Joshua Keith Craft

0:51 Hi everyone. First off, I uh I just appreciate you guys so much. I've had people DM me, text me, come up to me in person, ask me when we're going to start season two since I said on the last episode that an episode was coming next week and this is uh multiple weeks later that uh we don't have an episode. And u that's not that's not because I'm lazy. It's not because I don't want to do a podcast or anything like that. I have an amazing and also um pretty crazy life. If you don't know, I have five kids and uh they start at nine. Charlie just turned nine and then Harper's six and Daisy is three and then I have twin u five-month-olds. And so we're navigating that. I'm also navigating uh trying to love my wife well and serve my wife. But I'm a part of a huge world. So I do all kinds of stuff with my dad. I'm a part of our church here at Elevate Life Church, but also we have I don't even know how many masterminds. Eight masterminds at least. 20 plus personal coaching clients. Um, right now I have two books. I have I've have one that's complete. I have the vow of prosperity which is just about done, but the one that's complete is called The Way. And [clears throat] I probably haven't talked about that. I don't think I've talked about that at all on this podcast, but um it's going to come out.

2:13 That's going to come out here pretty soon. I'm about to start editing on that. And uh that's just going to be self-published. And the great thing for me personally about self-publishing is I get to just explore this however I want. And I hired an editor and it's the same editor that helped me with The Way to Live. And uh The Way is going to be really great. I'll talk about that more as we come. But one of the things I've been kind of kicking around as we go into this new season with this podcast is just what I'm going to talk about and h how we're going to talk about it and how I'm going to present it. I think I've always got ideas and so much content, so many thoughts that are just kind of being developed and so many things that I'm doing. And you know, I think the goal for me, the purpose for me, I I had a conversation um or I've had a few conversations, I guess, over the past couple years. I've had a lot of life changes that have happened and um a lot of goals and dreams. And I think we all have those things and we all say, "Well, like I have goals and dreams and I don't know if those things are going to happen and I'm not sure how much I should push for those things." I think I also have the uh the blessing, this amazing blessing of having a great dad who I get to work with and get to be with. And I'm 39, he's 66.

3:25 He had a heart attack in 2019, which was 7 years ago. And um it doesn't really mean anything. He's really healthy. That doesn't mean he's going to die soon, but I look back on my life or I don't look back on my life. I think one day I will look back on my life and what I'll be grateful for is uh getting to spend a lot of time with him and getting to spend a lot of time with my wife and my kids as they're being raised. And so I could do more for sure. I could do more for myself. I could promote myself a lot more. I could uh go out and generate a bunch of stuff. I could say yes to things. I I get invited um to speak different places and I'm I'm open to that. So like if you're considering that um feel free to ask, I'm open to that. I'm open to a lot of different things, but I I say no to a lot of stuff. And um that's on purpose. That's not a negative thing. I also don't have certain opportunities that I, you know, sometimes you get opportunities and you say no to them. Some sometimes you have to go out and create an opportunity. And uh the place I'm at in my life right now that I've just kind of not realized or settled into, it's just the reality of what I want. I think that's the most important thing is knowing what you want. Um is I don't I don't see the value personally right now and going out and creating a bunch of new opportunities for me. So I could do that. I could spend a lot of time going and developing an audience. That's that's the number one feedback that, you know, we got from publishers in the process of me uh turning down book deals is that they just didn't feel like my audience was big enough and so the deal wasn't going to work, you know, based on that. So, I'd need to invest some time in building an audience. And there's ways to do that, like self-promotion. And there's nothing wrong with that. Marketing and getting your stuff out there and doing offers and building a funnel and building an email list and and all of that. I think the goal for me in doing this podcast or the goal for me in writing on my Substack is not really it's to help people for sure, but it's not really to grow any kind of audience for any kind of purpose. It's just more of um an artistic expression. And that doesn't mean it's um that doesn't mean I don't want to have an audience. Doesn't mean I don't care about an audience. I want to reach as many people as possible because I think this is really really helpful. But at the same time, um, the amount of work I I I love the work of creating stuff. I love the work of thinking about stuff. I love the work of writing. I don't love the work of marketing. I don't love the work of going out and promoting. And in order for this to turn into what it could be, it would just require that. And um, one day I'm going to have to do that a lot.

