggles and how to wage war against them by mastering the basics of life & tapping into our faith in God.
Stay tuned for future discussions on manhood, hospitality, taking back our families, and intentional living. This is your call to action. Are you ready to join the force?
Episode Highlights:
Links Mentioned in Episode/Find More on A Force to Be Reckoned With:
This show has been produced by Adkins Media Co.
We are at war and it's not against our neighbors, spouses, children, politicians or whatever else we feel like we're battling against.
Speaker 2:So the questions are who's the fight against, and are we winning or losing? We're the Adkins, and we are a force to be reckoned with. Are you ready to join the force? Alright, got your mic ready.
Speaker 1:We're live.
Speaker 2:We're live. We're live on audio and we are live on video again this week. How you feeling about it?
Speaker 1:I'm gonna apologize to all the people on video right now, not for myself, even though I'm recording in a tank top, in shorts, which is normal. But I am apologizing if you haven't seen Beth's reels.
Speaker 2:He's really jealous. You guys and I just have to say a couple things. Go check out my Instagram. It's in our show notes, but, yes, I posted a real, because look at this incredible sweatshirt that I found.
Speaker 1:A Costco. Listen dude. There's one thing about buying something at Costco and another thing wearing this like 1994 crewneck with the Costco wholesale written a thousand times all over this.
Speaker 2:You have to go to my Instagram to get the whole story. It's not like it was love at first sight with me and the sweatshirt, but we are in love. I'm in love with it now.
Speaker 1:You're mostly in love with it, despite me.
Speaker 2:No, no, and I just have to say so many of you have given me support on Instagram. You say you want a sweatshirt. You know what I think we should do?
Speaker 1:no, no, no, you're not doing a giveaway as a matter of fact I'm so disappointed in all those people.
Speaker 2:You should see the comments.
Speaker 1:There's like 20 of them.
Speaker 2:People are saying they want sweatshirts. They were gonna buy sweatshirts. So many messages and said they were gonna mail you a sweatshirt. I'm like okay.
Speaker 1:If they mail me a sweatshirt, I can promise you that we will record me burning it.
Speaker 2:Okay, go to Costco and get this sweatshirt and we can match. We can do something so fun with it. I beg you.
Speaker 1:Listen, I'm not a snob. Like this is from Old Navy and I think there's some ribs on it right here and I've got Old Navy shorts on. Like this is like wearing starter brand when we were in high school.
Speaker 2:And here's the other thing. So the next thing, it was on my story, so it'll be disappeared by the time. You know it's coming out in like four hours. So anyway, I was going back and forth, I was like I don't feel like I should do video today. I don't know, I'm not really up to it. And Kory was like, yeah, if you're not camera ready, no, you were like looking at me like Like I don't think I want to do. Do this?
Speaker 1:The camera today. So here's the deal. My hair.
Speaker 2:I took a shower, but I didn't do my makeup, didn't do my hair. I have my glasses on, my contacts are out, my teeth are brushed. I'm ready for bed. This is what I look like when I go to bed. But have you ever heard of the term tuna fish?
Speaker 1:I mean, I know what the food is.
Speaker 2:Okay, I know you have, because Brooke and I made it up and we've told you about this. We've even talked about this on the podcast years ago. But tuna fish Okay, are you guys ready for this? This is one of my biggest fears in life is I'm on Instagram in stories looking all cute, looking all nice, and then somebody sees me at Jineagle and they're like, oh my, she's catfishing everybody, she's catfishing. She looks she must be having filters. You know that show catfish Like, so help me if that is ever me.
Speaker 1:So what's a tuna fish?
Speaker 2:So Brooke and I were talking about this because I was like I sometimes I'll just show up online and I used to show my face like a lot more when we got started. I really don't anymore, but I would just be looking, you know, like this, and the thing a tuna fish is. You show up online looking like this, you know, looking like this, and hair and side things and you look Like you smell like tuna fish. So then when people see you in public, they're like Opposite of a catfish except I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't ever get ready in public either, but that's a tuna fish, so you guys should try it and Let me know how it works for you. So weird, okay. So here we go. We're talking about some pretty serious stuff today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know we've got to get in that space.
Speaker 2:Cory's gonna be the ringleader.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna have a hard time with it staring at this sweatshirt.
