Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Outlasters, Part 2: Financially Free Families

Episode Date: May 3, 2014

What will the world say about you when you’re gone? No one can live forever, but anyone can create a legacy that stands the test of time. Prepare to make your mark on the world—become an Outlaster. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm thrilled to have all of you with us today at all of our life churches. Those of you at our network churches, we love you all. We love your pastors. And it is a great honor to partner with you. And those of you on the other side of computer screens in countries around the world, you are going to be incredibly blessed today because we have a guest speaker, actually two speakers, to help us with the second week of our series Outlasters. We're going to live in such a way that what we believe and what we value actually

outlasts us. Next week, I want to talk about how do we impart a first generation faith to the next generation that comes behind us. Today, though, we're going to talk about leaving a financial legacy, and I've got to tell you, we are blessed to have brought in the best in the entire world, Dave Ramsey, and Rachel Cruz, to help us do just that. In fact, before we welcome them, I want to tell you that their newest book is just out. smart money, smart kids.

Debuted, of course, number one on the New York Times bestseller list because it's just that good. And I hope that every single one of you will get this book because it really is something that will impact not just your life, but generations to come. And I want to give honor to Dave and Rachel. I would say quite honestly that I would put Dave outside of my family in the top three men that have influenced. my life and leadership beyond a shadow of a doubt. Amy and I have been following his ministry for almost 20 years. He became a personal friend about 15 years ago. Their organization is a dear friend to our church. We love them so much. They've influenced our church. When we start a campus before we ever start it, we save up and we pay cash. Before we ever break ground, we have the money set aside to do so. And it's honestly because of the way Dave has impacted my life, both personally,

and organizationally. I'll tell you, I think Dave is one of the sharpest people on the planet. I actually think Rachel's daughter may be even sharper. And so, would you please help me show some love to our dear friends, Dave Ramsey, and his daughter, Rachel Cruz. Thank you much. I was that dad. I was that dad that dad that messed up our financial situation.

so badly that I put my entire family in jeopardy. I was that dad. My wife, Sharon, and I, we started off with nothing. I mean, y'all started off with nothing. You remember, we ain't got money, honey, but we got love. Good thing, too, because we ain't got any money. I started buying and selling real estate, and I got rich. By the time I was 26 years old, I had about $4 million worth of real estate.

at least by a kid from Antioch Tennessee's standards, that's rich. But I borrowed too much money, and I didn't know what I was doing. I was stupid. And I didn't know that the borrower is slave to the lender. Bank got sold to another bank, called our notes. We spent the next two and a half years of our life losing everything we owned. We were sued and foreclosed on, The electricity got cut off and the water got cut off and the house was in foreclosure.

I had a brand new baby and a toddler and a marriage hanging on by a thread because money fights. Well, they're the number one cause a divorce in North America today. Sharon and I, we didn't get a divorce, but sometimes we held on to each other just to get a better grip. You all know what I mean. I was 28 years old and I was scared completely out of my mind. I couldn't breathe. I remember standing with a shower so hot in my face. I could just barely stand there and just stand there and cry.

Finally, I didn't know what to do, you guys. I didn't know what to do. I run into people, got all the answers. I didn't have all the answers. Finally, September 23rd of 1988, we filed bankruptcy. I was that dad. And I was born that year. So I was born in April.

and mom and dad filed in September. Some people tell me that I was born at the worst possible time, the crash. But I see it differently because I think I was born at the best time because it was their fresh start. You see, I literally had a front row seat of watching Dave and Sharon Ramsey not only figure out how to handle money, but God's ways of handling money. And because of that, I believe my life, and my legacy has forever been changed.

And I think that's why one of my favorite calls on Dad's Radio Show is when people call in to do their debt-free screams. If you've heard this, people will call in and they'll share their journey about how they became completely debt-free. And then at the end of the call at the top of their lungs in front of six million listeners, they get to scream out that they are debt-free. And what you hear in their voices, I believe,

are these chains dropping off? Because there's a sense of freedom that comes with not owing anyone something. And so Dad actually does his radio show live in our office in Nashville. So when you come into our office building, his studio is off to the right with a big glass wall so you can literally watch him do the show.

