Building Households of Valor with David Reece

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shotgun: Click. Click.

david reece: There's this triple office that the man has. He's the master of the house. He's the husband of the wife, and he's the father of the children. And as master of the house, it's his job to make sure everybody's profitably employed.

'Dramatic music household.

Nathan Spearing: thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. Uh, we'll be talking about schedule here a lot, um, it's been great.

Reconnecting and Discussing Recent Interviews
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Nathan Spearing: I guess we were just talking pre interview that it's been about, I guess, a year and a half since we sat together in person at fight, laugh, feast conference.

And then, uh, you've been busy lately. some, some people at church sent me your knocks unleashed. I believe it was recent interview. we'll link that show in the bio, but I, I wanted you to kind of. I guess key off with giving the listeners, uh, your bio and then we can kind of summarize maybe in, in five to seven [00:01:00] minutes, kind of the premise that you discussed on that show, just in case they don't go listen to the whole thing.

But then I wanted to move pretty quickly into how you practically. Uh, walk out that kind of higher premise that you laid out, uh, in that episode.

Diving into the Guest's Background and Mission
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Nathan Spearing: So for the listeners that aren't aware of who you are, who are you?

david reece: Oh

Yeah It's

an honor to be here, by the way. And I, I don't know if, I don't think I told you this before, but I literally listened to all of the episodes of your podcast on a couple of plane flights, uh, and really enjoyed them. And I have a respect for you. Um, that, uh, I think that you have obviously had to carry yourself at a high level.

And I think that you've also done some really neat things with your family and thinking about prioritization. And that you are exemplifying the man of valor that I'm trying to encourage a lot of men to be. Um, and so I thought I'd surprise, I'd ambush you since you, you probably tactical benefits of ambushes.

I thought, I thought I'd, [00:02:00] I thought I'd ambush you with the fact that I've listened to your podcast. I don't know if you've done any recently, that was probably a. Maybe a year ago, but I think you've been on hiatus from the show. So, but anyway, so just so you, so you asked about my, my, my bio. Um, so I am a pastor of Puritan Reform Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

Um, I am also, uh, married to an awesome wife, uh, Katie, and she is a woman of valor and she is extremely administratively competent, which allows for, um, all sorts of. Helpful ways to get stuff done. So my, my main advice to everybody, as far as to make your schedule good is marry well, uh, that that will help your schedule.

Um, so then the, uh, the other thing is we have six kids. Um, we have homeschooled them. Uh, three of them are old enough that they, they work for me. Um, when I, my kids, when my boys turn, um, you know, about 15, 16, I try to make them start working basically full time and them start pulling, you trying to pull together [00:03:00] capital.

Um, And then, um, I also, uh, one of my, my, my oldest son, uh, has gotten married and I'm very happy to say they have a child on the way. Uh, so I'm, I'm a granddad because, you know, we got the immortal soul in the body there. , I own a company called Armored Republic.

Um, and we talk about our Our mission is to, um, provide tools of liberty to free men to defend their God given rights against tyrants and criminals to the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's sort of the, the largest business in a portfolio of businesses that I currently, um, own and manage, and I'm trying to pull together more businesses.

And so on the basic level, the thesis is that I think Christian businesses are businesses that try to run off the operating principles of reality. We're designed by God in God's creation. And so there's a competitive advantage there inherently. And in addition to that, um, also that buying kind of smaller businesses, a lot of guys are looking for somebody who's not a [00:04:00] wokester to come and buy the business as opposed to handing it over to somebody who's going to destroy everything they care about.

Um, and so there's opportunities there to do that. So I'm always trying to raise capital, looking for people who want to invest in, um, trying to build that out. So that requires people to be accredited. Investors because the federal government likes to tyrannically keep away the best opportunities from people who have less money.

Um, and so those are kind of some of the key things there. So that's what I've got going on. And that's, I'm trying to help to take over the world for the Lord Jesus Christ using those various tools.

Nathan Spearing: Amen. All right. Well, I think we've been, that's like mic drop. We could just end the show right there. That's for everybody to implement for the rest of their life to, uh, to emulate that. I like how much aligned I always find in interviews stuff about people that you didn't really know about it.

And so it's, it's, I'm excited just even with that, uh, Intro to, to delve into several things about that.

Family Dynamics and the Role of Children in Business and Home Education
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Nathan Spearing: I guess the first thing I wanted to ask is, [00:05:00] is you're saying you have three children working full time and that you kind of try to do at the 15, 16 mark, have them start working full time.

Um, so what are those all boys? I, I missed, what did you say? The three that are working for you are,

david reece: So my oldest is a girl faith is my oldest and she's my only daughter. She's brilliant. she's really good with words. She's good at, administrative, tasks. She can handle kind of managing details and she really likes to understand kind of the big picture and all that.

And so she actually, what we have her doing is she kind of splits her time between working at home, helping, Uh, my wife to, to run things. Also, she runs kind of payroll, some finance and administrative things. She manages, like, uh, benefits and helps us with some of the HR things. So the thing is, she doesn't have to be there all the time for it.

So these administrative functions are really helpful things. men tend to, like, hate dealing with all the, like, administrative details. We want to, like, go out and grab stuff. So she's being well trained to be, you know, a Dominion woman supporting a Dominion man. [00:06:00] Who she could help to deal with stuff in the background that frees him up to go forward.

And my wife does that for me in a lot of ways helping me to kinda me enjoy managin a kind of adminstrative details. Um, and so I have found that so we wanted to help Faith have opportunities to do that. The Boys. Logan and Ethan are, are working with me, and, uh, Logan does a lot of the marketing stuff, and he has to handle spending a really large marketing budget, actually.

so he spends a lot of money, um, and, uh, but he has inexpensive tastes. Uh, so, so, but he, he, uh, so he spends money on that, and, and, and then we also, uh, my, my son Ethan does a lot of video production stuff, he's been training. Um, and the, the two of them are starting to interact more. So what I find is with the boys, my goal is to take them out of the house and to have them be engaged.

My goal with my daughter is to have her continue to be engaged in the house, to have her to continue to help and engage in kind of ministry ways with other people's households and children [00:07:00] and some of the women in the church. So women in the church and other people's children, so she can kind of see more broadly those things, uh, helping to engage in our own house and helping to assist my wife.

And then she also engages in the business realm because the Proverbs 31 woman is a competent helper in business affairs to the husband so that he has more time to be able to rule in the gates, uh, be able to be a good churchman and a good statesman. Um, and so I'm trying to help her to be a good queen to a good king someday.

Um, so, those, so the boys, my goal is to throw them into work and to get them to focus on developing a skill. Uh, the Jews have a fantastic phrase, uh, a fantastic saying, which is, if you, if you don't teach your son a trade, you're teaching him to be a thief, right? And so, that idea that, that there is, you, you, you want to give them the basics of some sort of work.

If you don't know how to do any skill at all, if you haven't learned anything, like, like there's no trade, there's no skill, there's nothing, you haven't even become a jack of the trade in it, then you don't really understand the process [00:08:00] of going from the grammar of a task to how it fits together as a system logically, to then kind of the rhetoric of how do you figure out the beauty of it, right?

And so I want to have them learn something deeply, and then they can start to learn other things more broadly, which gives them kind of a management perspective, uh, you know, liberal arts or whatever, like, like I have, I force my kids to read a lot. they like to read, but so I'm not trying to in any way denigrate the intellectual life.

I, I really want to emphasize that wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom, right? The knowledge of God is the, is the key thing. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But I also want to then have them take that knowledge and apply it to a bunch of stuff that they have to do. Um, because the good life is an active life.

There's a jumping between contemplation and activity, and then contemplating while you're being active. And, so, that idea. Um, so, so the boys, I really try to emphasize them learning to do something. And the kind of learning to grind out some difficult things on the lower level before they take on sort of managing other people and stuff like that, so.[00:09:00]

Nathan Spearing: So, so leading up to that, Um, that full time. Kind of development of those skills and the throwing into the task kind of in the marketplace if you will.