Speaker 2:He's the the serious one. I'm here for the personality, or wait, that's not usually how it works. Cory's usually personality. Anyway, I'm feeling confident today. So that's what's happening. No, but before I start, I just like we do have a really good topic and we're gonna talk about lineup that we have coming next and man, it's been a struggle for us like Coming up with not not, it's not Coming up with stuff, it's that we come up with like 50 ideas and trying to figure out how to shave that message down and articulate it and make it clear and concise for you guys.
Speaker 1:It's been really hard and I break it into like two or three different ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've felt honestly super discouraged by it and Like confused I've my kids, our message even clear anymore, I don't know, and so, honestly, that's kind of what we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker 1:And I just want to say too, like we were just kind of looking back at the past few podcast episodes and then episodes before that, and I'm sitting there and I'm like I feel like we're Talking like and maybe I'm wrong by this but it felt like we were more kind of negative and down in some of the things that we were talking about, and I think it's just because we've been going through some really tough stuff and and but that we can't just sit around and be all doom and gloom, right, you know the tricky thing about having a podcast where we're sharing the real-time struggles and the lessons is hard because like you're riding the waves with us and sometimes we get caught up in the mix and like we get bogged down because that's just real life.
Speaker 2:And the whole mission of the podcast has always been like we Want to be real. We don't want to like pretend like we have the perfect marriage or the perfect kids or we have all this parenting stuff figure out. We just want to community people. That's like all right, let's just do better. But the reality is sometimes you get discouraged and then naturally, when you're talking about a Pod, you know you're doing a podcast about spiritual warfare and how we have a real enemy who wants to discourage and destroy and defeat us. Like Obviously, like we're gonna get even more discouraged.
Speaker 2:Yeah so we don't ever want to just be negative and be like. You know, what was us like? We don't ever want to be like that, but we do want to be real. But we also want to give you guys hope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Hopefully. Yeah, today's message is a message of hope. It's gonna start off seeming a little gloomy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So when do you even want to start?
Speaker 1:I mean, it's just dive in, yeah, go ahead, all right. So we were kind of talking this out and so I started pulling up the some of the statistics. But I just want, and then, once I even saw these, this really sunk in. But it seems like Today, with, you know, the millennial generation, you know the people in there like early or late 20s, I guess, to like late 30s, it seems like things are really hard right now. And it seems like, as I look around, you know, some of the younger generation isn't quite. You know, maybe there's some Gen Z's out there that are getting ready to buy homes or buying homes and kind of start their life. But it also seems like a lot of the older generation they bought their homes so long ago and things like that this is what kind of brought this to my forefront that they bought their home so long ago that they're they're like mortgage payments are a lot less than ours, or they're they don't even have mortgage payments anymore because their houses paid off. And it started making me think like you know how were things for for them? You know, for for people you know, 20 years ago or so?
Speaker 1:So I pulled up some statistics and in the year 2000 the average home cost a hundred and nineteen thousand dollars. In 2023, the average home cost two hundred and fifty four thousand dollars. In 2000, the average household income was forty two thousand dollars and In 2023, the average household income is sixty seven thousand dollars. So if you think about just that for a second, the average home price more than doubled, but the income only went up like fifty percent. So that's a. It's a over a hundred percent increase compared to a fifty percent increase. And Then you start digging in. You look at the debt. The average household debt in two thousand was fifty one thousand dollars in. The average household debt in 2023 is a hundred and two thousand dollars. So now you also your debt has gone up a hundred percent, right? So as we're looking at some of this stuff, it's like we're veering off off course here, and it just in a from a financial perspective, things are harder for, I think, somebody just buying a home today or, you know, in the past couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, before we go on, I just want to interject really quick. This is like yeah, things are harder and times are harder. I know, I know we'll get there, but just before anybody gets too turned off, this isn't an episode where it's like, oh, millennials have it harder and you know people in this they're trying to raise families right now. They have it harder, and that's why we suck it live. No, there's there's things that we need to do better too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and even in just point where there's definitely things we can do better and that's what we're gonna dive into, but it's it's that I would be curious even to look at our. They from go back from 2000 to like 1980 or something, go back another 20 years. But it seems like things are getting harder and harder. And if you start looking at divorce rates, divorce rates are at about 50%. Are the amount of you know, technology, these phones and these devices and the internet everything was supposed to make things so much easier. But we are living in an era where anxiety is at its highest, you know, post COVID anxieties at its highest, you know, post COVID anxieties at its highest, depressions at its highest, drug use is at its highest. There's all of these things. That it's just. It seems like things are getting worse and worse and worse and it's like, okay, why is that?