Across from that, there's a little cafe called Martha's Place where there's cookies and cakes and cappuccino's and coffee being made. And so people will literally drive or fly from all over America to come to Financial Peace Plaza to do their debt-free screams live in our lobby. And that's really one of the perks about working at the office is because you can walk through this lobby between one and four on any given afternoon. And you get to meet these people. You get to see these people. You know, you'll see the 60-year-old couple sitting at the high top table in the corner who just paid off their house.

You'll meet the single mom who drove up from Atlanta. with her 15-year-old teenage son who became debt-free. But the ones that always get me are the young families that come in. The doors to our office will open up and a little five-year-old boy will come sprinting in because he's been in the car for eight hours. A dad will walk in behind them with a two- or three-year-old little girl

attached to his leg and she's in little footy pajamas and her little blonde curls are stuck to her face and she's been sleeping. And then a very, very, very tired mom walks in behind them with a little nine-month-old on her hip. When this family gets together and they put their radio headsets on with the microphone ready to get on their call with dad and they get on and they'll say things like that the dad will say, Dave, we took out an extra job and I worked nights and weekends to finally pay off our student loans. The wife will chime in and she'll say, Dave, we didn't take our beach vacation

that we've taken every year for the past five years. And we took all that money and we finally paid off the cars. And then towards the end of the call, dad will say these magical words. He'll say, okay, count it down. Let's hear your big debt-free scream. And when you watch these parents as they gather up their kids and they bend down for the kids to reach the microphone

because the kids, they know they have one job to do. And they've been practicing for eight hours for this moment. But I watch these parents, and I watch their eyes as they get their kids together. And I'm just saying, those parents have literally moved mountains, made so many sacrifices to change their family tree. And that dad gets to look at his kids, and he gets to say, are you ready? three, two, one. And in unison, this whole family with these little chipmunk voices in the background

scream out together, we're dead. And every time I hear those calls, it just makes me cry. And I look at that family, and I just cry because I think I was that little girl. You know, my parents, they could have gone right back into their old ways and their old habits. But they drew a line in the sand. They said, enough is enough. We're only doing what Scripture says to do with our money. And because of that, again, my life has changed.

And I get so excited for that little girl, because I know what's in store for her in the next 10, 15, 20 years of her life because I was that little girl. So how do we raise children in such a way that they become biblically wise, money-smart adults? You see, my friend Andy Andrews says, we don't want to raise good kids. We want to raise kids in such a way they become good adults, because we want them to leave. So how do we pull this off?

How do you teach money-wise, biblically based concepts to kids? Well, I know there's a lot of things that go in this recipe for sure, and we're sure not going to cover them all here today. But I do know, Rachel and I are sure there are at least three things. You have to really get through to them. to be able to raise them that way. The first thing you teach them is God owns it all. You teach them God owns it all because the Bible says the earth is the lords and the fullness thereof. Now, a neat thing happens when you teach a child that God owns it all.

You see, we live in a very kid-centric culture, and I believe in children. I love children, but I kind of adopted the Bill Cosby attitude about kids. And that is, I will die for you, but I also might be the one that will kill you. You see, I can take you out and make another one look just like you. And so, but in a kid-centric culture, things have shifted to where we're worshiping children. We don't need to worship children. They're precious, and we'll do anything for them. But we cannot let the inmates run the asylum.

So we have to teach them that God owns it all because what that does is it takes them off the center stage. They start to learn humility immediately when that happens. Because when God owns it all, turns out the axis of the world does not run through the top of your little head. Go figure. And it changes the way you handle money when you understand God owns it all. It does for me. I handle money differently when I'm managing it for someone that I adore, someone that I worship.

I will handle it better for him than I would have for me. your kids are exactly the same way. And you've got to do this in everyday life. I remember one time we finally got a decent car. I mean, when we went broke, we lost everything. I got the first car I got the predominant color on this puppy was Bondo. Y'all know what I'm talking about? I mean, we drove Hooptyville, right?

We were Hoopty's all over the place. And finally we moved up out of that. We saved up our money, and we got our first decent, good used car. And I don't know how you guys celebrate getting a new car at the house, but we load all the kids in it. We drive around the block and have that first new car. car experience, right? This is a good used car, and finally we got it. And I'll never forget, Rachel's little brother Daniel, he was one of those little guys. I guess he's probably six or eight years old somewhere in that range. We pull in the driveway from doing our little drive around.