Discipline, Education, and Raising Children with Purpose
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Nathan Spearing: What was the path like talk talk about your kind of your family's homeschool methodology and because that you know, you know That doesn't just start like okay now we're going to flip a switch and you're going to get competency now that you're 15 or 16 like there's there's development of kind of those base level Abilities to learn abilities not to be afraid of Have the initiative to jump into something that you don't understand and figure it out that that starts way before quote unquote full-time employment.

So talk about that.

david reece: Absolutely. So, I, I would say, first of all, um, you want to put an emphasis on learning to read as fast as possible. Um, and, and, and that's because you want your children to be reading the Bible and being able to read other things, right? Reading is the [00:10:00] gateway to, to learning. So, a real emphasis on, on the basics of the ability to read, the basics of the ability to write, and the basics of arithmetic.

Um, And when you have those, all of a sudden you can kind of, you can just kind of go. You can, if you're at all motivated, you can kind of just learn on your own. Um, and so, um, that, that, that is a real focus. Um, we, we, my wife focuses on teaching the children, um, when they are younger. Right. And that's sort of her thing.

And I, I talked to them about, I spend time with them. So my time with them is not really scheduled, um, Classroom type of time. I have stuff I want to teach them. And I have sort of an order of like stuff I want to teach them. My goal is to do things with them and to talk to them about the things I want to teach them in sort of like, you know, I focus it.

I got to sit down and have a meal with them and I'll talk to them. And I want to talk to them one on one and also in groups, they hear things and, and you kind of look for opportunities to talk about things. So, you know, Deuteronomy six talks about teaching people, you know, your children, the [00:11:00] word of God in the morning and in the evening, but it also talks about the idea of doing it when you walk by the way.

Right? And, and so, it's sort of like you're looking for opportunities to do it. So I think it's important to, to one, have scheduled times to spend time and talk and that includes family worship. And two, is to kind of take advantage of things, right? To be resourceful and when stuff comes up. So if you're going to watch a movie with your kids, you know, analyze it with them afterwards or during it.

Like just pause it. Like just, you know, be a dad and be like, boom, we're pausing here. Kids, was that good or was that bad? Why? know, like, that kind of thing, right? So, so you're requiring them to analyze stuff and then you, you know, they give you an answer that's sort of not very good. You go, no, that's not right.

Let me explain to you what I want you to understand. And so, so, so that sort of, you do that, right? So, so that's, you're doing that from a young age. Family worship, every day. Our family, seven days a week. we read the Bible together. We pray together and we sing a psalm together. And at the end of it, I bless them.

I give them the Aaronic blessing from, from [00:12:00] numbers, right? The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you or lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. And so that blessing, you're giving that to your family.

You raise your hands over them over and over again, give them different blessings to different, you know, apostolic benedictions or whatever, but fathers, you're priests of your home. Right? Bless your family. Like, pray with your family, read the Bible with your family, sing Psalms with your family, and bless your family.

Which is just a type of prayer, and the, you know, superior blesses the inferior. You're authorized by God to bless your family. Bless your family. And, and so that, that regular thing, your driplets of knowledge are going into them from their, from their from their youth. I mean, frankly, we, you know, you do family worship, even when your children are in the womb and who knows what the Lord might do, you know, with the sound waves and the use, you know, the power of the Holy Spirit, you know, and that child in the womb.

Right. So that's, that's, that's this like regular thing that's happening. But then as they get older and you're teaching them to read, you're teaching them to do stuff. You play with them. I talk to fathers about this all the time. [00:13:00] Play is play work. Play is practice work. And when you enter into the childish world of your child, your goal is to figure out how, how much complexity has this child put into their play already, So it's just like, here's an action figure and the superpower that causes it to fly around and then the superpower that causes lasers to shoot out of its hand, you're like, okay, so this is a relatively low level of thoughtful play, but you have good guys fighting bad guys. That's fantastic. Try to add some more element and maybe be like, Hey, You have to do a couple extra steps to beat the action figure that's in my hand.

Or, you know, your guy has a certain amount of energy, he gets tired after a certain amount of time. Right? You just add tiny, tiny, tiny bits of complexity, and you use that to start plugging in these ideas about the world and the nature of reality that only God is infinite. Your superhero's not infinite, he doesn't have infinite power, and, and so you're just kind of gradually helping them to think about things in a more complex way.

As they get to a place where they're maybe four or five or whatever and they're starting to read. Katie is going to be [00:14:00] kind of helping them to, to take on a greater amount of stuff. We find there's some neat videos that are put out by the Ron Paul curriculum. They have some good history videos. They're kind of biblical history.

Um, there's, you know, various free things for math, math. We, we've used a bunch of different things for different kids. Um, but I really, people have to know how to add, subtract, multiply, divide. Like you need to do that. Like you do it all the time. If you could, if you get to fractions, you don't have to memorize everything in algebra or calculus or statistics or anything else, but if you can't do fractions, you can't do business.

Like, and so like you, you really have to emphasize those things leading up to a child being able to work in a useful way in business. so you're also reading. And so Katie is going to work on the early childhood stuff up until they are 10, 11, 12, 13. And somewhere in that zone of maybe, depending on how far along the boy is, I'm going to take over spending some significant time going, I'm going to talk to you about history a lot more.

Now I started to have like intentional effort to give them a sense of the history of the world. I talked to them about wars and about major [00:15:00] political power stuff. I talked to all the kids about, uh, about church history. And I've even talked to my daughter about these other things too, but it's just, the boys really like to hear about war, right?

And so you're like, the thing about history is, You're not going to remember history unless you have kind of touch points that make it so that you start to have like, okay, here's a thing that happened and a thousand years later this happened. That's a really big deal. If your kid knows this happened and a thousand years later this happened, they start to plug in the stuff between those big points.

And they become, they become significant events that help them to remember where other things are in relationship to that. History is a story and it's really hard for kids to get a grasp on the story. And so it's so important to get biblical history and give them a sense of the timeline. And I don't know, you know, uh, Usher, James Usher wrote a fantastic history of the world, but it's a long book.

And, and so, uh, our goal, uh, Ethan, for example, my son has done a lot to help me to create a kind of timeline. It's more simplified where we kind of tried to draw those things out. And it was a project he's just [00:16:00] been kind of. Creating a timeline where you go, here's the major stuff in history. And so my goal is to give people really big touch points.

You know, creations in 4000 BC. You know, the, the, the floods 1500 years later. Abraham's 500 years later. Moses's 500 years later. You just kind of have these big things. You do that with the kids. You repeat those kinds of things. You give them the big meta narrative. Because the atheists are doing a really good job of being like, there was a big bang 13 million, 13 billion years later.

Uh, you know, you've got whatever. Or, you know, 4 billion years ago, the earth, you know, starts to form through there. Gravitational pull process. They're really good at giving big touch points on their metanarrative and repeating it over and over and over again. Our metanarrative is the Bible's metanarrative.

It's the truth about history and we need to be repeating it to our kids over and over again and giving them a sense of it. You know, there is creation, there's the flood, you know, these big events that are happening. So you help them to get touch points. And in more modern history, wars are kind of things that people, you know, especially boys, start to become interested in and gravitating around.

So you give them some of these big interesting story points. And if you can find any [00:17:00] characters to tell them about, it helps to give them a place where they're interested. And you give them people to, to emulate that kind of have certain heroic elements, right? So, those are some of the things for history.

You got the math, you got the, all that kind of stuff. And, and as you, you sort of emphasize theology and you throw books at them. Make them read them. You need to read this book by the end of this month. Um, and that's one of the ways you can take the Lord's day. I don't know. I can't, I can't remember where you stand on the Sabbath, but I'm Sabbatarian.