6:06 And so there's that dynamic. But the bigger dynamic for me is um whatever I would go build myself and whatever I would go do, I would have to go do that. And what I mean by that is I get the privilege and the benefit to be with my dad. I get the privilege and the benefit to be at home a lot as much as I can be. I travel a lot, but um I get to I get the privilege and the benefit to be home a lot with my kids in this season of their life. And I also um am am doing good uh financially. I don't need uh I don't need more money. I I think I'd be grateful for more money. Sure. I'd love I'd love more money, but I've been taught my whole life how to manage money really well. And that's what I want to talk about on this podcast in the season. And we'll get into that. Um but I'm in just a great position. And so I don't have to do things. I get to do things. And that's the goal. You know, my dad talks actually a lot about that is that the one of the goals in life that we all kind of we all have without seeing it is that we want to have get-tos, not have to. And there's things that you get to do and there's things that you have to do and we always have to. And you know, hopefully as we get older, we can have more get-tos. Well, I have some amazing get-tos in my life. I get to do business with incredible friends. I get to partner with them on things. I get to uh invest in real estate. I I get to be with my dad and do masterminds with him and travel all over the place with him and help him do what's in his heart to do. I get to help with our church. Uh I I get to have five kids. I get to be with my wife. I get to write and uh I get to do all of that as a fun thing that is um also a also it's a exercise in me just practicing my greatness. You know, I think I've talked about this before on the podcast. If not, I'll go ahead and talk about it since we're on a podcast right now. Is my my life really my life Bible verse, I think, at this point in my life is Ephesians 2:10. The Bible says that we're God's workmanship created for good works a long time ago.

8:11 And the the Greek word for workmanship is the word masterpiece. It's the word poiēma. And it means a unique work of art like a one-of-one thing like the Mona Lisa or the statue of David or the the Sistine Chapel or Beethoven's ninth ninth symphony. And that's what we are to God. There's a there's a part of us. There's something about us like our life is just a one of one thing. You know, you only get this one time. You only get to tell your story one time. You only you only get to live your story one time. You only get to raise your kids one time. Uh I only get to be with my dad one time in my life. And I think I'll look back on my life and if I was going to regret something, it would probably be pursuing a writing career or uh spending a lot of time trying to go out and develop some kind of personal platform for the sake of my own ego because at this point I don't need that to support myself. I'm I'm I'm I'm in a great place in life. If I needed something like that to support myself, I think I'd probably do that. But now I I'm I'm able to walk in a lot of balance in my life. And a lot of that has to do with my relationships and who I serve. So I want to get back to what I was saying, which is few years ago in the middle of some crazy like kind of life transitions and navigating my own dreams and whether or not those things were going to come true or things that I wanted or visions that I had that didn't seem to be happening.

9:30 I I landed on really three key priorities for my life that I'm currently pursuing. I I I believe I'll pursue these for the rest of my life. I think this is what I'm supposed to do, but I've said this a lot on this podcast. I learned from a mentor of mine, Erwin McManus, uh to say I reserve the right to change my mind. So, this isn't set in stone. But the first thing is the first priority I have in my life is for me to just be the best me to grow and develop and become who God's created me to become in the uniqueness of who I am. I call that mastering the art of living. I really want to help other people do that, too. That's becoming the workmanship. If you're one of piece of art, there's things you can learn from other people, but there's things you also have to become that are just uniquely you that God's God wants to use that to bless the world. And that leads to the second thing, which is uh to be my best for God. I really I really want to just live up to every ounce of my potential that God's given me. I want to live my life his way. Being my best for me and being my best for God aren't always the same thing. I want to be on a personal growth and development journey, but also I really care about living according to the truth of scripture. And then the third thing as it relates to my priority is to notice my right alignments. is to notice great relationships that are in my life and spend my life serving those relationships as much as I can. You know, C.S. Lewis said that we think that we pick our friends, but the truth is God picks them for us because he knows what we need. And um so that's what I spend my time doing. I have business partners that are friends of mine that I I invest in serving the business, serving them. Uh I have mentors in my life that I invest in serving. Uh I have I get to roll with my dad. I have my family. I have my wife. And the goal for me is serving them. And I think serving just opens up doors for you. And that's that's what continues to happen in my life is God just continues to open up doors for me to be used to help people.

11:28 And that's not as much about going out and doing a job or doing things that I think are going to go make money. It's just more about serving the relationship. And then what happens is I think when you get on the side of life that's about sowing into people, serving people, there's a there's a harvest that happens. And that's that's just what I get to live in. I'm not saying it's like a perfect situation. I'm not advocating everybody have that level of philosophical flow in their life, but I'm just really happy to get to experience this and explore this in this season. And I'm not saying that as some kind of defense of not recording podcast episodes. It's just I know that I know the process of like you want to build an audience. You're going to record episode every week. And I'm going to try my best to do that. And I'm grateful for you guys that you want that and that you want to help me with that and you share this with people and it's this podcast has helped you. Um, but that's not necessarily the focus that I have. The focus that I have is to master the art of living and help other people do the same. And that requires a lot of serving of relationships one-to-one. It's not Instagrammable. It's not um something that people are necessarily going to see. It's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. But I love what Lil Wayne said and that's real G's move in silence like lasagna. And that's how I that's how I prefer to move. And so in this season of this podcast, one of the things I've been thinking about is I've got pretty much two seasons, the next two seasons.