He flops back on the back seat, drops his arms back and says, Dad, we're doing pretty good. I started laughing. I said, honey, I'm doing pretty good. You got nothing. You have to reinforce this idea of ownership the whole time you're dealing with them in the normal ebb and flow of life. And so the first thing you've got to really make sure that they get is God owns it all. The second thing you want to be able to teach your kids so that they are bimbically wise, money-smart adults later in life is you have got to teach them the value of work. The value of work. The soul of the lazy man desires and has nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich. The diligent prosper.

You want to teach your kids to work. And not only just work, but the idea that money comes from work. Money does not come from mom and dad's back pocket. And so growing up in the Ramsey House, we were never given an allowance growing up. We were always on commission. So you work, you get paid, you don't work, you don't get paid. And so we learned that very early in life, and I love that because allowance seems like it's like you're saying to your children, you're deficit, you're not able to succeed, so we have to help you.

What mom and dad did with us is they instilled dignity to say, no, you can actually accomplish something. And they made us do that. And then they attached money to that as well. And obviously, this work is very age-appropriate, right? When your four-year-old cleans up their room, they're not really cleaning up their room, right? They're picking up a few toys and mom and dad are doing the rest. And that's okay because they're four. But their responsibility should increase the older they get.

And when your kids make money, there's really a couple of things they can do with it, and something that you can kind of watch over and help them. The first thing they're going to learn to do is spend money, and that's okay. Let them enjoy some of the money they've earned. But they're going to learn that money is finite. When it's gone, it's gone. There's boundaries. There's limits with money.

And you want to teach your kids that as they're spending the money they've earned. You want to teach your kids to save. In Proverbs it says, in the House of the Wise, there are stores of choice food and oil. A foolish man devours all he has. Wise people save. Foolish people spend everything they make. So teach your kids to save. Mom and dad growing up told us that they were not going to pay for a car when we turned 16.

That we had to save up. And the amount of money we saved, they would match. And dad called that his 401-Dave plan. And so when my older sister did it, when she turned 16 and they made her do it, I realized, okay, they are serious about this whole thing. So I went crazy and started working like crazy. I mean, I opened up two little side businesses. I mean, I just went nuts.

And I ended up saving $8,000. So I got a $16,000 car paid for with cash at 16. And I tell you that, thank you. Very nice of you. But I tell you that not because of the amounts or even because of the match, because maybe you're sitting out here, you know, are you watching me, think, I cannot financially match half of what my child is going to save. And that's okay.

But what that did for me, at 16 years old, it taught me work, It taught me patience. It taught me goal setting. It taught me delayed gratification. It taught me so many things. And I'm telling you parents, when I sat in that car at 16 years old, you better believe I drove that car much differently than my friends that were just handed cars. You take a sense of ownership in a good way, in a prideful way of yes, okay, I did this. I can manage this well. There's a sense that you, you know, a prideful sense in a good way. When your kids save up and they work for something, give them that digger. And lastly, your kids, you want them, is really the first thing you want them to do, but is give. Teach them to give some of the money that they've earned. In scripture, it says that we were made in the image of God. And God is the biggest giver of us all. So if we were made in his image and he is a giver, we were created to be givers. And I'm telling you, when your kids, even as young as five, six years old, when you, when you, when you, when you, when you, When they take some of the money they've earned and not you just giving them a dollar in the church parking lot, but the money they've earned and they give that away, and they do that week after week, month after month, year after year, their little hearts change. And they become more and more like Christ is what I believe as they're living with this open hand mentality. And so teaching your kids the value of work and how to spend, save, and give gives them a solid foundation to stand on as their adults.

So we're going to teach them God owns it all. We're going to teach them the value of work. And the third thing we want to teach them is contentment is the antidote. You see, we live in a crazy culture. Have you noticed? It's nuts out there. And the materialism is just run amok. Now, I'm not against having nice things.

I'm against worshiping nice things. Having nice things is fine. But when you spend your life worshipping at the altar of them, you have a problem with contentment. The Bible says, godliness with contentment is great gain. And so when you can teach contentment to your child, you have given them the antidote, you have vaccinated them against the culture and the impact of the greatest idol that we're worshipping out there today, which is stuff. Again, I'm not against stuff, but I am against the worship of stuff. Now, contentment is an amazing thing. content people, they don't always have the best of everything, but they make the best of everything.