And so one of the things is we really emphasize, Hey, learn to focus and read for a longer period of time using the Lord's day. And so the boys are really trying to push on them going. Yeah, you gotta get through this book. And if you can't figure out how to get enough time on the Lord's day to kind of read and get time to focus on that, then, you know, you've tried to use up some of your free time during the week to keep up with it.

So those are some of the major things to get guys, the boys ready. And then as they're in that, Little older, period. My goal is to continue to throw that stuff at them and give them projects where them to do work that's independent of me and I, you know, kind of judge it. And I talked to them about that.

And so this idea of having responsibility, keeping the deadlines,

and [00:18:00] if you don't spank your kids, none of this is gonna work.

Nathan Spearing: Mm. Yeah, there has to be, punishment.

Practical Advice on Discipline and Restoring Dignity
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david reece: Do you with, uh, with the rod or there any particular, uh, Things that you have found that, uh, as you're dealing with kind of setting up things, do you have a kind of ways that you've, you've found that implementing the discipline, uh, at different kinds of ages is useful or anything like that?

Nathan Spearing: Yeah, I think, um, one of the things actually just recently were men of our church are watching the future men documentary that cannon put out. And one of the things that I, I felt particularly convicted on that is if you're not disciplining promptly and Every time, then you're not, you're, you're being tyrannical to your kids because the standard is always moving.

And if you aren't being consistent in that particular sense. So, I, I felt, um, a renewed zeal to, to just follow through every single time. And, and [00:19:00] that, it's, it's kind of like they think that they're gonna, there is a moving standard, then you can't expect them to keep it. And so that, that's kind of been, um, something that I've focused on, you know, just very quickly.

Uh, also keeping myself, uh, under control. This can't be emotional for me. It has to be very calm, very under control. And, you know, sometimes I take a second before, um, I, I approach them because I want to make sure that I am not provoking them. They, they don't get to, I don't want them latching on to me being a tyrant, me being unruled, me disciplining them for their emotion, emotionally.

Uh, so I guess those are, those are kind of the disciplines that I try to employ at a personal level to make sure that I'm calm and collected. And then I guess one of the other things that I try to do too is, is make sure that my kids know that because [00:20:00] I'm at the office. My authority is still, uh, in the home.

And so every one of them knows that it does not matter what daddy is doing, wherever he is doing it around town, that he will immediately end the meeting he's in, he will immediately drop what he's doing and he will be there. Um, which is one of the benefits I think, and one of the reasons why I, I prescribe men having their own businesses or having a boss that understands that Uh, there are duties that are outside the office that, um, are eternal and infinite in nature as well.

Um, so I think that that's been one of those things that's been, you know, I can get a call from my wife and she says, uh, hey, and I just said, I'm on the way, you know, and, and I get there quick because I don't want, you know, Uh, the, the child sitting there dealing with that, that knowledge and then we make sure that we're, they're fully restored afterwards, um, that it's, it's, it's quick [00:21:00] and we restore them and we hug them and we tell them they don't get to continue to be pouty.

They don't get to continue to let that be over them. I want a completely restored and cheerful heart and I want them, you know, rejoicing that, that they're, that it's gone. It's forgiven. It's not on their record anymore. And restoring them, um, back. Um, so I guess that's wavetops of how I implement it. And I would love to have you sharpshoot it and give me some additional stuff to lay on there.

david reece: So it's and it sounds like so. So your wife, obviously she has the authority and ability and competency to discipline the kids too. But if, if the boys in particular are not properly respecting her as the queen of the home, then like reinforcements coming. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's awesome.

The idea that the, that the parents reinforce each other's honor, right? If, one of the, if the kids are disrespecting me, I can defend my own honor, but it's good to have my wife be like, Hey, do not disrespect your father. Right. if, I see her being disrespected, so the mutual reinforcement, the two witnesses, so to speak.

Who can come in and support each [00:22:00] other's honor. I think that's awesome. And that other only thing I really add there, I think everything you said was fantastic. I think I would just add, I think an emphasis on one of the ways you keep your cool is by making sure that, you know, you're like, I'm a judge. I'm going to answer to the judge of judges, about how I've exercised as authority.

And so I need to make sure that I have a biblical basis for exercising discipline here. And so you, kind of, I think memorizing the 10 commandments and being able to refer back to which one of the 10 commandments does this break. You Right? And, and so you're, you're, you're going, you know, you have sinned in this way, you know, maybe it's just a lot of times it's just, you know, you dishonored father and mother because you didn't follow one of the household rules or whatever.

And so you're going, okay. Here is this way you've sinned and then giving them an opportunity to either plead guilty or not and to give a defense​

if somebody is honest and humbly confesses sin, you can back off

right. And so we always, if there's a confession of sin, uh, we do that. And if, if it only gives a just offense, it explains why there's nothing deserved. We, you know, we go, okay, you're, right. And so this is withdrawn. [00:23:00] Um, and so I think just that process of. Okay, here, here, here's the charge, you know, how do you plead, you know, are you guilty or not guilty?

Um, and then you kind of like, there's discussion if, if, if there's evidence or whatever, well, you know, this child saw that child do this and I saw it too and it's okay, we're just going to move forward to discipline at this point. Okay, great. So that's the verdict. And then you're kind of like, what about the sentencing?

Kind of, what kind of discipline are you going to get? And then, you know, okay, any, any response to that? Any reason you think that's an unjust sentence? I think that's And I think you can do that real quick. Uh, just sort of, what's the charge, you know, what's the plea, you know, what's the evidence, what's the verdict, what's the sentence, and I think that, that, that trains men to govern, uh, you think about that, and helps your kids to know that you're doing it judiciously.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah. There's a lot to that,

I guess one of the things I'd want to ask too is, you know, my, we have daughters.

I have a 13 year old daughter. What are some words of wisdom for that kind of age as you're, as you're essentially shepherding your, your daughter across that threshold to womanhood?

Um, with [00:24:00] sin still being present? Mm-Hmm.

david reece: So first of all, Um, I think that there, there is a dropping off of corporal punishment in terms of like, not a total dropping in terms of there's, there's a, there's a degree, it starts to diminish in terms of its frequency. Like very, very small children receive it a lot more frequently because they're just total rebellion and outward lack of discipline is typically more manifest.

The older they get, the more you want to, your time, like they almost just go like, I don't even care about that. It's not, it's not even that like, it's, it's something that is something that, that is undignified for them.

It's just, it doesn't matter. They're like, this is fine. I can take this. This is totally fine.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah. Mm.

so what you'd move to

david reece: is here's work that you've got to do. Here's stuff you've got to read and I need you to write something. Okay. So, so what I do is I typically, we go, here's some law you broke. Here's the Westminster larger catechism on the commandment.

I want you to now write me a, you know, one page essay or whatever that says how you broke the [00:25:00] commandment, you know, the harms that it caused, uh, the lawful consequences for that. Um, the commitment that you need to make to alter your behavior, um, in terms of what you need to put off and what you need to put on.

And then I want you to ask forgiveness to the party in writing there. So you have a thoughtful apology. And so those five elements are again, admitting what's wrong, acknowledging the harms a commitment to alter behavior, accepting lawful consequences and asking for forgiveness. And so those Those elements of a lawful apology where you're causing the thoughtfully consider the law of God in terms of putting off and putting on and they're kind of thinking so they have to read and they have to write to show that they're doing it and you look at the thing and you can go no this is bad try harder you know or or you can go well done and then you can talk to them about it a little bit but but that and the other thing is using time to have to go do work so if they do something you know if one kid breaks another kid's toy it's like okay well you got to pay for that or uh you know or or they break their lego set okay well you need to rebuild it You know, and there's sort of this, this, [00:26:00] you're trying to make them do stuff.

So you're always giving instruction, but as they get older, you're making them do more time to show that they're studying it themselves, thinking about themselves and expressing it themselves. Um, and those would be the things that I would emphasize as we grow through that time. And so if it's, if it's a repeated sin, you got real problems where you're like, we keep seeing this, we're having a hard time seeing this be put off.

