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Reset Podcast with Archie Callahan is where faith meets real life.
In a world constantly shaping the way men think, lead + live, Reset Podcast takes a fresh look at men + culture through the lens of the GOSPEL. Each episode features honest conversations, practical wisdom + scriptural truth designed to help MEN reset their minds, strengthen their faith + lead with purpose in their homes, workplaces, churches + communities.
Whether we’re discussing leadership, marriage, fatherhood, integrity, current culture, spiritual growth, or the challenges men face today, our goal is simple: to align our lives with God’s truth + become the men He has called us to be.
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NEW EPISODE EVERY WEDNESDAY.
Hey guys, welcome again to Reset.
In the studio once again is Scott Mayo, Executive Pastor of Bridge Church.
We've been talking about consistency and why it's so important.
And I think a part of consistency is in the area of management.
What you don't manage, you ultimately lose.
Life is one of stewardship.
It's one of management.
And when I fail to manage, I lose what God has given me.
And we want to look at a parable today, a parable in Matthew 25.
I think Scott's very familiar with this parable.
It's the parable of the talents.
There was this master going away.
He was going to a distant land.
He gave one servant five talents, another one two, and another one one.
The Bible says he gave to each one of them according to their ability.
So God already knows our ability.
And sometimes we get frustrated with what God's given us.
not knowing that he gives us according to our ability.
But we don't have to stay there.
We can grow in our management.
And if we grow in our management, everything else grows around us.
And so, Scott, man, you've got a master's degree in what is it called?
Business administration.
Business administration.
You understand management.
You understand financial management.
But more than that, you understand how to manage your own life.
You manage your family.
well, you manage your marriage well, manage finances well.
You're a very frugal type person.
You're going to manage to the T. You know where every dollar goes, every penny.
And so when it comes to management, why do people fail in that area?
Why can't they get a grasp of managing the things that God has given?
Well, I think some of it is when I say education, I don't mean like formal education, but maybe never been taught in a particular area.
Like, you know, I know from even my dad's generation and stuff, money wasn't really talked about like, you know.
Like today.
Yeah, like today.
And you obviously didn't have the resources that you have today to help you.
I mean, you can pretty much get somebody, you know, AI to put together your budget for you, right?
You've got apps and software, things like that, that'll do it.
But so I think a lot of it is have never been trained in that.
And then I think,
The second thing is maybe I've never been trained in that, but I'm too maybe prideful or shamed, and I never ask a question on how to grow in that.
And so, yeah, I think that's part of it is that some of it is not being trained, and then the areas that I lack in, I'm not willing to tell anybody that I'm lacking in that area because somehow I think it makes me look less of a man.
And so you think guys deal with pride?
I think so.
I mean, that's part of it.
Because no one wants to say, hey, they make more money than me or they make less money than me, but they manage their money better than I do.
And some of it is you do have to find a safe place to have these conversations.
It's not like you just go out and...
and grab somebody off the street yeah my money's terrible help me manage it yeah yeah uh so you'll help somebody manage it uh they'll help you manage it they'll manage it from your wallet to theirs yeah you gotta you gotta get somebody that manages something well so you know the key is is to find somebody that's doing it well not perfect but doing it well
whether it's in the area of marriage, the area of finances, the area of health.
I think all of us need coaches.
I have a fitness coach.
Me and you have had executive coaches teach us about management, about leadership.
We just brought in Dr. Courtney McBath to speak to our leadership team.
He talked about our theme for next year and how to push through that, how to get it done as a leadership team.
So life is one of management.
And when you mismanage something...
You often, when you mismanage it personally, you begin to blame others for your own mismanagement sometimes.
You think it's the system.
You think it's the people around you.
You think it's your kids.
You think it's your boss.
You think it's your job.
Not knowing that when you do that, you take the responsibility out of your own hands and you play the blame game.
But when it comes to management, you have to take personal responsibility.
Absolutely.
Nobody's going to manage your life for you.
They're trying to manage theirs.
Why am I going to manage yours?
