Forty Christian men, nine-figure exits, a CEO who’d advised the Cathy family, founders running some of the most successful businesses in the Southeast. On paper, these were men who had “won.”
This was the room I had the privilege to spend time in last month at a retreat in Alabama.
But the conversations weren’t about deals or exits. They were about broken marriages, kids who had wandered away from the faith or wanted little to do with their fathers after they’d left the house.
They were about this realization many of these men had (typically somewhere after age 50-55) that the inheritance they’d spent thirty years building might be the worst thing they could hand their children.
Four ideas from that weekend have stayed with me. Here they are.
#1 – Pursue a Well-Ordered Life, Not a Balanced One
Everyone talks about “balancing” their family, work, faith, health, hobbies etc… but balance should never be the goal.
The first commandment isn’t about balance, it’s about order. Put God first, everything else gets arranged underneath of that one pursuit.
Stop trying to distribute your time evenly across all of your responsibilities, put God as your first priority of the day and everything else will fall into place around it.
#2 – Win the Identity Battle Before You Fight Any Other Battle
Our first and primary battle each day is not a battle of the will or of discipline; it’s a battle for our identity. It’s the battle to believe that you are indeed God’s beloved child (1 John 3:1).
If we don’t see God as our Abba, we’ll get stuck living a religious life, trying to get God to love us. Let the Father embrace you each morning like He embraces the prodigal. No earning, no proving, just receiving.
When you start winning that battle, all the other battles start to get a lot easier.
#3 – Your Money isn’t Your Legacy
I hear a lot of men talk about how they want to build generational wealth. It sounds like good stewardship, sounds spiritual when we say we’re “providing” but I fear most of us are pointing our ambitions at the wrong target.
It’s not a matter of whether we will amass treasure,
it’s a matter of what treasure we are living for.
Most men are pursuing financial security, wealth and riches but very in the process they experience very little prosperity.
We ought to be putting our emphasis on generational faith over generational wealth. If you are exhausting yourself in an effort to hit some financial number you think will give you peace, in the end you’ll find you have forfeited your most important asset in the process.
The legacy you leave your children (who you are, what you invest into them) will be far more valuable than the assets you hand over.
#4 – Your Family Needs Your Presence More Than Your Provision
Most of us tell ourselves the reason we’re working so hard is to provide our kids/family the life we never had. Sounds noble right? But your kids don’t need more stuff, they need more of you.
Saying you’re “doing this for them” while you aren’t even mentally or emotionally present for them because you’re grinding yourself into the ground is like watering your driveway every day and wondering why your grass is dying.
Don’t overwork in the pursuit of retirement, and don’t let a net worth number dictate how you live now. Your kids aren’t going to remember a financial number you hit, they’ll remember whether you were there and if they felt valued in your presence.