Those things start to become heavier. You go, I need you to write about it more. I need you to write about how you're going to stop it. I need you to read this book about this. And you kind of go, you know, you're taking things away, but you don't want to make it into a super long thing because you want to have restoration be quick.

And so you're trying to make it maybe, you know, maybe a day, maybe two if it's like a bigger project. But your goal is to, is to make restoration occur fast. And if you're having them do this work to be restored, you still want to have forgiveness be given quickly. I really discourage [00:27:00] people from doing anything like grounding or things that take away, uh, you know, things for a long time where there's an alienation from the parent for a prolonged period of time.

Nathan Spearing: Mm hmm. Yeah, that's, I, I didn't, uh, our pastor has preached on that, just that model of quick forgiveness. You know, I've heard, I've heard the, Kind of the rebuttal to that being, well, the Israelites had to walk around for 40 years in the, in the wilderness. So there's, we have examples in scripture where it's not quick, you know.

Um, but I guess my, my response would be that's, that's, that's Almighty God doing it for that long. Uh, so there's maybe a little more confidence in that duration being appropriate than me grounding my kid for a month or a week or, or whatever, but I don't know if you have any comments on that.

david reece: I agree with what you just said. There is a difference in terms of the jurisdiction and the level of authority, but it's also the degree of the rebellion, right? The rebellion against God is the King of Israel and rejecting his commandment to go to war. being [00:28:00] something that results in a, a, you know, prolonged thing.

I mean, we're talking about, you know, capital crime level rebellion. so as opposed to executing them, you know, God executed them by walking for 40 years and, uh, and then had them be replaced, but he needed to have them train up the next generation. so, so I think, I think that there's a, there's a discipline there in some ways, but there's also these people were, were committing capital crime level rebellion against sovereign of the nation of Israel.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah. It's definitely excellent points.

The Role of a Homemaker and Managing Time Effectively
---

Nathan Spearing: One of the reasons why I like doing this podcast is I'm seeking out men that have wisdom, that have mastery, have experience in areas that I am trying to also, uh, get better in and hearing how they particularly do it practically.

This is how I break out a week. This is what my perfect week looks like. These are the tools that I use. This is how I, um, initially plan. to block out what [00:29:00] percentage business and what percentage, you know, and relationally and spiritually and then personal growth. You mentioned that you're on a, you said 10 months now, uh, of, of weight training and things like that.

Obviously when you weight train, you're not being entrepreneurial, but, or you're not reading a book necessarily. There's a, there's a opportunity cost with your time. So I just, I really would like to hear. Practically how you, how you do that?

david reece: Yeah. So there is a cost benefit analysis that has to be given and you're going to focus on some things, especially as you're establishing new habits. They're going to take up more of your bandwidth than at other times. Um, one of the big things is time is extremely limited and you're going to die away sooner than you want. And so you've got a number of your days, right? And so you go, okay, um, Jerry Bridges talks about how, um, How he realized it wasn't until he realized how truly, you know, pathetically limited and finite his own abilities, resources, and time [00:30:00] were that he was able to actually maximize his own impact. Um, and I think that that idea, um, by the way, he had a magnificent book in the gospel called the great exchange.

Uh, so if anybody's looking to really deeply understand the work of Christ on the cross, the, uh, uh, the great exchange by bridges is really good. Um, So anyways, the, the, this idea that you've got to, to focus in, I think delegation is really important to realize there. So if you're a man and you're not delegating any work to your wife, you're not commanding her to do any work.

You're not using your authority to order her to do any work. Okay. Hopefully a lot of your audience is feeling uncomfortable right now and they're realizing that sin they need to repent of. Um, if you're not doing that, then you're wasting the queen that the Lord has given to you. And so a big part of it is actual delegation.

A lot of men want to, want to say that they're an authority over their wife and then not give her any work to do and not hold her responsible for any of it.

Nathan Spearing: Mm-Hmm.

david reece: And so [00:31:00] if you cannot manage your wife and exercise the power of command there while loving her, caring for her, then you're not going to be able to command elsewhere very well. then with your children. Right, your children are people that are to be given work. And I forgot to mention this earlier, but this is really important, that you have to give them chores as young as they possibly can. You need to give them work that they are responsible to do, with jurisdictions, an expectation of what they're supposed to do to make it happen, holding them responsible, and using the rod if they don't do the work.

you can take really, really, really small stuff to begin with, and it's not going to save you time to begin with. And that's a part of the training. So, there's that priority on time as delegation becomes extremely important and you're figuring out how to delegate with the resources the learner has given to you.

So, you talked about this idea of principles, uh, you talked about the worry about the checklist. God gives us checklists, for example, there's the two great commandments, there's two big checklists that you have to have.

Exploring the Ten Commandments and Christian Life
---

david reece: And then there's also the ten commandments, and then you've got all the other details.

And [00:32:00] those commandments, you could put them on a list and then you could see am I doing them or not doing them. I'm not saying that we should be, we're justified before God by doing that. The only person who's ever been justified before God by keeping the checklist perfectly is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we are, we are saved by his checklist keeping.

Um, but at the same time, we're saved from failing to keep the checklist to more and more checking out the checklist. And so I think that this sort of like hatred of the law is a heresy that the church needs to repent of.

The Importance of God's Law and Wisdom in Daily Life
---

david reece: Antinomianism, the hatred of God's law is foolishness and stupidity. And if your preacher is a preacher who hates God's law and does not think that God's law is a lamp unto your feet, you need to protest that and talk to your elders about the need to change that.

And if they won't change that, you should leave your church and go to a church that does teach the law of God. They also need to have the gospel right. And so. So what I would say is that's very important.

Understanding Wisdom and Skill in the Bible
---

david reece: The other thing is, there's a difference in the Word of God [00:33:00] between the Hebrew word Chokmah, which is wisdom, and Haskel, which is often translated wisdom, but would be better translated as skill.

And so you have Chokmah and Haskel. And so oftentimes the book of Proverbs, you, if you're reading it and you wonder which, which, what thing is being talked about, you want to look at, is it the word Chokmah or the word Haskel? And when it's talking about Chokmah, it's giving you principles that are universal.

And so Chokmah, or wisdom, is the knowledge of what's good, and the knowledge of how to get what is good. So God is the good, and the more we know God, the more we possess what's good. And the law of God teaches us how to get what is good. The good life is the life that encourages the growth of the knowledge of God.

And the law of God teaches us the way of life that will increase our knowledge of God. Psalm 1 says that meditating on the law of God day and night helps us to result in fruit bearing all the time. And so Haskell, skill, is something where you think [00:34:00] about the difference between moral knowledge, which is chokmah, or Moral skill, the ability to skillfully carry that out.

And so you develop skills like Plumbing, and, you know, electrical work, and construction, and how to write a good song, and, like, all these things are skills. They're not, uh, they're knowledge, it's art. It's, it's, it's, the Greek would be like tekne, uh, versus gnosis, knowledge. You'd have, in Latin, you'd have science versus art.

And so this idea of, of art, or tekne, the skill of doing something. And so principles are, are here's the skill, here's the artistry that somebody provides. Uh, in terms of the, the, here's what I do. So you have these principles that are universal, and you've got, here's the practical applications of how I've tried to do that.

And so, I'm trying, when we give these details, you know, you're, you're trying to understand, you know, the audience wants to understand the principles that are universally applicable. And then here's the application.

Balancing Life's Responsibilities with Spiritual Growth
---

david reece: So, if we're gonna have time, [00:35:00] To do things like work out and do worship and do family worship and you're gonna eat food And you're gonna get work done during the day And you're gonna have time with your wife and you have time with your kids, right?

Everybody's gonna have a different schedule, but the principle of finding time to do all those things applies to everybody and So so now the particular way in which I'm doing that is Um, I had a guy, there's a guy from Apologia who has a fitness business.