I've got enough management here.
I'll pour into your life.
I mentor guys, but they have to put it to work.
They have to work the system.
I tell people when they come in for financial counseling, I can't want this more than you want it.
Yeah.
Because my heart is I really want it for them because I can see, okay, yeah, okay, you know, there's certain things maybe need to cut that out.
And, again, we're talking about finances at this point, but stewardship is all life stewardship.
But, you know, you see things and you –
you want it almost more than they do.
And then when that happens, you know that it's not going to work out because they have to take that ownership of it and say, you know, I'm responsible.
And that's one of our staff values here.
We have six staff values here at Bridge Church, and they spell out the word bridge.
Each letter has its own different value.
But the R in our bridge staff value that we have is responsible stewardship.
So what we expect of our team when they serve here is that they are responsible, stewarding their things in a responsible manner.
In other words, am I making good, wise decisions with what God has entrusted me to oversee at Bridge Church?
And so the same thing is true in your house.
or at work or wherever God has placed you, that he's given you an area of influence or responsibility or stewardship, and you have to be responsible to oversee that and manage that for the glory of God.
I think that's what Paul says.
Whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord.
So if I'm managing my boss's
finances or a business account or whatever it happens to be, then I have to do that as if I'm doing it for the Lord.
And that helps bring me into alignment of what I would call biblical responsible stewardship.
Yeah, and when you're stewarding somebody else's money, somebody else's business, somebody else's time, you've got to do it well.
Oftentimes people want to go in their own business, but they don't steward the business of another person's well.
Why would God give you your own if you're not willing to steward somebody else's well?
And that's the whole principle of this parable.
These guys were stewards.
They were not owners.
In fact, we own nothing, guys.
The Bible says the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
We're just stewards.
God's the owner.
We manage every blessing that he's given us.
These guys had to manage the talents.
The talents was a certain measurement of money.
One had five, one had two, one had one.
There came a day the master came back to reconcile accounts.
He came back and they had to give an account for their stewardship.
And the same with us, we're gonna have to give an account for our stewardship one day before God, whether it's the stewardship of our family, our marriage, our finances, our health, whatever that is, whatever you steward, the church, we're gonna be held accountable for that.
But they had to give an account.
He came to reconcile accounts.
And in the end, all accounts will be reconciled.
The one he gave five, that guy said, man, I went and took that five.
I invested it.
I doubled it.
Now there's ten.
The guy who had two, he said, I doubled it, master.
Here it is.
There's four.
And to both of those guys, he said, well done.
Thy good and faithful are consistent.
Serve it.
You know what I'm saying?
There's that word consistency again, guys.
Yeah, for sure.
And to the one who had won, he said, Master, I knew you to be a hard man.
So he didn't really know the master.
Yeah, absolutely.
He had a misconception of God.
Everything flows out of the way you view God.
If you have a wrong view of God, man, that changes the whole way you act.
And so he went and buried it.
When the master came back, he dug up that one coin, that one talent, and gave it back to the master.
The master turned around and called him a wicked servant.
Mm-hmm.
And he said, cast him into outer darkness.
And he took the one, and guess who he gave it to?
He gave it to the guy who had 10.
And in our society, we want to take from the guy who has 10 and give it to the guy who has nothing.
And the guy who has nothing, not all people, but a lot of times people who do not have much, sometimes it's poor stewardship.
Not in every case.
There are some cases where people are in poverty.
They just can't help it.
They were born into that.
There's different reasons, single-parent moms, single-parent dads.
We understand that.
But a lot of this is people are not willing to put in the time, the energy, the effort, and learn a skill and go out and work.
The hands of the diligent lead to profit.
You know, if you want to come to poverty, just begin to fold your hands a little bit, sleep, slumber.
And then poverty, the Bible says, will come on you like a bandit.
And so oftentimes we want to – God doesn't give you what you deserve.
He gives you what you can manage.
So God already knows your ability.
He already knows what you can manage.
We had four kids.
He gave us four kids because he knew we could manage them, I guess.