12:50 So I've got season two, season 3 kind of planned out. The reason why I think about season is because I have these really long trains of thought and it's hard for me to just sit on a podcast and do like a 30-minute episode or just have a topical conversation based on what's going on in culture. I've actually sat down this episode that I'm doing right now. This is my third uh recording of this episode because I'm just trying to figure out how to do this. I've written a bunch of stuff. I've I've uh I've I've uh thought a bunch of thoughts. I've recorded episodes obviously and I and I haven't necessarily liked the flow of those things and so I'm trying to figure that out and I appreciate you guys being on this journey with me. I think that's the navigation of a dialogue and that's just the navigation of life. I'm I'm um I try my best to be professional but I'm not always the most polished person. I think that I'm figuring out as I'm going and I think you are too. I think that's what we're doing in life. And I'm having these conversations with myself. And so I invite you, that's the point of this podcast is for us to learn to have conversations with ourselves. And so as we as we do that, I've been thinking about which which kind of topic I want to hit.

14:00 If I want to talk deeply about philosophy or if I want to talk about money. And I think we're going to spend this second season talking a lot about money, about what the Bible says about money, about what what the history of kind of prosperity, and really, I think fundamentally from a practical perspective, I want to talk through how to win financially and uh how to how to win in general God's way. Because in the Bible, this is what we'll talk about in this season, but money is the third most mentioned topic in scripture. I'll probably come back to that on this episode. 40% of Jesus's parables were about money. God is very, very, very concerned with money. And also, there's this idea that we have in culture, especially in like Christian culture, that God's only concerned with eternity. And that's been developed over however long, where it's like, hey, it's just about going to heaven. And no one says this. I I don't feel like anybody says this, but I think what's been created is this idea that in the world of Christianity and in the church and in in in walking with God, God doesn't care about your practical life today. Like Scripture is not really going to help you live a good life. It's not going to help you be successful. It's not going to help you make a bunch of money. And those are actually bad things for you to want to do that. And that's that's what we're going to explore is that when you look at what scripture actually teaches, not what people think, not what people believe. You know, I saw I saw a a survey recently that said that uh I think it's 25% of Christians, don't quote me, I don't have it in front of me, 25 to 30% of Christians, something like that, um don't they believe that biblical beliefs are outdated. These are Christians, like people that go to church at least once a month. So for me, the the Bible is the the standard of truth and the standard of how I should how I should live life.

15:53 It's not just like the standard of truth in terms of of biological truth of male and female or u LGBT truth or something like that. Biblical biblical truth. Jesus said, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life." So he's the way first. And what does that mean? He's the way. What does that mean? He's the truth. Well, there's a way to live that's right. There's a way to live that produces results. The Jesus said himself that broad is the pathway that leads to destruction, but narrow is the way that leads to leads to life, leads to eternal life. He said in John 10:10, and that's what we're going to talk about this season, too, is uh the the the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I've come that you might have life and life to the full, life abundantly. And and the Greek word for abundance there, abundant life, is perissos. And perissos doesn't mean eternity. People have have translated this for a long time to mean, well, eternity. God wants you to have abundance and that means right now doesn't necessarily matter.

16:50 And that's not true at all. That's not what the Bible says. What God is not an either-or God. He's a both-and God. And so that's that's where I where I want to talk because I think there's a lot of people and probably most people they struggle financially. They're Christians. They they want to do money God's way. So that's one big group is people that really struggle financially and they don't have the tools that are written right there in scripture. that teach them how to not struggle financially. They have a poverty mentality or they're they're in poverty and that's really hard and I want to help people navigate that. But then there's this other side of the equation which is people that are very successful and people that are very wealthy or people that want to be wealthy, people that want to provide for their family, people that want to do great things, people that want to give large amounts of money, people that want to change the world and they feel guilty about that because of what they've heard in the church and what they've heard talked about in the church. And I think that's I think that's wrong. I think God has given us the ability. It's it's the Bible says um it's God who's given us the power to create wealth and that's in scripture. And so a lot of people are trying to navigate this and they're trying to deal with this and this is what I want to talk about and hopefully as we conversate as we talk this this helps you.