A Personal Journey of Fitness and Faith
---

david reece: His name is Sean O'Brien. Uh, I'd encourage anybody who's in kind of the Phoenix area to check it out.

I think O'Brien Fitness is the name of his, of his company. He came up to me, it was pretty awesome. He, he showed just like manly fortitude in doing a sales thing. He's like, I can see that you are fat. You somebody to help you to work out. I was like, thank you. And yes. so this like, this, this like straightforward thing, I was like, yeah, let's do this.

Let's talk about this. So we scheduled this going, I mean, like the guy was awesome. He was just like, I can see that you would benefit from this. And so just the manly straightforwardness of the guy was awesome. So he's at [00:36:00] Apologia, uh, which is,

Nathan Spearing: Well, I would like to, to pa pause you too. Is that, um, you'll be able to say, okay, I'm gonna receive this from you. 'cause he's coming with a solution too. You know, he's I actually can help you with this. Um, and, and I actually have had a conversation with Michael Foster about this.

Navigating Challenges in Physical and Spiritual Health
---

Nathan Spearing: He's like, cause I, I took some heat from, from, uh, County Before Country stage, kind of calling out, hey, you know, Abraham Kuyper said, you know, every inches of God is, belongs to God.

It doesn't mean you should add more inches to your waist to give opportunity for him to have, like, that's not how we actually exercise dominion. And, and he said, I just think a lot of, A lot of pastors that are struggling in the physical area, if they would just say, yep, I, I need to work on that. And they would just silence it instead of this.

Like, I feel like every time I kind of talk about it and I, [00:37:00] I definitely bring the heat a little bit more, um, when I talk about it because I think it is a problem. Uh, and so the, maybe I'm not providing the most opportunity to, you know, in every context and social media, maybe it's not the best place to bring it up.

But he just said, like, if, if, if a pastor be like, yep, you know, I got it. And, and I, I recently said, um, I was on Twitter spaces and it's like, look, you can't make a person's life be perfect before you, you listen to them or else you'll never be able to be gain wisdom from anyone because it's not, obviously Jesus is perfect and we have a biblical narrative that describes his life and we can learn a lot from that.

But. There's also a reinforcement that needs to come from brotherhood here in relationship in the church and men in different households so anyway I like to just commend you for receiving it and then taking action and getting on a trajectory because we all we all know that This [00:38:00] sanctification is a process, you know, we are being saved Um, we are we are being made more holy day by day if we are continuing to study in these different ways So anyway,

david reece: Yeah No praise, praise the Lord. And I'm grateful for it. And I've had, you know, a lot of people try to encourage me in different ways there. And, um, and, and so, you know, for maybe the last two years, I've had some sort of significant effort where I've been trying to figure out how do I, how do I figure out diet more?

How do I figure out time to exercise and do that kind of stuff. And then doing, doing that, uh, weight training. And so that was a thing where, you know, he was having me do cardio a couple of days a week, and then we were doing weight training for three days a week. And I was having a hard time managing that I was losing.

I was not getting enough sleep. Obviously I have a busy schedule. like, I think sleep, I started, I was losing weight and I kind of plateaued and I was like, you know, there's stress. How do you control food plus the time plus not getting enough sleep? And so it's kind of this, you're, you're trying to balance things, right?

And you're going, how do I discipline here? And how do I have, keep, keep time with my wife? You asked about that earlier in this, frankly, a lot of time, I'm basically spending time in the evening with my wife, you know, we [00:39:00] spend a little bit of time together. Um, and so those, those things, looking for those opportunities.

Um, and, and so, so with this training, you know, it creates opportunities for intimacy and it allows you to be able to just kind of have time with your wife and you look at like maybe Friday or Saturday, trying to have some time where you're setting a part time to spend with your wife to take her on a date or go for a hike or whatever.

Um, and so those, those things, looking for those opportunities. Um, and, and so, so with this training, You know, I was trying to figure that out. Um, and as I found actually, you know, I needed the discipline really regularly to begin with to get used to it, right? It's sort of a, you know, the joke that my trainer would give, that Sean O'Brien would give, would, he'd say, uh, it's almost like, you know, exposure therapy, right?

Where you're just getting, you're getting exposed to increasing levels of physical difficulty. and the pain that's associated with that and you become able to differentiate more and more of the different types of pains that are associated with, with exercise. And so, you know, frankly, I was going from like zero to one right on my, on my level of physical fitness.

[00:40:00] Um, and so my, my joke with him now is, you know, I appreciate the training time. You're getting like 10 months with him. I think I went from 0 to 1. 732, you know, and, and so that's, you know, trying to, trying to keep making the, the, the progress up there, uh, but having this idea that, you know, now I'm doing it with my sons, I'm doing it, you know, by myself, I'm doing that kind of thing.

And so it gets extra time with the boys. So as you develop those, those kinds of disciplines, um, you keep figuring out stuff and it requires sort of, you have to have spurts and something that was really big for me as a guy who's been fat like my whole life. Yeah. Um, is, is thinking about the reality that you don't have to be on a diet all the time and you don't have to like not enjoy things forever, right?

It's, it's sort of this, you have times where you go through intentional dieting efforts to lose weight and then you kind of like try to maintain that and you have sort of these, these points where you're going with it and so your behavior changes there. And so there's this sort of like sense, you know, people that have been fat for a long time kind of feel like, you know, dieting is like Vietnam, it never ends and you're always [00:41:00] going to be ambushed and die.

And so, this, this problem that there's a reality that you can, you make advances, you kind of hold those advances, and then you kind of make more advances. And so you're, you're kind of, you're chopping away at things, and you're making this kind of, this, these progressive, you know, sprints, so to speak. That was something that was really helpful to me.

So, so anyways, this, this is, that fits into the time thing, but, I, I, I'm happy to go into the, the schedule thing in more detail, but I, forgive me if I went down the, the wrong rabbit trail or whatever.

The Role of Discipline and Delegation in Personal Growth
---

Nathan Spearing: You're trying to get more businesses. So you're trying to bring on more responsibility, which when you have certain businesses, if you try to bring more on when certain businesses aren't at the right spot, then that business starts to fail.

And it, and for me, I always would rather start something new than be diligent. At the thing that's right in front of me. That's an entrepreneurial strength and weakness in the same time. So I like to hear how you kind of walk that out in your life. Mm

david reece: Yeah, so

Nathan Spearing: Mm

Applying Biblical Principles to Business and Leadership
---

david reece: [00:42:00] it's true that you have to have the things that you're currently running. You have to figure out how to make them run well.

Nathan Spearing: hmm.

david reece: If they're running well, and if you are able to delegate, uh, if you're able to train people to do things and to have them run well, then you start to have the ability to potentially give attention to something else.

And so your goal is to be removing things. You know, from from sort of your own plate as you are trying to add other things. So your own time, your own project is sort of an assembly line. You know, what's the work in progress? And one of the goals is to eliminate work in progress and to have completed things.

And the way you complete things faster is by doing less things. And so the way you can give your, the way you can give your, if you can give your focus to things to maximize how to increase throughput and complete a thing and then kind of put it over here, here's a done thing and great. And so businesses, to a certain extent, there's the acquisition, there's sort of a reforming of the business, there's organizing the business, there's helping it to be set up properly, there's [00:43:00] making sure you've got a good management team, and there's helping them to stay on track.

And if you have competent leadership that's properly resourced, um, and there's, you know, kind of alignment in terms of, uh, you know, the source of truth and of, you know, the law of God, and you're able to, you know, see that applied, um, You know, a CEO has four major jobs, and those jobs are to, you know, set strategy, to set culture, to hold management accountable, and to have a financial plan to make sure that you have sufficient capital to carry things out, to make it so there's profitability, and that the cash flow doesn't make it so that you seize up by having an insufficient amount of cash in the business, even being very profitable, it's possible to overextend yourself if you have to wait on terms from a customer or something like that.