It was tough, man.
People said, man, wouldn't you want to go back to when they were little?
I said, no.
No, man, I'm past that.
I've got grandkids now.
I enjoy the season, man.
Our youngest daughter just got married, and I'm enjoying it.
It's an adjustment.
It's a transition that really challenges your consistency, but I don't want to go back.
I think I proved to be faithful in that area, and I don't think I have to retake that test.
You like trying to steward this part of your life.
You're like trying to steward the empty nest.
Yeah, it might be a little bad.
It might be easier to even steward and be consistent in the area of finances.
But it's just tough, the management, because management, it really takes time.
It takes effort.
It takes energy.
You have to be very studious with that.
You have to manage well.
And why do you think guys don't manage well?
What happens?
Well, I think, you know, part of it is that the opportunity or the opportunities that maybe they had when they were younger.
Like I said earlier, you know, I think a lot of times our upbringing affects us.
In other words, if you grew up where it was cut that light off, it costs money.
Cut that water off, it costs money.
So you grow up and when you were talking about the one that had the one talent,
and he had a misconception of God.
So I think a lot of times our mindsets that we've been given, and they're not necessarily wrong.
They're not sinful in the sense like it's a moral right or wrong decision, but we grow up into that, and so when God blesses us or provides, we still operate in a stingy way.
right?
We don't want to release.
So maybe generosity is something that we struggle with in the area of stewardship because we were raised that everything has to be tight.
There's just no margin whatsoever.
Or maybe on the flip side, we grew up and it's like, just spend all the way anyway all the time.
Live on the edge.
Live on the edge, and God will somehow miraculously provide for the power bill.
For the stupidity.
Yeah, so it's one of those things that I think it's like we believe in miracles, but we shouldn't have to have one every month to pay the rent, right?
So there should be a way that we grow in stewardship.
And so I think you have to self-evaluate or get with a good close brother in the Lord or spouse if you're married and say, hey, you know,
Here's some tendencies that I have when it comes, and again, we're talking about money, but it could be any area.
These are some tendencies that I have.
I get really tight when it's the Christmas season and people are out taking donations for different stuff, and I get really tight.
Why is that?
What in me?
And help someone or let someone help you discover
what it is that's causing you to react or trigger, if you will, a popular word these days, to a certain situation.
And then bring that to the Holy Spirit and the Lord in Scripture and say, okay, let me work through this and create... Craig Groeschel wrote a book, I think it's called Winning the War in Your Mind or something like that.
But he says, hey, you got to create new ruts
or pathways in your mind so that when these things come up, they don't lock you down from being able to move forward in what God has for you.
So I think some of it is that.
I mean, obviously, there's a lot more that could be put in there.
Yeah, some of our lack of management comes from the way we were raised.
Yeah.
That just follows us, but that doesn't mean it's right.
Correct.
If you need a miracle every day, that's probably a good indication you're not maturing.
Sure.
You're not growing.
That's good.
Because miracles were really seen in the days of the wilderness with the children of Israel.
Water out of a rock, quail came in, bread that was on the ground every morning, cloud by day, fire by night.
I mean, once they got into the promised land, the miracle ceased.
Sure, yeah.
They had to fight the enemies.
They had to mature.
And the quails came because they complained so much about the bread.
So before they could get the meat out between their teeth, they were sick of it, I think.
You know, you could tell a poverty mindset because they were gathering bread and trying to keep it, but it was going bad before the next day.
Why?
Because God was trying to get them to depend upon him daily.
He is our daily bread.
Yeah.
And so if you're needing a miracle, man, I need a miracle.
And I believe in miracles.
Oh, absolutely.
I believe God still heals.
God still delivers.
Blind eyes can still be opened.
And provides financially at times.
But eventually, as you grow in stewardship, the need for a miracle every month.
Yeah.
That has to cease, that I have stewarded my resources well to the point that I can manage what God has given me.
And as you grow in that, it's like somebody who has an older car, but they never take care of it.
They don't change the oil.
They don't wash it.