18:00 So a few years ago I have a friend of mine and we were having this this conversation about the duality of the Catholic Church. So on one hand the wealth of the Catholic Church cannot be calculated. They're by far the wealthiest organization in the history of the world. They own over 170 million acres of land throughout the world. Much of it being the most valuable land in some of the most prominent cities in the world. It's impossible to estimate the worth of that land. in their museums. If you think about all these Catholic museums all throughout the world, there's over 70,000 works of priceless art. Uh but the thing about the Catholic Church is you can't just go Google how much does the Catholic Church have because they're decentralized financially. There's the German Catholic Church, there's the Vatican, there's all these different kind of expressions of this. So, but when we group this group together of Catholicism, uh it's safe to assume that at minimum the Catholic Church's wealth is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But what's interesting, and this is the the interesting conversation that my friend and I had, is many Catholic priests, they take vows of poverty. So, how does it make sense for some Catholics to take vows of poverty while simultaneously the Catholic Church, the organization itself represents anything but poverty? Now, you might have a problem with this early on. You might go, "Yeah, that's the whole problem is is that they the duality of that and they've, you know, and this is what people think about a wealth and this is what people think about money and this is what people think about rich people or rich things because culturally we've been taught this and we've had a lot of bad examples is that the reason people become wealthy is because they're unethical. And if a person is ethical, they're not going to be wealthy." That is not true in history. It's also not true biblically.

19:59 And that's what we're going to talk about. But this leads to two questions for me. And I promise we're going to talk about it on this season. So stay tuned. Stay with me. Feel free to DM me your questions or email me your questions. I don't necessarily check in check DMs, but feel free to let me know your questions as we go because maybe I can answer them as we talk. And maybe I'll do some I thought I had this thought the other day. Maybe I'll do some live episodes where I get a couple people on here and we record a live episode and you guys ask me questions and we talk. Maybe it's not as much about me asking questions. We just have a dialogue. The the goal of this podcast is to have a dialogue, but we're going to get to all of that because the idea that wealth is inherently bad and that the reason a person becomes wealthy is bad is a complete misunderstanding of how the universe works. Okay. But this whole thought process about the Catholic Church being rich and people taking vows of poverty sparked two thoughts for me.

20:52 Number one, simple thought, where did the vow of poverty come from? I want to talk about that. But the second thing which is the more important question which is what does the Bible and therefore God really say about prosperity. So my friend and I uh both grew up in churches that would be seen as prosperity gospel churches. And we'll talk about the prosperity gospel but the they were seen as prosperity gospel churches. And we went to the what I consider to be the prosperity gospel university Oral Roberts University. So was founded by a man named Oral Roberts in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1960s and he had a vision to raise up students who could take the gospel to the whole world and what he was known Oral Roberts was known throughout his life for teaching what's become known as the prosperity gospel and ORU is considered by a lot of people to be the heart of prosperity gospel country. I didn't grow up personally.

21:48 The kind of churches and church environments I grew up in were not prosperity, gospel, word of faith is what we kind of call that in the church world. I didn't grow up in that, but I grew up around it. So, I knew of it, but I I wouldn't say it was a part of my belief system. And there's a lot of beliefs that are inherent within this dynamic of prosperity gospel theology. Not prosperity gospel as we often define it. Not prosperity gospel like, oh, a mega church, prosperity gospel. Oh, someone a pastor who has money. Oh, prosperity gospel. I mean, the actual theology of the prosperity gospel. That's that's what we're going to talk about because a lot of people throw around the term prosperity gospel. And it means something, but it just doesn't mean what we think it means. So, I grew up around it. I knew of it, but I wouldn't say it was a part of my belief system. So, in 2007, it was my sophomore year in college. In the middle of the night one night, we're summoned to the chapel. So the dean of students and Richard Roberts who's Oral Roberts' son, he ran he he was the president or ran ORU, whatever the position is, he ran the college and they were on stage and all of us walk into this to the chapel at ORU in the middle of the night and uh they told us that the school was under attack and we needed to pray. So I'm 20 years old. I'm trying to sleep or do whatever I'm doing. I don't really care that the school's under attack. I'm more upset that you just required me to come to chapel in the middle of the night. And they didn't tell us any context. They didn't say what was going on. They just said, "We have to pray."

23:17 So, they had us in the chapel and we sat around and just, you know, I I'm I'm I wouldn't say that I prayed. I would say I just sat around and waited like probably most students did for us to be allowed to go back to our dorm room. Uh, but we found out the next day what happened. So, they didn't tell us anything that happened that night, but the next day we found out what happened. And that's three three professors had filed a wrongful termination lawsuit. And they said that they had been dismissed because they had reported financial and ethical misconduct involving Richard Roberts, who was Oral Roberts' son. So, their claims were that the university uh that university resources had been misused for political purposes and personal expenses. So the school just went into turmoil. So the faculty goes and they take a vote of no confidence in Richard Roberts. By November he resigned. Uh and for a few months they they didn't know if ORU was going to survive the school year. We didn't know if we were going to be able to come back to college after Christmas break. It was right before Christmas break. And all this conversation happens that all of the sudden we find out ORU's $50 million in debt. Donors are walking away. Enrollment's beginning to decline.