So, um, so those, those, those elements. Um, if you're able to help somebody else to be there, a lot of the times, you know, the people that are running things, you know, focusing on the diligence there, your goal is to figure out how to help them to have a good strategy, to have a budget for the resources and a goal for it.

And strategy comes [00:44:00] down to determining kind of, you know, principles that are sort of, um, observations or insights about the nature of reality and the way things currently are, so that you can then make determinations about where you can put the least effort in to get the most result. Um, and your goal isn't to maximize that effort being multiplied out there, so that's leverage, right?

So, you're looking for points of leverage based upon the structure of reality and the way things are actually going. And you're seeing if you can manipulate that point to maximize the outcomes to have more output. And so, so those are, so if you're, if you're able to coach other people in that, the execution takes a lot of time.

Teaching takes a lot of time. Helping to focus people in takes time. And, and so, I think I am, I'm a good teacher. I'm good at helping people to identify insight points. Uh, where there's a need to manipulate some sort of a, a thing that can be altered, um, and to be able to, to do that. And so, but a lot of it's in place in terms of, you know, what is the culture that you want and stuff like that.

It's based around simply having a, a Christian idea. So that there's a lot of things that are figured out that allow for a focus in that. And I have some really good, solid [00:45:00] Christian men in Armored Republic that help me, uh, to run it well. And so if I didn't have, you know, excellent men that I could rely upon to work with, Um, I would not be able to do that.

And so my goal is to honor them, to give them rewards, to give them incentives, and, and to also hold them accountable. And, you know, if they're not doing their job, if they get lazy, they abuse power, whatever, to also to punish them. Right. And so, uh, those, those things, the idea of delegation is essential for the ability to multiply out.

Um, and that delegation requires significant discipleship or else you're going to have, the institution is going to devolve into a non Christian institution. So Christian discipleship. is the thing there. But you'd asked about the schedule and I kind of ran down this road.

The Significance of Sabbath and Structuring Time
---

david reece: And so let me, let me, let me point out, you know, on a basic thing, the way you make this stuff happen and you keep the main thing, the main thing is by realizing that God has appointed time markers.

Um, and in the new covenant era, the only time markers we have are the weekly Sabbath, the Lord's day, which be kept as a day to rest from [00:46:00] ordinary work and recreation. and is to be spent to be holy unto God, which means you spend the whole day in the worship of God except for works of necessity and mercy.

And so that's a day that's focused on church. It's focused on private worship, family worship, discipling your kids, catechizing your kids, and you spend time there, you pour in. And only if your house is in a really good order, should you then overflow into public ministry in terms of the diaconal office or the office of the elder.

And so the men whose houses are in good order, Their children are being catechized. They have been able to do things. They're showing fruit and the wife is too. And so there's sort of the officer qualifications, the wife qualifications and the children qualifications. Those things are typically not looked into sufficiently.

And we like to ship people in, like we get pastors from Amazon prime. the nice

Nathan Spearing: Oh, there's so happy to have anybody willing to To do this, uh, this labor that there's, there's not enough people to do. And we'll just put [00:47:00] somebody in the position cause they, they're going to do it. Thank goodness. I don't have to do it. You know? Um,

david reece: And what we need is we need the best men. elders and deacons, we need the best men, which means we need to remunerate them. Well, right now. And so you, you're, you know, you get more of what you subsidize and you get less of what you penalize, right? So let's give honor and material rewards to men who are good elders and good deacons.

And let's try to get the best men there and let's make it an honorable office as opposed to, you know, a group of relatively incompetent, but well meaning duds, right? That, that, that idea should be a high honor to receive church office. And so we want to, we want it to be only reserved for those men who are competent and character qualified and whose houses demonstrate that.

And one of the qualifications of an elder, by the way, is cosmeon, which is in some ways closely related to the word kael in Hebrew. Kael is the man of valor, is the, kael. Um, ish kael is the man of valor. And so you [00:48:00] have, uh, you know, This idea of cosme on is order. It's translated as well behaved a lot of times, which is like, sounds like a little boy, like, Oh, you're a good boy.

You're well behaved. It's no, it's, it's this idea of well ordered ness, competent, you're a man of valor. You, you can, you're decisive in business, you're decisive in battle. Um, I'm sure you've found that your experience dealing with, you know, being in a combat branch, having dealt with things where you have to make decisive things, you are more accustomed to the idea that risk is unavoidable and you must be decisive.

Nathan Spearing: Mm hmm.

david reece: So

Nathan Spearing: risky to be indecisive than to be decisive with less than all the facts. You know, it's just of momentum, violence of action is required, and, you know, and then ultimately you train, um, in combat, you train because, so the basics, you don't have to think about them. And so if you're a well ordered man of valor spiritually, You're not having to calm yourself down because you're getting angry because you were well ordered so that [00:49:00] you're not in the way of Acting decisively you the basics are handled and so advanced Maneuvers advance operations become easy because all the component subordinate component pieces are are Well trained and ordered to function

I'd love to hear, hear more about, um, about how, um, you are empowering the men in your church and in your business too, because I feel like that's something that I struggle with is that discipleship side that, you know, we talk about as progressive authority and responsibility, like that kind of.

You're delegating more, you're doing it to your son, for your sons, you're doing it for your, your leadership in your business and then in your church as well. So I'd love to hear kind of your principles and how you do that.

Empowering Others Through Delegation and Discipleship
---

david reece: And so, um, I think you have to know what you're going to structure your time around and you have to be able to do that. So, you know, you heard the analogy of the big rocks, [00:50:00] right? this idea, you know, how do you get the most volume? How do you get the most mass into? Into a container, right? And you go, if you've got a bunch of rocks and sand and stuff, and you gotta move these big rocks away, but you gotta move as much stuff as you can.

You know, you're gonna, you're start putting the big rocks in and you fill in the gaps with the sand and whatever, right? So this idea of what are those big rocks? And so you this, if you're gonna de develop things with men, you have to have a sequence and a rhythm. You talked about this idea of, of there's a hierarchy and that men are hierarchical.

Women tend to be loyalty focused. And so it's harder, they're designed to have kind of a, a more localized focus on that. Uh, and, and so this idea of. of, of their loyalty in terms of the home and then men being able to deal with these exchanges of hierarchy, uh, more. Um, I think the rhythm of time you go, okay, so here's the Lord's day.

And then, you know, here's designated time where there's constraints where you're trying to get stuff done inside of that. And so for me, you know, I guard my morning so that I can do worship and I can wash my wife in the word. And so we have sort of, you know, our private worship there and [00:51:00] engagement with my wife to be able to do that.

Yeah. And the evening we have, you know, this time with the family to do family worship. So those are the major things. And so,

Nathan Spearing: And what, just, I want to specifically how, for you, what is that, what are those times, uh, like, what's the duration or the block that you have, guard, that you guard?

david reece: yeah, so I'm, I'm trying to have a 30 minute block for it. and it might be 15 minutes that day, or it might be the full 30 minutes, or it might go a little bit over, especially if we're having a good conversation about the applications or whatever. But I'm going to go, there's going to be very minimally.

At least a small amount of time that's there for again, the things are there's prayer starting with prayer, going into the word of God, reading it and talking about it. You might read a good theology book that has like, you know, some applications of an area we're trying to study or whatever, but you want to have scripture in it.

And then, and then you're also dealing with, you know, the idea of, of reading and singing a song and, and then blessing, right? So if you, if you're with other people, so I think it's important we have, but Jesus talks about going into your prayer [00:52:00] closet, to secret worship.

Nathan Spearing: hmm.

david reece: So there's this private worship and I think a husband and wife can do that together because you're, you know, legally one person or you could do it by yourself.

If you have small children you can incorporate them because otherwise they're not going to get there, you know, at worship. So you're kind of doing that. So right now our four year old does that with us. So my wife and I in the morning, sometimes we'll do our worship separately, sometimes we'll do it together.