They don't vacuum it out.
But they're constantly praying for God to give them a new car when they're not managing what God's already given them.
Well, why would God give you a brand new car?
Toyota Tundra if you can't manage a 1968 Chevrolet.
You know what I'm saying?
It's all whacked up.
You know, dirty.
You never change the oil.
So it's this thing about management.
Management.
So how do men...
learn to manage, and how do they pass it down to the next generation, like their children?
How do you feel like you've passed that down to your son?
Well, I think a couple of things.
One, I just tried to start having open conversations with my son.
My daughter's special needs, so those conversations aren't there for her.
But with my son, it's just to have more open conversations.
Did my dad – I can remember freshman year in college, that's when my dad said, this is how you balance a checkbook.
At that point, I was 19 years old.
I learned that in high school.
I learned that in an economics class or something.
Yeah, I did that.
So that was like my introduction to finance.
General math.
General math.
But I think having those conversations –
And just being real, being honest of, hey, here's some financial mistakes.
And again, we kind of get on the financial, but here's some mistakes that I've made in stewarding my life or finances or different areas.
And just being able to be transparent with them because there comes a point like you talk to your kids when they're a kid, you talk to them a certain way because they're, you know,
five, six years old.
But as they mature, you can begin to release more deeper conversations or meaningful things that they can take and help them along the way.
Don't keep them in the dark.
So I think part of that is just being able to have those open conversations.
Again, I don't know, may have talked about it already, but I think you have open and honest conversations with your spouse in the area, again, of finances if you're married.
that you say, hey, you know what?
This subscription over here is, you know, really costing us.
And again, you're not having a mean-spirited conversation.
It is not a head-to-head.
It's a side-by-side, right?
And so we're having a side-by-side.
We're looking at the budget.
We're looking at things.
And you know what?
If we don't make some changes in this area or that, or, you know, we want to set up some financial plans or goals for us to retire at a
and the funds when we do retire.
So we have to make some adjustments or decisions here.
And so I think just having those open, honest conversations, like I said, there's a ton of resources that are out there available that you can kind of do anonymously in the sense of if you feel ashamed or embarrassed about your financial situation that you can get access to and can make wise decisions.
Now, where before...
I didn't have that kind of stuff.
So everything I had to learn, I had to learn from grabbing bits and pieces from different people.
We didn't have 24-hour financial news shows to tell us what the stock was doing and all of these things.
No, man.
You have to renew your mind.
I think one of the first books I read about finances was probably Larry Burkett's book.
I probably read that same way.
That might have been the only book out there.
Yeah, back in the day, there was not a lot of financial stuff.
But man, I love the area of finances.
I like reading on finance.
I like cryptocurrency.
I like the stock market.
I like looking at it.
I like studying it.
I don't understand it all.
But I want to grow in that area.
I want to keep growing.
The moment you stop growing, you start dying.
So you want to grow.
You want to
You want to expand the way you think because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
So I think John Maxwell once said, your thoughts have brought you to this place.
And they will bring you where you're at tomorrow.
He said it in those kind of terms.
I'm paraphrasing it.
But our thoughts are powerful.
I think our thoughts limit us.
And some of those thoughts come from how our family treated us, how our parents treated us, how we saw them manage money.
And poverty becomes this built-in system that becomes generational.
And it doesn't have to be.
Because poverty is not about how much money you have in the bank.
It's what you got here.
Yeah.
It's inside because there's a lot of people that have money in the bank that are still in poverty.
Mm-hmm.
They're stingy.
They're scared they're going to lose it.
That's an impoverished mentality.
They're not generous to give to people or to give to organizations.
They are just holding on, and it's a poverty thing, man, and they think they're going to lose it.
I've met people like that that have a lot of money.
I've met people that make $300,000, $400,000 a year, and they live all the way to the edge.
There is no margin.
Right.
There is no rainy day fund.
They just say, hey, man, okay, I make $400,000.
I'm going to live right to that $399.9.
And then they actually – I've seen them get in trouble.
I'm like, man, can you help me manage my money?