Speaker 2:Do you know why that is? Do you have any input?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so beth and I were talking about this and If you look at it feels like even right now I don't know if anybody else feels like this it just feels like we're in a hard time, right overall. And If you think about it this way, america was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, right, and we had a lot of freedom. And at the early stages of America we had a lot more freedom. Families back in those times, families were mostly a lot of times working on farms, so the kids were at home with mom and dad. They were taught to work, they were taught to provide that your family was close knit together. A lot more people attended church and believed in God then and it seems like we have veered off of that. Think about even today. So now it takes, you know, back in the day you could afford to have one person working and the mom at home, and we've gotten ourselves into a place where even just to have a normal you know American dream middle class life, we have to have two people working.
Speaker 2:Right, and, as we were talking about this, this is where it gets kind of messy, because I know that there's so many other things that come into play, like, you know, the war and men having to leave for war and women having to still provide for their family. So I know this is where, as we're talking about these episodes, I'm like we, first of all, we're not knowledgeable enough to cover every base, and also there's so many that this in itself could be its own whole podcast you know, so we're just scratching the surface of all of this.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, the bottom line is things have shifted Like. So there's so many reasons that things have shifted Like. One of the things that we had talked about was that our, you know, millennials, our age, when we were all graduating high school, we, the thing, the normal thing, was like where are you going to college? Where are you going to college? And we've talked about this before and everybody but it was like flooded to college. It was very rare that people didn't go to college, and now it's almost like that has been saturated or people are starting to realize like, oh, I'm not even using my degree, there are other ways, and it's kind of shifting again back to the trades. Yeah, and then-.
Speaker 1:And if you think about all the people in the trades like they're talking about, like you know, we're having a hard time finding people, hiring people, but then because of that, all of their prices are going up. You know your concrete work, your roofing, your electricians, all of everybody. Because there you have to. There's less people and just to be competitive, you have to pay people even more because of it and you're having a hard time finding people. You have to raise your prices just to get by.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, so there was that. And then the other piece that we've never before had to navigate is technology has, like, significantly been on the rise. When we you know, when we were growing up and our parents were our age like dial up was the highest level of internet that you could have yeah, everybody still had landlines. There was no such thing as smartphones, you know all of this stuff. And now we are in the phase where technology is full blown, like people have careers that are solely through technology. People are making money through social media, which wasn't even a thing back then. Our kids use don't even use textbooks anymore. And so we're trying to, as parents, navigate the age of technology, which there's no handbook for that because it's so new. So we're navigating that. We're navigating technology consumption, like we're the guinea pigs of it.
Speaker 2:And we're seeing like mental health effects of that. And then also, like you said, homes have skyrocketed and both people are working.
Speaker 1:And if you go back to the kids for a second earlier, when I talked about how you know the kid, a lot of the times the kids were at home and they were learning from mom, mostly predominantly from mom and dad, right? Or you know, you had your little. You see your old movies with your little school teacher with multiple grades all in one little thing. But they didn't go to school as long. And now you know because one and this is just. There's no emotion linked to this, there's no bias linked to this. But, like the, both the spouses to live that middle class life are both at work. So then your kids are being shipped off to school and then we're running them around, all these sports and everything Like how much time do we get with our kids compared to how?
Speaker 2:Right, like we're fully and we still shouldn't be. We should still be teaching our kids whenever we can on the weekends and the evenings, through conversations and through life, but we're heavily relying on a school system to educate our children and you know they have a lot of reigns there and that's like a very heavy privilege. So what is our point? Like, clearly, we're living in a different time and our parents could even say that they were living in a different time than their parents and their grandparents, like it's always gonna change.
Speaker 2:We get that, but the one thing that's like significantly different is what seems to be how far we've come from this like happy American dream. It's almost like the American dream is demonized now because it's no longer suitable for what we're trying to achieve. But it's is the American dream off base, or is what we're trying to achieve off base or is it neither, because we're just living in different times. Right.
Speaker 2:And so that is kind of a point that we wanna hit home today. And again, we're not gonna be perfect on this, but there is one thing that is so evident and it's so true if you really sit back and think about it, and it's moral law.
Speaker 1:Right. Really, we have veered off course for how God created and established the world, how God created and established the family, for example. You know the parents are supposed to be the primary caretakers and educators of their children. You know we're not supposed to get into debt.