24:31 students are already transferring out to go to some other college. So, I went home on Christmas break thinking that probably I was going to get a call or some kind of communication that I was going to have to find a different college to go to and maybe take a semester off or something. It was just kind of crazy. And it wasn't just like this financial crisis. It was a moral crisis. It was a spiritual crisis. And it spread through every aspect of the school. Students were fighting. Parents or not parents, students were upset at each other. Some people were taking Richard Roberts' side. Some people were going against him. Faculty were doing this and doing that. We were talking about it in every class that we had. And there was no light at the end of the tunnel. And then in January, so we come back to school in January of 2008, the Green family, who are multibillionaires, they they founded Hobby Lobby and Mardel, at least they're multi-billionaires as far as we know.

25:24 I've met them. I've been around them. They don't flaunt their wealth. They don't talk about how much they have, but they wrote a $62 million check to ORU. And it wasn't a blank check. So, it wasn't just, hey, we're going to give you $62 million. There was this there were these conditions. There were these conditions on major governance reforms. And they changed the board structure. They actually brought my dad in and made him a part of some board that they were doing. My roommate's dad became a part of the board. Um, and over the next two years, the Greens would give over $110 million to stabilize ORU and begin to endow for the future. And now the ORU that we see today is not the ORU that I went to. When I went to ORU my freshman and sophomore year, the buildings were falling apart. The school was a mess. They were kind of doing their best, but obviously $50 million in debt, you're not able to do a whole bunch. The ORU has been completely transformed and turned around and is an amazing school. They have amazing things going for them. And I say that as an alumni who doesn't really necessarily I had a great time at ORU. I matured a lot, but I'm not like Mr. alumnus of of or um but they've done a great job.

26:34 They're in a they're in an amazing place. And when you look at the life of Oral Roberts, so so to go back to the life of Oral Roberts, uh, or I'll say this one I'll say this one last thing. This this this was in my 20s when I saw this happen. And I'm in a school, the school's dilapidated. It's falling apart the first two years. The second two the second year I I graduated my junior year, but the second year um or or sorry, the third year, uh, everything at the school began to change. The the culture of the school began to change. Mark Green had come in and made a bunch of changes and things were just headed in the right direction. And seeing somebody come in and do that financially was a was a major moment in my life. Watching potentially the end of the school and watching the beginning of what ORU has become today, 20 years later uh were some major moments in my life. And when I think about the life of Oral Roberts, I've always been a a student of these stories, a student of history. I love ministry history. I love church history, too. At its peak, Oral Roberts raised over $und00 million a year. This was like in the 60s and 70s and 80s. So, I don't have an inflation calculator in front of me, but you can do the math uh of how much money that would be in today's money. And and the reported value of the campus of ORU while he was alive was somewhere around $500 million.

27:53 And at the end of his life, he raised all this money, did all this stuff, and at the end of his life, the school that was named after him would have ceased to exist without the generosity of the Green family. So, this is a lot, I think, to consider, and I want to draw this out with you. First, what's crazy is that the Roberts family had access to that much money. Second, and with all due respect, that it had been stewarded so poorly over the years. third that another family who are great stewards. When you look at Hobby Lobby, you look at what Mark Green does, you look at what their family does, you look at what what David Green has done. Uh they're amazing stewards of what God has given has given to them. The fact that that another family who had significant means came in to rescue Oral Roberts' legacy was a lot to think about. And living in this context, this is all the stuff that I'm processing in my 20s.

28:49 Living in this context, there was on one hand I wanted to reject the idea of prosperity entirely because I had seen what had happened just like many of you had. When a pastor or a minister or a person just skip past the church thing or a person has tremendous means and they use it in a in a bad way, they become a bad steward. So, it made me go, I'm not going to really lean into wanting to be successful, wanting to be wealthy, wanting to be prosperous because it seems like it's a bad thing. So, it seemed like to me in my 20s that God and money were incompatible with each other. I felt that, you know, to love and to serve God, I had to reject the idea of prosperity. But at the same time, prosperity saved the school and its impact all over the world. If you look up or look up who's graduated from ORU in history, some of the most tremendous ministry impact in the history of the modern world has come out of that place. And what saved it was wealthy people giving out of their prosperity.