I'm like, you make way more than I make.
How did you get there?
But they buy multiple cars, boats, houses.
They just keep living it up.
And their credit score –
Well, I don't know what the stats are on it, but I've heard that the people that win the lottery, within a few years, they're broke again just because they didn't know how to manage the funds that they received.
So winning the lottery is not always the answer, although I'd like to have some of that money, I can tell you that.
I'd like to give it a shot to Stuart, just being honest.
So, yeah, some of that...
It is a behavior.
And again, I think at every end of the spectrum, whether you're stingy or whether you overspend and you just, you know, whatever, God's always teaching us.
wherever we are in our lane, right?
And God wants to come and bring his word and illuminate the word to us.
The Holy Spirit comes along as a companion with the word and helps to grow us and mature us.
So if we're stingy or scared,
Stingy, it could be just greedy, but it could be operating out of fear.
And then on the other end of just overspending is just learning how to have some self-control, some discipline.
So again, that's part of the fruit of the Spirit over here as well.
So the Lord is always working with us on everything.
area of our life, right?
What the background is or whatever.
The Spirit of God wants to teach us and grow us and mature us so that we can be found faithful, right?
So that we can be like the steward in the parable, the one that had the five and doubled and had that.
So I think that's what God is wanting us to work and grow in, but we have to yield to
to him and come to his word and recognize that his word and spirit are the ultimate authority in our life.
Yeah, so it says here in verse 28 of chapter 25 of Matthew, so he takes the bag of gold from him, the one who had won, who mismanaged it, and he gave it to the one who had ten bags.
For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance.
Whoever does not have, even that what they have will be taken from them.
So he's saying it's the principle of increase.
If I want God to increase me, I've got to increase my capacity to steward well.
Yeah.
It's just like our kids, man.
My son at 10 years old, I wouldn't turn around and hand him $1,000.
Sure.
Why?
Why?
He's going to buy Xboxes, gum, snicker bars, drinks.
He'll buy crazy stuff and he'll mismanage what I gave him.
He wouldn't invest it.
You know, he wouldn't invest any of that.
So we teach our kids from a young age, hey, man, we want you to steward this.
We would give them money.
We want you to tithe off of this.
We want you to put a little bit away.
And you teach them stewardship.
Even I've got older kids.
All my kids are married.
I do not force my way into their life.
If they have questions about stewardship, I want to answer them, but I don't push and I let them come to me.
And when they do, you know, I talk to them about finances, you know,
This is how you're going to be able to buy a house.
You've got to have this much money.
You need this kind of credit score.
You need to learn to save every month.
Don't spend all the way.
If you want to be poor, go out to eat every day.
Yes.
That's a good way for the enemy to rob you of the money.
So you steward what you have.
And sometimes we want the house.
We want the car.
We want all the furniture.
We want it overnight.
And oftentimes we want what our parents have.
It took them 40 years to get it, and we want it in 40 days.
And it just doesn't work that way.
If you do, you're going to go in debt to get it.
And debt in marriage can become fatal to a marriage.
People argue over finances, communication.
And a lot of times the reason they can't communicate because it's so financially tight, they don't want to talk to each other.
Yeah.
So I've found that when my margin goes down, my stress goes up.
Say that one more time.
When my margin goes down, my stress goes up.
And so what happens when I take on a debt and, you know, there's all sorts of conversations on debt and we're not necessarily going down that road.
But what happens with what we'll just call consumer debt is now I've invited unnecessary authority in my life.
God's Word is the ultimate authority, His Word leading me.
But what I've done is now I've attached myself to the Chevy payment.
I've attached myself to the department store or whatever store I like to or whatever.
So now these people...
I have voices in my life.
They didn't have it.
They didn't.
Now they do.
So when God says and speaks to me and says, hey, I want you to sow a seed into ministry or missionary, or I want you to bless somebody who's needing some food.
the first thing I do is I consult my finances, not God's Word.