How many of you are like me? You had a three-year-old child, and you bought them a really nice gift for Christmas or for a birthday. They open the thing, and you look up ten minutes later, and they're playing in the box. So frustrating. Now, me, bad dad, what I did was I said, oh, no, no, come back over. I'll teach you materialism. No, you're playing with the wrong thing. Come over and play with this.

But that's not what content people do. They just make the best of everything. Like my friend Ziglar used to tell about the psychological study of the two boys. One was an optimist and one was a pessimist. And they took them to do the study and they built two rooms with glass walls and filled them with manure

and put the little pessimist in one, the little optimist in the other. They came back a few hours later and the little pessimist was sitting in the corner of the room full of manure crying. He said, what are you doing? He said, I'm crying. You put me in a room full of manure.

What did you think I was going to do? nothing good ever happens to me. And they walk in there with the optimist and he's in the middle of the room with the manure, throwing it in the air. They're like, kid, what are you doing? With all this manure, there's got to be a pony in here somewhere. Contentment is your view of things.

It's your perspective of things. Now, I'm not positive how you can teach contentment, but I am sure there's one element to it. One element of content people is their grateful people. people. Teach your children gratitude in order that they might become content. Gratitude starts with basic things like please and thank you. Thank you and you mean it. Thank you to lifechurch. TV and to my good friend, Pastor Craig, for allowing us to be here today. We really mean that. Thank you. Gratitude is a huge element of contentment. And I'll tell you what an element of gratitude is.

you're not grateful for things if you think you're due them if you feel entitled. Entitled people are the opposite. They're arrogant. There's an arrogance to entitlement. I'm owed this because I'm walking the earth. That's a sense of entitlement. And that starts at childhood. You can break that by working with them and teaching them humility.

Humility will give you gratefulness because you feel like, how can a kid from Antioch, Tennessee, who went completely broke, end up standing here doing this? I'm just amazed. Thank you, Lord. There's natural gratitude that comes from natural humility, from realizing your place on the planet and your place within the universe. God is God and you are not. Teach your children this.

And if you want to create generosity, oh, let me tell you what generosity does, what Rachel was talking about. It creates, it's the antidote for selfishness. your child when they learn to give and they learn to put others first, it shifts the selfishness bug out of them. All of this mixes together with humility and gratitude to create contentment.

Generosity is a big part of that. When Rachel was a little kid, she was the one that was the most full of herself. Dobson wrote a book about her, The Strong-willed Child. She was the one at four years old that would put her hands on her hips and look at you and just defy you.

If she wasn't so cute, we probably would have just taken her out, you know? It was amazing. And she was in kindergarten, and her kindergarten teacher gave the little kindergartners an assignment. She said, I want you folks in kindergarten here, our five-year-old kindergartners, to draw a picture and write down what you would do if you had $100. Now, if you haven't had a kindergartner in a while, $100 is somewhere around $10 million. She brought this home in the little homework papers, and her older sister's homework papers, We're sitting in the floor in front of the couch, thumbing through them, and we picked this thing up, started reading through it, and we were laughing at these kids. Scott H. says, if I had $100, I'd want a car that changes into everything.

Anna K. Allison says, if I had $100, I'd buy a little dollhouse. You're right. It'd be little. Andrew L. says, if I had $100, I'd buy a swimming pool with a diving board, a football, a gun, and a bomb. Put this kid on the terrorist watch list. Anna Catherine says, if I had $100, I'd buy a swimming pool with a diving board, a football, a gun, and a bomb. Anna Catherine says if I had $100 I'd buy a house with a cat You could get the cat And we got to Rachel's and we figured our little character was going to be the funniest of all the characters Because that was pretty much God setting us up As we flipped to hers and it caught us off guard and we both looked up at each other and we were both crying