29:53 So on one hand, I felt like if if I was going to love God well, I had to reject the idea of prosperity because so many people used it poorly. But at the same time, prosperity saved the school. So this creates this significant intellectual tension for me. How could prosperity do so much bad and so much good at the same time? And I'm really convinced, and this is why we're going to talk about this in this season. I'm convinced that this is a tension that a lot of us feel. A lot of us Christians feel or people that aren't even Christian. If you're listening to this podcast and you're hearing me talk about this, it's like, I hate this stuff. It's like, I completely understand. It seems like money and wealth are evil. But at the same time, we see so many people that use these things to make the world a better place. So how do we reconcile the tension of that? Many people think and I think this is what I want to walk through together. A lot of people think that there's a binary choice between prosperity and poverty. And in the Western church, we've created a straw man called the prosperity gospel. So people often attack this straw man for for a good for good reasons. But the problem with the straw man of the prosperity gospel is no one actually believes a lot of these things that people are attacking.

31:04 At the same time, you know, scripture is filled with verses that tell us that God wants to prosper us. God wants to give us an abundant life. I talked about that a second ago. And he wants to bless us in every way. How do we reconcile that? How do we reconcile the misuse of prosperity and our desire to reject it to serve God with what God says about prosperity? And so in my own journey with this tension, one of the things I've I've I've learned is that I started probably in the wrong place. So I have spent and and I want you to think about this. I've spent more time thinking about what I think and what other people think and what's been taught about prosperity than I have trying to learn what God teaches in scripture about. And that's the first thing I want you to consider is as we talk about this and as we have these discussions, I want to do my best to talk about what scripture actually says and strip back the layers of thinking and the layers of what you've heard and the layers of what I've heard and what someone else has taught and what our family said and what our environment is teaching us and what our culture is saying. Let's strip all that back and let's see what God actually says in the Bible about prosperity. And so this is as we go through this season, I really want to explore this in like a middle way. So I want to try my best to be unbiased, but I also think it's difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to be unbiased. So, it's easy to admit that both sides of the argument and and any argument, not just this argument, but this argument, too. It's easy to admit that both sides of the argument are wrong in their own ways. I I do love what John MacArthur said. He said, "I have errors in my theology. I don't know where they are. If I knew where they were, I would change them." So, I'm wrong in my theology somewhere, but I just don't know where. If I know where I'm wrong, then I would change it. I feel the same way about my own beliefs as well as the journey of even having this discussion. I haven't wanted to even talk about this, you know, with me and Nick with our conversations. He's wanted to draw me into talking about this and I've been like, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. And I've talked about that on previous episodes. I don't want to get into the mix of all the fighting and the debating and the anger and the yelling and the screaming and you know, people sit down. This is my problem personally with debates. My problem personally with debates is people sit down and they debate and both of them walking away walk away believing the same thing that they believed before they started the debate. What's the point of that conversation outside of just an egotistical win? We live in a world today that's so crazy and hyperpolarized and no matter what side of the argument that you're on, the other side is not just wrong, the other side is actually evil. And you're probably sitting here going, "Yeah, exactly. The other side is evil."

33:57 that's not actually true. And if it is true, it means we're all evil because we're all trying to figure this out. So, some of our beliefs are wrong, some of them are right. And it's a good idea, I think, for all of us to examine our beliefs and search to see if they're right beliefs. And and that's a huge question you and I have to answer for ourselves is what makes my belief right? Is it my opinion? The fact that I like it? Is it the fact that someone who I really respect and love taught it to me? Uh or or or what? For me personally, what makes something right and what makes something true is if it aligns with objective truth. Now, this exposes my first bias. And my first bias is that I believe in objective truth. I also believe here's my other bias. I also believe that objective truth can be known. And the primary foundation of objective truth is scripture is the Bible. my theology, my beliefs about God, they're a set of beliefs that I've formulated based on my current understanding of scripture. And so there's also something I think that we have to understand about beliefs. We usually really like them. That's why we have them. And I know this is a really obvious statement, but it's also something that we should be aware of because one of the problems that can arise, so I want what do I want? I want truth. I don't want my beliefs. I don't want something that agrees with me. I don't want something that I'm comfortable with. I want truth. So, one of the problems that can arise when we like and and well, let me before I go down that road, we have to be careful that we actually want that because if you want truth, your beliefs will be challenged and a lot of your beliefs will be wrong and you'll realize that they're wrong and you'll have to make a decision. And a lot of Christians, a lot of people, the decision they make is the safety of their beliefs, not the adventure of truth.

35:52 So we should not be so comfortable with our beliefs. We should not seek so much comfort comfort in our beliefs that we continue to believe false things that do not help us. So one of the problems that can arise when we like our beliefs is what we do when they're challenged by new information. So for instance, for hundreds of years in the world, smoking tobacco was seen as normal and sometimes even medicinal. So by the 1950s in America, smoking was publicly sold as beneficial. Cigarette companies would use doctors. They'd use doctors in their ads to say that they had a variety of health health benefits like helping with digestion and reducing stress. And by the end of the 1950s, large studies started to link cigarettes to lung cancer. In 1964, the US surgeon general released a report concluding that smoking cigarettes causes major health harms like lung cancer and bronchitis.