And when I say, well, I've got to pay the car payment, two car payments, and I've got to pay the mortgage or the lease, and I've got to pay all these other things, then that becomes the authority in my life and not God's Word.
And you have to resist the peer pressure from other people.
I remember when Tansy and I first got married, we had one vehicle for the first five and a half years.
And I had peer pressure coming from my brothers, people around me.
Why don't you buy another car?
I couldn't afford it.
I don't want to go in debt.
And so we chose to have one car.
And, you know, that's what we could do, and we did it.
And so we didn't go in debt to the point that it was overwhelming.
You know, it's not a sin to take out a loan.
Sure, right.
It might not be wisdom.
Right.
but it's not a sin.
So for us, we just said, man, we don't want to be in that kind of debt.
And if we were, for instance, if I had two car payments when we came to Virginia Beach, it would have been a whole lot harder to obey God because I came here with no guarantee of making money.
Sure.
And so it was very easy with one small car payment that we were paying double on to come here and not get another car payment and get an apartment, not go put couches on credit, but pay cash for them or furniture.
And just live that way, man.
You got to live at a way that, hey, man, one day you don't have to live like that forever.
Sure, it's a season.
Yeah, but you have to sacrifice up front.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
It is what it is, not unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth or something like that.
I wasn't.
I remember I shared this story with you before, but my dad, when he was very young working and he was getting ready to expect his first, my older brother, my parents' first child, the guy looked at him and said, well, you better go out and get you an overcoat because it'll be the last one you ever get.
So what he meant was, as a father, as a man,
You oftentimes, without the sacrifice, you're the last.
Could dad go out and get a new overcoat?
Sure.
But the point was is that you begin to make decisions for what's best for others and not for you.
You begin to filter your decisions based on, okay, does my wife amply supplied?
Are my kids well?
Do they have the clothes, the shoes they need?
Yeah.
And dad becomes last, man.
And maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.
You know what I'm saying?
You are the husband.
You're the band around the house.
You hold that house together.
And if you have to sacrifice, you need to sacrifice.
And I think that's what we need to call a generation, too, especially these young guys and older guys alike.
You need to learn to sacrifice, man.
Life is not all fun and games.
It's not all just play.
There is a stewardship of sacrifice.
You have to sacrifice your life, what you want, man.
You know, I'm seeing that in my son right now, man.
He likes to hunt and fish.
But he's taking a job so he can supply for his family that requires six days a week.
So the hunting for a season, it's no longer there.
And I'm glad he understands that.
He came to me and he said, I ain't going to get to hunt this year.
Yeah.
It's not even in my mind this year.
I've got this job.
I've got to get this done.
We've got some goals.
And I applaud that.
I'm not trying to make it easy on him.
Parents, I think, sometimes try to make it too easy on their kids.
Well, I'll help you.
You don't have to work five days a week, and I'll give you money for the sick.
No, get out there and get it, my friend.
It's just a part of life.
It's just a part of living.
Oftentimes we want to rescue our kids from struggle.
Yeah, someone told me, and so I shared it with Nathan growing up, manhood begins when you take responsibility.
Whatever age.
Whatever age.
So you can be a 50-year-old man, never take responsibility, and I don't know that you've totally moved into manhood.
No, you're not a man.
You're in a man's body, but you've got an adolescence mentality.
Yeah, so when you take on that responsibility, again, that goes back to responsible stewardship.
When you take on that responsibility for whatever it happens to be, whether you're single, married, kids, or whatever, you're still responsible to oversee what God has placed in your care and to do that well.
Yeah, yeah.
You have to do it well.
If not, life won't happen, man.
It just won't grow.
So today, just a takeaway, just one or two things in your life, guys, that you need to manage better.
What can you do this week to steward or manage your time, your energy, your resources, your marriage, your children?
What areas need to come up in management?
I believe it's God's will to increase us.
I believe God wants us to increase, but he doesn't do it without us learning how to manage what he's given us.
Scott, thank you for being here, man.
Absolutely.
My pleasure.
Awesome.
Guys, bless you.
We'll see you next week on Reset.