Speaker 2:Right, well, before we even get into that, because it sounds not in the U, but like just it sounds a little preachy.
Speaker 1:I'm preaching to myself.
Speaker 2:Is okay. So why like a moral code? Let's take for a second, even just take Christianity and the Bible out of it, because this is something that I really struggled with Like in my late teen, early adult years, as I was trying to figure out like, do I believe in God, do I believe that God is real? I had all these doubt questions and it was something I really struggled with my faith. I was trying to navigate that because I'm a very like when it comes to things like that, I need like facts, I need to know that they're like proof, evidence. You know Like that's how my mind works. I have to know those things and some.
Speaker 2:A book that really helped me and I've talked about this before as well is Mir Christianity, written by CS Lewis, who he's an incredible author, but it's very. His books are hard to read. They're like poetic and also just different times, different language. But anyway, what I want to say is he was an atheist. His book, mir Christianity, kind of talks about his thought process, walking him through like why Christianity Is Christianity? Like, why does this make sense? And something that has that just makes so much sense is when we're born into this world, whatever, regardless of what our belief is. Religion, regardless of what our religion is, we all are born with this innate moral code, so we know stealing is bad.
Speaker 1:We know murder is bad.
Speaker 2:Right lying. Nobody thinks lying is good, you know Right.
Speaker 1:And when you think about it. I mean, how do you know Like you can?
Speaker 2:feel it in your gut, like it's a piece of it, right.
Speaker 1:And these things, we feel that they're bad because, whether it's lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, they hurt other people, right, they hurt other human beings.
Speaker 2:But then going even past that, like let's, we got that out of the way. Why, why does that matter? Okay, well, why would? If we are just born for no reason, by happenstance, why would we all be ingrained with the same like order within us, the same moral code, the same thing? That like, like, how can you even explain that? And then putting I mean CS Lewis says it so much better, you know, but like putting it back to the Bible, that is the only thing that has that moral code right in there. I mean, you look at the 10 commandments and that was written. You know, god gave us the 10 commandments. And so when I put those realizations together like I said, he says it so much better in the book, just read the book I was like this makes so much sense, like this is me as a human right and wrong, whether I believe in God or I don't believe in God. This is true. But why is it true? Because God says it's true and he wrote it in the Word of God.
Speaker 1:Right, and I mean, and because of this natural law and this natural order that we were given, you know sin. Any sin other than you know separate you from God, but it also affects you with people, right. So anything that you know Christians would term sin really harms either yourself or harms other people, and it's just this natural order amongst this chaotic world that we're living in.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, so where are we going from here with that? So we're talking about order, we're talking about chaos. Moral code why does this matter with what we're talking about today?
Speaker 1:So, because we have veered further and further away from that moral code, we're living rarely right now, in a time I think we were talking with your pap about this too, and it was the book of Isaiah, but he said it talks about there will come a time when good will be called evil and evil will be called good. And it really feels like we're living in that time right now, and I think because of that, we're getting further and further away from this natural truth, this natural order to the chaos. Our lives are becoming more chaotic as we get further away from following that moral code that gives us the order.
Speaker 2:Right, there's just so much I could say that we could just go down all these rabbit holes with this. Yeah, I mean, if you think about that moral code and, just like you said, we don't have to follow it because we have free will. But once you do start to follow it, you do, you get so much order and so much peace back into your life and it's like it's not something you have to follow, it's something that you get to abide by and you get so much freedom from it and it's just so cool once you understand that.
Speaker 1:Right, and just a couple of things on that. The crazy part is tying in what you were talking about earlier is that the founders of this country were not perfect men there were no perfect men ever except for Jesus but and there were a good amount of them that were not Christians, right, but even all of them agreed that the moral code that this country should be founded on, even the non-Christians, was the moral code of the Bible, and that's why our constitution and our country and the freedom that we had and still have is all rooted in that biblical moral code.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so cool.
Speaker 2:It is so cool. Okay, so the point is we need to get back to the basics of life, really, and when we're talking about the basics, it even goes back to my pap sermon, which I don't have the notes in front of me. But what is that? It's in-person community, focusing on our families, focusing on our marriages and I forget what the fourth one was but in other ways that we could do this. It's like less screen time being intentional when we're together in the evenings and not being in front of screens but talking and building our marriage and pouring into our relationships, slowing down more often, making space for quiet. It's all good things, but those things are rejecting a lot of what is considered socially normal.