36:52 Even though this information, this is the crazy thing, even though this information scared people, they mostly kept smoking. Smoking was a part of ordinary life in the 60s. pastors, doctors, teachers, soldiers, and parents. They smoked at work, they smoked at home, they smoked in their car, and pretty much everywhere that they went. I remember growing up in my life and and there was a time, and my kids will never know about this. They never will remember this. It's like a cassette tape or a CD or an MP3 player. Um, I remember growing up in the 90s and going to restaurants and asking if smoking or non-smoking. So there was still when I was a kid there's this there was a lot of people that smoked. We don't live in that culture today. But in that in the 60s smoking wasn't seen as a vice. It was part of being an adult in America. So even though they said, "Hey, we've done these studies. We've shown this. We've shown that. We've shown this."

37:49 People kept smoking. So even though the data was clear, most people didn't stop. And today, more than 70 years later, it's taken 70 years after this initial study, smoking has mostly become a public nuisance in most of the Western world. This isn't because it took 70 years to find the truth. It's because change travels a lot slower than truth. So truth is the catalyst for change, but change takes time. because we hold on to our beliefs. We hold on to our biases even when they're irrational and they don't make sense anymore. So you think about this in your own life. I think about this in my life. When you're confronted with truth, how long does it take for you to align your beliefs with truth? For most people, there is a massive significant time delay between learning something is true and doing something about it. So, I don't want to I I'm not defending I'm trying not to in my life. I try not to in my life on this podcast as we talk as we go through this season. I know a lot of the stuff I'm going to say may or may not be seen as controversial. I don't really know how this is going to go, but I'm not sitting here trying to defend a bias, you know, at least to the best of my ability. As much as I can know in the context of not being able to know my blind spots. So, I've heard an insane amount, a tremendous amount of teaching on God, money, and success throughout my life. And most likely you have, too. So, I also happen to have some core beliefs about God, money, and success. And I started this process that I'm going to walk you through with an assumption that I want [clears throat] you to start with if you will listen to me. And that's the assumption that I'm probably wrong. I want you to assume that you're probably wrong. So before we like get into what we're going to talk about on this podcast, this book is not about defending a line of thinking. I'm not here to take down the prosperity gospel.

39:48 I'm not here to defend it. I'm not here to be a certain guy that fits in a certain category that wants to justify a belief that I have that that's probably not biblical. I want to see what God thinks. I want us to search for what God thinks. Isaiah 55 says this, "God's ways and thoughts are higher than our ways and our thoughts. They're as far away uh from each other as heaven is from the earth." Now, heaven is not a physical place that we know of. Heaven is metaphysical. How far away is the physical of the earth from the metaphysical heaven? It's infinite. It's a completely different plane of existence. This is how far away how God thinks and how I think and how you think are from each other. Always. Not sometimes. Not for some of your life. Not until you become a Christian for long enough. Not until you read enough Bible. Not until you hear enough messages. Your thoughts and God's thoughts are completely in different universes forever. Period. End of sentence. Maybe until the day you die and you go to heaven. How do we measure the distance? C. Is there even a way to do that? In Romans 11, Paul says this.

40:57 He says, Romans 11:33 through 36, "Oh, how great are God's riches and wisdom and knowledge. How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways. For who can know the Lord's thoughts, who knows enough to give him advice, and who has given him so much that God needs to pay it back? For everything comes from God and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever and amen. So, no one can know what God's thinking. It's impossible to understand his decisions and his ways. How great and how deep is this? How how far apart is it from human thinking? And that's something that I have to live in. That's something I want to encourage you to live in is you and I are never going to be in a place no matter how much we learn, how much we know, how many books we read, how many gurus we listen to, uh how much fruit we have, whatever that is, we're never going to be in a place where we have full knowledge on anything and we're just like all of a sudden an expert and we have the mind of God.

41:56 We're always going to be in a place of uh a lower level of existence than where God is, as the heavens are higher than the earth. So, I want to learn where I'm wrong in my theology and my beliefs about life and my philosophy and everything else so that I can correct it. I want to understand what the Bible says. I want to understand what God thinks. Because if I can understand what God thinks, then maybe I don't ever fully get to heaven. Maybe I don't ever fully get to thinking like God in my life, but I can get better at that. And if I think how God wants me to think, I'll probably have what God wants me to have in my life. But so, what does God think about prosperity? What does God think about money? What does God think about success? Not just prosperity in a financial sense, but prosperity in terms of our life. What does it mean for us to live a prosperous life? And and does God even do you believe? Do you know? Have you even answered this question? Does God even want that for you? Do you even know that? Do I know that? So in in this discussion, I want to strip back as much of these. There's all these traditions and all these thoughts and all these biases and all these interpretations and all these opinions and we should just strip those back and see what it is that God has to say. And I think the first thing we have to do is admit our own personal inherent bias. So what if we admitted our biases and allowed God's truth to challenge them? What if we are willing in our life to say that we're wrong and we just don't know where we're wrong? And when we find out where we're wrong, we actually change what we're wrong about.