We've been doing it together for the last couple of months, um, and sometimes we'll go, we need a time to go, I'm going to study this thing separately. You're going to do that thing separately. But it's sort of whether we're doing it together or doing it, doing it separately. And then she always has our, our four year old with her.

And so, um, Josiah. And so, uh, he, he is there. So whether it's us doing it together or whether it's her doing it separately with him and, and so that sort of give, we give

Nathan Spearing: the early riser, huh? Mm

david reece: Yeah. And so, and so then, In the evening, uh, with the family, you know, we right now, for example, we're going through the book of numbers and I'm just kind of We're talking through it.

We're looking for principles. And the book of numbers is a very kingly book. It's a military organization book. The first 10 [00:53:00] chapters are about the organization of the people of God, Israel as an army and their consecration and organization. And by the way, people credit Napoleon with developing the core system.

The Lord God Almighty developed the cord system, the core with having multiple divisions, right? He made it so there were, there were three, so there were four core of, of major infantry. And they had all of them broken around into these command structures where you'd have three tribes that were together and those would march together.

And so the marching order was broken into the core system. So you essentially had these independent armies that could function and then they were able to gather and reinforce around each other. So there's a system of march that Napoleon gets credit for, but actually God gave it to Moses. Um, and so this, this whole, this whole set up there.

So anyways, the numbers is a glorious book. I'm sorry, I won't turn this into a podcast about numbers. So, uh, but, but so this idea. that you have, um, you have this, this worship in the morning worship in the evening, it sets a rhythm morning evening is this, is this rhythm that God gives and it helps you to mark [00:54:00] off the day and to know that the day at the beginning and the end is God's day.

Um, and, and then every, and then the Lord's day is itself sort of a recognition that he owns all the days, but it's the day for worship. So those are the rhythms. So people don't work in my companies, uh, on the Lord's day, except for if they're like necessity, like, like somebody is going to die or there's like, you know, there's some sort of like dramatic need to do something to hurt the destruction of property or life.

Um, something like that. Or mercy. If we were in something to care for somebody, uh, where there was a need to, to bless somebody, uh, to take away their present, uh, suffering, right? So they're for their immediate relief. So they might make better use of the Lord's day themselves. That's the kind of thing we're talking about.

So just avoid it. So people are not allowed to answer email, look at the email, whatever on those days. So that idea, helping people to understand that's the priority of the company is for the glory of God. And we make money so that we can honor God with money. As opposed to money being the God or the client being the God or the customer being the God, right?

That's the God of the system is God and And so then you [00:55:00] go to the Ten Commandments We're gonna apply the Ten Commandments and and the Lord's Day is so countercultural and this idea Of the Lord's Day being emphasis in a company level helps to go. This is serious. So like, you know Our marketing team doesn't spend advertising dollars on on the Lord's Day.

And sometimes there's like a glitch or something where people spend ad dollars accidentally. They forget to turn something off and they have to, like, tell me about it. I'm like, I need to know if this ever happens and you when you tell me this happens to tell me how you're gonna avoid it happening in the future.

So it creates

Nathan Spearing: even machines work on your behalf on the Sabbath, huh?

david reece: So we keep, we don't turn the website off or whatever, but we're also going, we're not going to, we don't want to spend money to draw other people's attention. to us, to get do commerce with us. So,

Nathan Spearing: that's a good

david reece: so some of the businesses I have, we send out emails sometimes. And I'll go, well, can we send out an email like, you know, an Armored Republic.

I think we sent out an email one time on the, on the Sixth Commandment. I was like, I'm fine with that. Let's send out a video on the Sixth Commandment on that. Um, I think for, uh, another company I've [00:56:00] got, you know, we, we have a regular. It's a media company. We send out emails that have kind of editorials that are biblical, basically applications of things.

And I go, that's fine. So this idea of trying to figure out how do you do that? So you set the tone by things that. You need, you need markers. And so you've got time markers and you, and for your own life, this is that priority and, and so you go, I'm going to make this happen. And, and those big things.

And so inside of that, the other stuff, like you go, okay, I got to find time to physically train. I've got to find time to, to disciple, man, I've got time to do my own work. The hardest thing for me to find right now is focused time to work by myself without interruption, right? To get 90 minutes to prepare a sermon or, or to get, you know, a couple of hours to do some strategic planning or to like figure out a comp structure for some organization that we're organizing or, or whatever, right?

This like focused time to work is really hard to find. And so, you have to delegate in order to have the decision throughput reduced, right? If your mind, if your command is the exercise of [00:57:00] decision making, the number of decisions you make is the kind of the throughput you've got there. And to make a good decision, you have to have information, you have to understand, you know, like, what are the risks, what are the things there?

So that, that creates the need to delegate, because delegation is essentially passing to other people the throughput of decision making. And if they're going to make decisions, they have to have authority. And so, so this creates the motive when you realize the finitude of time and your own ability to have the throughput of decision making and then the communication of it.

I mean, it, how many times have you had a time where you gave an order you thought was clear and somebody else messed it up because they understood you very differently than what you thought?

Nathan Spearing: all the time.

david reece: So, so the time that you have to spend in communicating well is really difficult, right? like, you have to think about it, you have to communicate it, And you've got to follow up on it, you've got to track it, and you've got to hold people accountable for it. And that's all very time consuming. So that creates a motive to have to delegate.

And so, when you do this delegation, you, when [00:58:00] you make people that have authority, okay, there's some key hierarchical things that you have to understand in order to pass along authority well. Um, First of all, God has created four authority spheres. There's the individual, the household, the church, and the state.

The individual and the household are designed to be extremely consolidated and efficient in their decision making structure. The church and the state are designed to be extremely deconsolidated, decentralized, and inefficient in their decision making processes. They are designed as public authorities with less natural affection and connection to individuals to have to go through public process and deliberation and the work of councils.

And so, the, the, the church and the state are meant to be that. Dominion principally occurs by work of the individual and the household. And so, the individual is a, you know, monarchy where the one person is making choices about what to do with themselves. The household, you have a [00:59:00] monarchy, you have a king, you have a head of house, a patriarch who's making decisions.

And so, one thing is, you do not want to turn a business into a republic. In the sense that, you know, we have an armored republic, but armored republic is about armoring the republic. Helping other people. The business itself is actually run by a person who's a property owner. so, you don't want to confuse the public and the private.

Public institutions are designed to be republics under the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the household, although there's a body of law under the kingship of Christ, is supposed to be an efficient decision making system where there is sort of a, a person who calls the shots under the law of God and they're making decisions about what to do and they can distribute out stewardship responsibility.

So you need to make things efficient and you need to give people particular clear jurisdictions where they have authority and responsibility there. So you want to make a clear [01:00:00] decider of, of things and to know where the resource is. So a lot of guys go, okay, well, this is great and everything. And if I had a like big organization, I'd love to do that.

Well, I'll tell you what, have you given your wife a budget? you given your wife time where she can complete projects on her own? Have you given her clear objectives? You can give her particular things you should order her to do particular work. And you should give her deadlines. And you might tell her how to specifically do some things that you want her to do.

But on other things you need to give her resources and goals and a broader jurisdiction and the ability to make decisions on her own so that she gains management accountability and responsibility so you can do that. And what you'll find is that helps her to become the Proverbs 31 woman who's able to make profits.

My wife early on when we were early in marriage we didn't have much money um, She would take money that was in her budget and she would do things like, you know, back when Craigslist was a thing, I don't know that a thing anymore. I don't even know. So she would, she would, she would buy a furniture on there that was used to fix it up a little bit and resell it.[01:01:00]

And so she was able to take, you know, a hundred bucks and turn it into a thousand bucks through a couple of exchanges of selling stuff, right? And so she was able to take small amounts of money and make them into larger amounts of money in a way that really helped us. Um, and, and, and she was also able to, you know, spend efficiently.