Speaker 1:Right, making a budget, living within your means, taking care of your body and being healthy and exercising it's all the things that don't sound fun and sexy, and that's the thing it's like. Sin is fun and sexy for a season, right. But then when you start to, is it fun racking up spending I don't know, $50,000 on credit cards and? Buying all the things and all the exhilaration of it. But then you have to deal with the consequences of that $50,000 plus interest later Right.
Speaker 1:You know the same thing with being healthy. Is it fun to eat Papa John's and McDonald's and donuts and cakes and ice cream and all those things? Heck, yeah, that's fun. But then it comes back later and bites you in the butt when you're morbidly obese with diabetes and all these things cause you didn't take care of your body and you can't keep up with your kids and you don't have energy. Right, it's just not how we are supposed to live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I mean one quick thing that we can talk about here, which this isn't the focus, but and we're already at 26 minutes but you guys listening are probably like yeah, we know this, we know we need to be financially disciplined and I need to be more intentional, I need to get off Instagram. You guys tell me this all the time and we need to do it too, because we don't. You know, it's easy to get off track and it happens.
Speaker 2:So like sneakily, but, and it's hard because we do a lot of things right now more than ever, based off of emotion. We are consuming stuff all the time. That's making us just like want to make all of these emotional decisions. So what we had talked about earlier and really it was really more of a pep talk for me, as I was like venting to query is he was reminding me and this is such a good reminder that sometimes in life you just have to go through the motions and like when you start a diet you're so excited like day one you feel good, you got your new water ball, your new shoes, all the healthy food, and like by day six you're if you haven't already quit, you're about to, because the food is bland, you're tired, you're sore, you want to drink coconut water, and but it's in those moments where you can't just go off of feeling you have to keep pushing through the motions.
Speaker 2:And it's the same thing with marriage, sometimes, with parenting and loving our kids and being intent. I mean, obviously you always love them, but like being intentional with our kids. It is the same thing with faith, like I can honestly say that for a while now I have been faithfully going through the motions of reading my Bible in the morning because my heart we've just gone through so much recently and I don't want to do it, I don't like. But I have had seasons of I'm getting off track here and I'm going to pull it back in, like I have gone through hard things and tragedy where I did put the Bible away, didn't pull it out. I emotionally we've talked about this too like coming back 25 pounds heavier and still depressed, but like and like spiritually out of whack. So sometimes you just have to go through the motions because that at least then you're moving in the right direction.
Speaker 1:And the thing that it reminded me of was I forget I think it might have been Derek that was talking to me about this but when we were going through the season, like when my dad passed away and we were going through a tough season then we were dealing with grief and I was telling him, like how did you do it, you know, when you had a season of grief, when McKenna passed too, and he was like you just got to take the next step. You just do your everyday, regular things, you just go through the motions and eventually you get back into that groove and routine and you never truly get over it, but you can get back on track with it. And in the thing, the audio clip that reminded me of it recently was Jocko Willink, and he was just talking about working out. He said do I want to get up at four AM every day and work out? No, but I do it anyway. You know, and he was talking about those things and Andy Frisella talks about it too with his power list.
Speaker 1:He has this power list that every day, you have to complete five key tasks on this power list and it's just tapping into this moral code that we talked about, and I think it's Peter. No, I think it's Paul. I don't remember what book it is, so sorry, guys, you can look it up, but he talks about how we have to finish the race right, and sometimes finishing the race is you're not always running, you're not always sprinting right. Who's ever run a 5K at a whim and didn't train for it? You know, you're walking some of that when you're out of shape, right, and sometimes it's just walking, it's just putting one foot in front of the other and taking that next step and doing the hard things, doing the non-sexy things, doing the non, sometimes, honestly, the non-fun things, and that's so.
Speaker 1:Our hope, guys, is that we're still here. There's a world that needs us. There's our families that need us, our community that needs us, and the solution isn't this overwhelming thing. It can be overwhelming when you think about all the things it wants. It can cause some of that anxiety and cause all that worry, but we have a hope in Jesus and you just gotta take the next step and just keep pushing through and do the non-sexy things, and we can take this back. The solutions are simple, right, it's not something where we have to pull in all the collective masterminds of the world to figure out the solution to this. The solution is the Bible is getting back to our moral code that God created us with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so here I am gonna just talk about scripture that we mentioned back in the first couple episodes. It's from Ephesians 6, and it says for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, and so of course, we're talking about everyday struggles, but we're also sharing on a podcast that talks about spiritual warfare, and if you think that spiritual warfare isn't, if the enemy isn't using spiritual warfare in every facet that he possibly can to discourage us and disrupt the peace, you're wrong, because I mean, it says right in the Bible and it talks about how we're fighting against forces that aren't even of this world, and that's the enemy, you know.