43:27 I really want to understand the genuine perspective of God on everything. But in this season of this podcast, I want to understand God's thoughts on prosperity. My way of thinking, you know, my my way of thinking in in my life now is not the same as it was 10 years ago. It's not the same as it was two years ago. It's not it's maybe not the same as it was a year ago. And I doubt that it's going to be the same 10 years from now. I'm going to learn. I'm going to grow. I'm going to develop. I want to allow where I'm wrong to be challenged and corrected so that I can be so that I can be better. I I and I I said this earlier. I said this as we started this podcast. I reserve the right to change my mind. I want you to reserve the right to change your mind as you learn more of what's true. And so I can't say whether or not what I think is unbiased. What I can say is to some degree of certainty, I've attempted to discern the truth and allow my biases to be challenged by it. So I don't start this journey with you with a bunch of conclusions or or let's say let me say it this way. I have conclusions now, but I didn't start this journey with conclusions. I started this this journey with questions. I've got some really great answers, I think, that I would love to walk you through. Um, but I didn't start there. I didn't start with a conclusion and then try to find information that supported it. I started with questions and and these are the questions that I asked. Does God want me to be rich? Uh, wasn't Jesus poor?

44:54 There's a lot of people that talk about Jesus being poor. Where did our our ideas about money come from? Where where did my ideas on money come from? How did I get how did we get here? So, like looking at the history of money, at the history of what people think about money and say about money, socialism, capitalism, Marxism, how did we get to the point that we're at with with the economic thing thinking that we have? And then people talk about the prosperity gospel. What's wrong with it? What's unbiblical about it? And then really, there's some people that are prosperous. So, how does prosperity work? And then that kind of leads to this idea of what does God require of me in my life? What does God require me to do? How and then how can I be rich? Obviously, I think I'm uh I'm giving away the lead a little bit, but I I we're going to talk about that as as we kind of end this first episode here. But God God wants us to be rich, and I want to I want to um I want to walk you through that with what's next. But that's a big question. How can I be rich? If God wants me to be rich, which is the answer to the first question, yes, how can I be rich? And then what do I do with wealth? What am I supposed to So this season of this podcast is really the the current culmination of my own personal search and and I want to invite you into two things. So first approach what I'm saying with an open mind.

46:15 Second and most importantly study and see if I'm right. You know I always tell people I talk a lot about tithing. I talk a lot about putting God first. And people tell me that's wrong. People tell me it's unbiblical. People tell me that's that's not true. That they don't believe that. They believe it's Old Testament. And my thing is prove me wrong because I don't want to tithe either. I don't want to put God first either. I don't want to do life God's way. So if you tell me I don't have to and you prove it to me, well great. We're both going to be happy with that. But I've never been able to find proof. I've only found proof in the other direction. So I want to invite you. Whatever I say that you're challenged by, whatever I say that you question, go go search it for yourself and see. Go search it for yourself and learn the truth. And if you find some truth that disagrees with me, I'd love to hear it because it'll serve me and help me be better. So these are the best answers that I have right now to some of these questions. But the quality of the answers that I have, the quality of the answers that you have is dependent on the quality of questions that you ask, the quality of questions that I ask. So as we grow we are we become capable of asking better questions and getting better answers. So as a human being like I said I reserve the right to change my mind um if better answers make them clear. I don't know if I'm ever going to arrive at like the answer capital letters but there can be no better journey for us to take. And so I want to invite you to take this journey with me because our our answer, your answer, my answer to the question of pro poverty and prosperity will significantly significantly affect our lives. It determines the role that I think I play in God's plan for the earth. It determines how much I believe I can make an impact in the lives of other people.

48:03 It determines the quality of life for my family. and whether we believe that God wants us to be happy and enjoy our lives on this side of eternity. And so that's that's my introduction to this season. That's the first episode of this season. Next episode, we're going to ask the first question. Does God want me to be rich? Thank you for being a part of The Dialog . If you liked it, make sure you subscribe and send it to a friend who you think might like it. If you'd like to know more about me, what I do, what I talk about, you can follow me on Instagram at joshuakcraft or go to my website jkc.is.