As Rachel's said If I had $100 I'd give it to the poor people teach your children contentment teach them generosity as an element of contentment teach them that God owns it all teach them the value of work and that contentment is the antidote I was going to say I have a confession to make

that I do not remember doing this but I can tell you probably was going through my mind even at yes five years old you have to realize parents through most of parenting, but specifically with this money stuff, that more is caught than taught. Your kids are watching you. And I can remember sitting in my sister's handmade-down dress,

sitting in the pew in the church we grew up in, in a red velvet offering bag with two wooden handles on each side, we get passed down our aisle, passed down the pew every Sunday. And I remember watching my dad, without fail, every Sunday, drop a folded check in that bag. and I'd see them drop a check-in. And it wasn't this like lights flashing,

hey kids, mom and dad are giving this week. I just saw it. That is how they lived out their lives. So parents, more is caught than taught. And as you're teaching your kids, all of what we've talked about, this doesn't happen in just one big, you know, money conversation or one weekend long money summit

that you think you're going to have with your kids. This happens in everyday teachable moments in the ebb of flow of life. and I believe handing them a little bit more of responsibility the older they get so they feel the weight of their own money decisions. It kind of reminds me of the way mom and dad parented growing up. There's kind of two extremes of parenting sometimes. There's one side that says, you know, let's just live in this little bubble. I don't want you to see the outside world.

I don't want you to make any decision with your life because I don't want you to feel pain or harm. So we're going to just stay right here. And some of those kids are the ones that graduate high school and go off to college and go crazy. But they do that because they were never allowed to make any decision with their life. So when something came up, they made the wrong decision because their decision-making muscle was never built. But then you have the parents over here that say, you know, fly, little eight-year-old, fly and be free.

Just run around the restaurant screaming and banging yourself aware. It's fine, don't worry. You know, you're like, oh my gosh, please parents, please discipline, right? So it's the two extremes, and mom and dad tried to find the middle ground. And they did this in one way through an analogy of a rope. So the idea of the rope was that we were tied to one end of the rope, and they had the other end. And depending upon how well we made decisions, how trustworthy we were, they would essentially let the rope out, and we'd have more and more freedom. But if we made a bad decision, they would pull the rope back in.

I remember being in the eighth grade with some of my girlfriends, and we went to the movies. My mom dropped us off, and we decided not to see the movie, so we went across the street and got ice cream. She came back two hours later, couldn't find us. It was like this whole ordeal. We had a family meeting about it that night. And I remember dad saying, Rachel, if you had called us on the pay phone,

because there weren't cell phones back then, right? If you had called us on the pay phone, we probably would have let you go get ice cream, but you didn't. And you weren't where you said you were going to be, so now we can't trust you next time we drop. you off. So we're going to have to pull the rope back in. But fast forward a few years. I was 15 years old at a high school party and some adult beverages were being passed around. And I called my mom to have her come pick me up and I got in the car and she looked at me and she said,

lots of rope, Rachel, you get lots of rope. Good decision. Good choice. So when my older sister, Denise is graduating from high school and going to college, she was the first one to leave home. and if you've had your first one leave, it's a big deal, right? A big deal. So mom made this huge meal. We sat in the dining room table. You know, we ate on the fancy plates that you only eat on, you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas. We had cloth napkins.

It was just this very nice dinner for Denise. And we all went around the table and we were telling stories and laughing and crying. It was like she was dying or something, but she wasn't. Just moving two and a half hours away. But towards the end of that dinner, dad brought out a gift bag and he pulled this out of it. A rope. And he said to Denise, you know, gave her kind of the sweet dad going away to college speech and told her how proud he was of her and how, you know, him and my mom, they're not worried about her going off to

college because they've been handing her a little bit of rope at a time. And now what's left of that rope doesn't reach from Nashville, Tennessee to Knoxville, Tennessee. And so now her everyday decisions are now up to her. She has the rope. And he tied different ribbons around it, symbolizing different areas of her life. So white was her purity. Purple was her spiritual walk. Orange was because she was going to the University of Tennessee. Go vals. Red was her academics, and yellow was if she ever needed to come home. And he said, Denise, this is your passage into adulthood. And he handed her the rope. And we all just cried. We're like, Denise has the rope and she's never coming home again. Everything's changing. Now, I'm the middle child of the Ramsey family, so the neglected

and abused child, of course. So the night before I went to college, we had pizza on paper plates but paper napkins. And I was going to bed, and dad was like, oh, Rachel, you need a rope, don't you? Went to the garage and handed me this. I'll let you decide which child is their favorites, but I think we all know. But I look at this rope,

and I see this as really my legacy. I see this as a legacy of life. I had parents who were not perfect, but were intentional with them. us and I believe they've passed us on a legacy of life versus the legacy that could have been. In Deuteronomy it says, I call heaven and earth as witness today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. So choose life that you and your descendants. may live. So I was that dad, but because Jesus intersected my life and intersected the life of my wife.