Speaker 1:Right, and that force will go against anybody that is truly living out and trying to live out their God-given purposes Right. So anybody that's standing in this moral code that God founded us with, he's gonna come after more, and so that means he's not just coming after the people with the nice, big, beautiful houses, the people that have all these Instagram pictures of them being with their family all the time and doing all these great things, and the people that don't have debt.
Speaker 1:He's coming after the people with the normal house that work a lot you know that are in debt, that are trying to get out of it. They're trying to do the right things. He's coming after you too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we have to tying this back to what we were talking about in the beginning. We just have to do better and we have to fight for ourselves and our lives, but also for our kids and for future generations. And we're gonna share an episode, hopefully soon, about just linking with older generations and talking about how has the older generation, have they given up on us? But also, over the next several weeks, we're gonna talk in more detail about other things as well. We threw around the idea of like doing another series, but honestly, there's just so much I don't know. That's like what the whole podcast is about. So bottom line is we have to do better and we are losing sight of right and wrong, just like Corey said, and maybe not even losing sight of it, but I do feel like some of us are just flat out ignoring it and that, whether you're losing sight of it or ignoring it, we need to acknowledge it, because those two things leave the perfect foothold for the enemy to sneak in and create confusion.
Speaker 1:And I just wanna piggyback off of that, because your pap said something to me that just is so simple but was so profound, and he was talking about how, as Christians, as the church, we have veered so off course into all these like complicated matters of trying to change culture right by whatever it is putting the flashy pastor and the music and all that stuff and I like a lot of that stuff but it comes back down to the basics. We are supposed to go out into the world and make disciples, and so the thing is is that we have here's the hope, guys, as Christians in this day and age, we actually have it easier, I think, to bring others to Christ, because if we can go back to this moral code and this foundations, that that God created, of having good marriages, of being intentional with our kids and we're not gonna be perfect, guys- right and we're gonna.
Speaker 2:We are gonna get discouraged right because that as soon as we start living a life worthy of you know our call, look, our calling that God is what God is calling us to. The devil hates that and he wants to discourage us. You know, at the Bible says the devil prowls around like a roaring lion waiting for somebody to devour. And so when we do start to struggle and when we do start to get on the right path, and then we start thinking like, should I be doing this? Is this the right thing? Should I really work on getting out of debt? Is it that important? Is it Should I be staying faithful in my marriage? Like once we start having those questionings of doubt, we need to remember that we are at war, like truly, and this is where we get to step in, just like you're saying this is the hope, this is where we get to step in and say no like no more.
Speaker 2:I'm not falling for this. I'm not falling for this trickery. I'm not gonna fall for this discouragement. I have community. I'm gonna share the discouragement. I'm gonna let them pour into me and, even when I don't feel like it, I'm gonna keep moving forward. I'm gonna keep taking the right steps. I'm gonna keep encouraging my friends. I'm gonna keep pouring into my kids, because they're gonna feel resistance too, you know.
Speaker 1:And then we, we band together and we encourage each other and through that perseverance, god gets to be glorified and we get to start taking back control right and to finish my point with that Be, by doing that right, we will become so much more Attractive to others, to where they start asking like, hey, man, we're all in debt over here. What are these guys doing, right? Hey, these guys, their kids are pretty good, they're nice kids. You know what? What are they doing? They seem to like each other in their marriage. What are they doing? And by doing that, that's where God's glorified, because we get to say it's not us, it's him and it's this moral code that was is an eight and all of us.
Speaker 2:And the further we get away from this innate moral code, the more attractive it's gonna become to people, because it's built and designed into them, and so we get to bring people back to Jesus and going off of that, I also want to say that I I do believe and I know I mean I know it to be true that God also gets to be glorified through our honesty and our transparency of when we grew up, you know, and so I'm just gonna say it here like I feel like part of the reason that we have been off Felt, feeling like we're all over the place, and maybe, if it's been confusing to you guys, I'm gonna be the first to say, like we have been in the pits too and we have gotten off course and we have been Discouraged and our marriage hasn't been in them.