And she knew that if she could, if she could, you know, if she goes, okay, we need a new piece of furniture in here because this thing's falling apart. If she could figure out how to do that cheaply, she could use that money for something else. Okay. It's a sort of profit incentive for her knowing she has jurisdictions.

And if she can put in work and time over here, it frees up dollars that she can use to solve problems over there. so you want to do that with a wife. You want to do that with, with managers where you go, here are resources, here are objectives, and you want to have rewards. And so this idea of clarity about that, And you go, here's, here's the time limitations on stuff.

So, on any project that you assign to be done, you need to define [01:02:00] the goal of the project, you need to define the resourcing, and you need to define an absolute timeline maximum that things can occur. so that occurs, whether it's for yourself, whether it's for your wife, whether it's for kids or, uh, or, or employees.

And so we talk about the four institutions. Well, inside of the household, right? There's this triple office that the man has. He's the master of the house. He's the husband of the wife, and he's the father of the children. And as master of the house, it's his job to make sure everybody's profitably employed.

The wife is not entirely, you know, without office as though she's just a servant in the house. She's the queen of the house, which means she's mistress over the estate. She is wife and has special rights over you. And she is also mother and she has special authority over the children. She's not just a, you know, a, a, a tutor or a governess, right?

She has legitimate authority given to her directly by God. And so acknowledging her jurisdiction as your helper, So, as your helpmate who has this role as queen is important. And so you're realizing you, you share together the duty of seeing the state [01:03:00] managed well in terms of the property and people's time, and you have special rights and responsibilities with each other.

And, you know, the husband obviously the head of the wife, and then you both have management authority and responsibility of the children. So, so seeing those things clearly. When you engage with servants, servants are a part of the estate in terms of your, they're related to the household. And so this idea that you need to manage them well relates to the household authority.

And so it continues into this sort of centralized model. And when you're granting things out, again, this idea that there's a clear person who's responsible to make stuff happen, who has executive authority to execute a plan and to spend resources in accordance with that plan. And so the other thing is then as an individual inside of that, everybody needs to seek to be like the Lord Jesus Christ, a prophet, priest, king.

So as a prophet, their goal is to teach truth and the correct error. And that's how you build culture and you set doctrine that's shared. You as a priest are seeking to set boundaries and you're seeking to keep people out who shouldn't be there and to let people in who should be there. And your goal is to pray blessing down on all the people under your authority.

And then as a king, your goal is to provide the resources necessary to get the objective done and to [01:04:00] protect from distraction and to protect from other harms and risks. And so that provider protector element of the king, a big part of it is you make sure to not overload your people, but to make sure that they have the resourcing, including the time that they can allocate to actually getting something done.

So those are major things that I would say. These are major principles for discipleship in the context of the household that I want men to understand as they seek to run their own businesses and seek to run their own households, building out an estate in that context. And I think if we have those categories rightly set, it helps us to be able to make decisions well and wisely, and to think about the proper places to give care, including realizing that our employees are immortal souls, so we're profits towards them.

But the last thing there is that use the 10 commandments to understand the nature of reality and you have to apply the 10 commandments in the business. So there's a ton to unpack there.

Concluding Thoughts on Leadership and Personal Development
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david reece: I know we're, we're coming close to the end of our time here, but I just. Those are some of the big headers that I'd want to encourage people to study those things, the four covenant institutions, the idea of the master of the home, the husband and the father, to think about being a prophet, priest, king, and to think about the 10 commandments as the way of, these are kind of the marching [01:05:00] orders to apply these things.

There's tons of practical applications of those in the larger catechism in terms of how it breaks out the 10 commandments. So there's a fire hose for you.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah. And I guess one, one way to maybe close out the conversation is, would you say. You Um, you have, uh, in addition to the word of God, you've mentioned, you mentioned a couple other books, you mentioned the larger catechism. Would you, would you say, all right, you know, there's a guy that's just like, okay, I'm not ready for this at the end.

I feel like, you know, I'm failing on, you know, seven different things and I've got so much work to do and they're ready to study and to get better. What would be as some additional kind of homework and resources, maybe three to five books or, or a particular. Content that you like to consume on a regular basis from certain people that will help kind of become the continuation of this conversation.

david reece: So I think you cut out right at the end there. So I think you said, what are three to five resources that I think are helpful in these areas for the guy that might feel like he's kind of failing here [01:06:00] that he could focus in on?

Nathan Spearing: Yes.

david reece: Okay, um, So first of all, I think the book of Proverbs is key. I think you need to be reading the book of Proverbs. The structure of it is, is really, is really key. The first nine chapters are, are for the young man to develop. And then you get to, uh, the, the next big chunk, the Proverbs of Solomon is sort of, how do you learn to function in the world as a man who's on his own?

And then the last sections after you get through about chapter 22 are sort of increasing from like middle management up to being a king. Okay. And so this, this book is the book that trains you for skilled application of wisdom. Um, I would also say, um, that I think that the larger catechism, especially the section on the law is really going to help a person to think about where the rubber meets the road and it's going to be studying the law.

Uh, but I think the early part of the larger catechism, uh, questions one through 90 is going to focus on, for example, the gospel. And the more you study the law, the law is a, uh, a [01:07:00] mirror that shows you your need of a savior. So it's also a lamp unto your feet. And so the more that you study the law, the more you're going to see your need of the gospel.

And so you're going to find as you study the law, you despair, right? If you listen, we talk about the law of law, like how to do things better, how to be better. And, and so people listening to this might start to despair. The Lord Jesus Christ has paid for all of your sins. And he gives you strength to be able to apply his law.

And so I would want to encourage people to study the gospel very carefully as well, because it will give them strength to seek to apply the law in greater detail. Um, and so we think about the, the, the book of Proverbs, the larger catechism. Um, I, I would also say that as you're seeking to engage, um, in, in sort of leading well, um, that the, the Puritans have some fantastic stuff.

There's a little book by William Perkins, um, that is called, um, you know, Christian Economy or in other words, how to, how to order the [01:08:00] home Well as a Christian. So William Perkins. Christian economy is this great little booklet on the ordering of the home and thinking about those three offices I talked about in terms of the the master husband and father and it thinks well about those roles And so I would really encourage that And so those would be kind of the three resources.

I would point to in terms of we have a scripture text of Proverbs We have the work of the church in terms of the historical Councils, the church pulling together, the larger catechism. And I think as a particular teacher who really competently taught about the administration of the home, William Perkins was an excellent person to look to there.

And so I think that those things are, you can find all of those available for free online, uh, if you're looking for them, but they're also available in print.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah. And I just go ahead and I'll link all this stuff and get with, uh, your media team afterwards, make sure it's in the show notes, but if people are wanting to engage more and consume more of kind of what you're doing, um, where, where did they go?

david reece: Yeah, people can, uh, can find me [01:09:00] at, uh, puritanphx. com. That's the church that's for Puritan Reform Church. Um, also you can, uh, see what I'm doing on, on Twitter. I like to say all sorts of, you know, barn burning things there. Uh, it's at real David Reese on, on Twitter. I guess X now. So I'll someday I'll get used to saying X.

So at real David Reese. Um, and, and so those are, that's there. Um, I'm going to be. I'll be putting, uh, something up there soon with a, with a link tree because, you know, things like the, the fund I mentioned earlier that I'm raising and also the, uh, the other activities people are kind of wanting to be able to see where stuff is happening there.

So, so Twitter is where I'll be putting a link eventually to, uh, kind of a centralized, a thing that shows where they can find more information.

Nathan Spearing: Awesome. Well, I know you're super busy. I'm going to, I really appreciate your time here and, and, um, hoping the Lord multiplies that in households all over and, uh, continues to bless your household as well.

david reece: Thank you. I appreciate the honor of being on the show and it was [01:10:00] good to see you again.