We were completely transformed. He did that because he's crazy about me. He did that because he's crazy about you. You see, none of you were perfect parents, nor will you ever be. The Ramsey's weren't. But the fact that Jesus came gives us this thing called grace. Grace means you have a do-over. You have a chance to do something that will outlast you because of grace. Our family has been completely transformed. Our legacy has been completely changed. Yours can be too. You see, I was that dad. But because of Jesus, I became That dad. God, we thank you for the folks watching. We thank you for the folks here. We ask, Lord, that you enter their lives in a way that is real and transformational. It's not just church as usual

or Bible as usual, but it is you entering their life and causing them to be changed in such a way that their family trees are shifted forever, in such a way that they become a person. They become a person that influences things like their children that will outlast them. God, we know you're capable of that. We know that is your agenda. And, Father, we just pray that for everyone that comes in contact with this talk. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you. At all of our different churches, let's just continue in an attitude of prayer. Father, thank you so much for bringing to us a message that will not only impact our lives, but impact generations to come. At all of our churches, as you remain in an attitude of prayer, I wonder how

many of you would rather pass on a rope than chains? How many of you want to be outlasters and pass on a financial legacy of freedom and blessings? At all of our churches, if you'd say, hey, I really would. I want to pass along a rope rather than chains, blessings rather than curses. Would you lift your hands right now? I hope every hand goes up. Father, thank you. for a church full of people who want to honor you with a godly legacy. Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit would remind us constantly that more is caught than is actually taught, that you would empower us to live in such a way that those who come behind us would want to reproduce the faith they see, and God, the wise stewardship that you truly own it all.

God, I know there are so many that are struggling financially, and even as they give, I pray that they would experience the joy of giving, and the blessings of your provision. I pray, God, that these eternal truths would impact our lives, that we would learn to live within our means and even beneath our means. And, God, that you would bless those who are climbing out of debt that they could serve you free of the bondage and pain of struggling financially. So, God, use this talk to inspire people,

maybe even on the first step toward freedom in this area of their life. And, God, you will get all the glory. As you keep praying at all of our different churches, I love the way Dave just closed the talk and talked about the grace of God. We've talked a little bit about bondage today, and if you look at your life, many of you right now, you're going to recognize that you're living in a real and deep bondage, a sin bondage. The reality is that all of us have fallen short of God's perfect standard. We've done things that are wrong against him. We feel the weight of that. We feel the guilt.

We feel the shame. At the end of a journey toward being debt-free, people will shout, I'm debt-free and they feel the freedom. There are some of you that in just a moment you could experience an even greater grace, the grace of God, that your sin debt would be totally and completely forgiven. That as you call on the name of Jesus who was without sin and became sin for us on the cross, died, and three days later rose again from the debt, as you call on his name, He will forgive every sin that you've ever committed. He'll make you brand new. There are some of you, you came to church, and you had no idea that you were about to be totally set free from the sin that's held you down.

You will be free because he who the sun sets free is free indeed. And all of our churches, those of you that say, yes, I want his grace. I want his forgiveness today by faith. I surrender my life to him. If that's your prayer today, would you lift your hand high right now? All of our churches, you say yes, that's my prayer right here in this section. Right back over here. God bless you guys over here as well.

Others who would say yes, ma'am, right here, I surrender to him. Jesus, be my Savior. Way back over here toward the back. I surrender my life completely to you. Church online, you click right below me. And all of our churches, would you just join your voices with those around you? Pray aloud. Pray Heavenly Father.

Forgive me for all my sins. make me brand new. I believe Jesus died for me, and he rose again so I could live for you. Fill me with your spirit so I could know you, serve you, follow you for the rest of my life. Thank you for new life. Now you have mine.

In Jesus' name, I pray. Life Church, would you worship God? Would you give him praise? Would you welcome those born into? his family today.