Speaker 2:You know, we've been going through hard things. Our marriage hasn't been in the best spot. Our finances are not what they were when we were updating you about our debt Three years ago. You know and we're gonna talk about that I have been more short-fused than I would like to admit. I have not responded and grace, you know, with people in Public settings, people that don't even know us and that is a poor representation of Christ, and who I sit here and say like this is who I am, but this is how I'm living, and so I want to say that here, like it's okay, when you're in that spot, to stop and be like this is what I have been doing and I and I'm gonna stop it and I'm gonna fix it right.
Speaker 1:And so, to finish, what your pap said is that it's so simple that we try to make these things so complicated and so big and overwhelming when it comes back down to the basics, which is like what we were talking about, and the basics is Converting one soul at a time.
Speaker 1:And by converting one soul at a time to follow Christ and to follow this, this code, we start to have better marriages as a country, we start to have less debt or no debt as a country, we start to take our kids back as a country, and that's how we we fix the culture by converting People and and get sharing Christ with people. That's how we fix all of this. That's how we fix the all of this woeful stuff that we feel like we're in. That's how we fix the car country that has gotten so off of off course in the world as a whole. It goes back down to the simple things. It's taking care of you and your relationship with God. All of these debt things and marriage problems will be an and after effect to just bringing people to Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, so start with you first. You know you got to get there first and we're talking to ourselves here like we needed this.
Speaker 1:You know, we're not anywhere near perfect. When we were talking, we were like lifting each other up in this, yeah, and talking to ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's real, it's hard and when you're on that path, when you're trying to get back up, like the devil's gonna try and knock you down. You know, and I know we sound crazy and like we're beating a dead horse, but it's so true. So just in closing, I just want to give you guys a little Teasers to what we're gonna be sharing in the coming weeks. Like I said, we were thinking about doing a series and then we decided this is just what the podcast is about. You know, it's about life and we're gonna keep sharing that and the struggles and Talking about how we can combat discouragement and the enemy throughout that. So here are the few of the episodes we have lined up. We have an interview coming about manhood Cory's gonna be the leader on that interview. I'm really excited about this. This is a topic that Cory's been passionate about since day one.
Speaker 2:You guys have You're really hyping this up, no but you, I mean, you probably will now, but you have talked about this marriage problems things.
Speaker 1:No confidence here.
Speaker 2:You've talked about this. You just kept saying I wish there was somebody I could talk about, being like a man, a A manly man and still loving Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yeah and that's what this episode is gonna be about. We're gonna do the gift, an episode on the gift of hospitality and community and why this is essential in our lives, leaning into and nurturing our marriages and this. These might be multi episodes like, but these are just some of the topics taking back our families and how to live more intentionally and and I'm dreading this you guys, I'm so sorry that I've let you down, but we're gonna be.
Speaker 1:Embarrassing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're gonna be doing dead updates again and finance episodes because, honestly, that's what you guys a lot of you Were asking for and we stopped doing it you Because we haven't been doing a good job, so we'll get back to that and then we're gonna do I'm excited about this an episode on prayer, talking about the power of prayer and an opportunity for, like, a community group. That's gonna be totally free but so accessible for any of our podcast listeners and there's gonna be engagement there and I'm just really excited.
Speaker 1:so Well, this camera's moving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, shorts here with all that said, we just hope that you guys have a fantastic week. We're really excited about what's to come. We thank those of you who have hung in there with us for hanging in there with us through Literally so many seasons and so many highs and lows, and we love you guys. I just checked and we haven't. We've been just so out of the loop with our own show. We haven't done any contest or anything like that. Our Christmas one is obviously coming, but we are Three reviews away from a hundred reviews because we haven't asked for reviews and a very long time. So if you haven't, on Apple, left a five star review or left a comment review, if you would do that this week, that'd be wonderful. And if you do do it and you go the extra mile and Screenshot it and either message it to me on Instagram or message it to the email in our show notes, I will send you something. I'll send you a little special something.
Speaker 1:So Please tell me it's not gonna be a Costco sweatshirt. It might, it might be, but yeah, did you notice earlier that you said do, do.
Speaker 2:Do do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you do, do it.
Speaker 2:That's funny. Um, anyway, yeah, leave a review and then share the show. We want to keep growing this community and, yeah, I mean we ideally. I can't wait to have conferences and to meet some of you guys in person and Just like be a true force To be reckoned with. So there's just so much exciting stuff to come and we'll catch you guys next week.
Speaker 1:Have a good week you.