How Christian Dads Can "Build An Ark" To Prep For Emergencies (Even While They Trust In God)
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[00:00:00] what is supposed to save your family from, major events that are likely to hit like waves... they might only come every 100 years, but they're gonna come.
And the person who's designed to save that family is the father,
Hey friends, welcome to the 1000 Houses podcast, where we encourage and equip households to make disciples in and through the home. Every episode, you'll hear interviews, teachings, and conversations around what it looks like to turn your home into a hub for mission, community, and discipleship. If you'd like to learn more about what entering into a season of coaching might look like for you and your household, visit 1kh.
org for more info. Let's jump into today's [00:01:00] episode.
everybody. Welcome back to the 1000 houses podcast. April and I are doing our last, morning in Langley, Washington. So gorgeous spot. This little Airbnb wanted to bring you guys one more episode. We're going to do something a little different. So I usually do sections of my book on my podcast, but I'm going to go ahead and release this one on the 1000 houses podcast.
This one's called every father, a prepper. And, uh, it's a section of my, uh, the book I'm working on called the ruling household. This is in chapter three. So I'm working through, uh, Genesis, um, from the perspective of a ruling household.
And so I wanted to, uh, yeah, dive into Noah and some, some things we can learn from that multi generational family line. So, yeah, excited to do this, but how are you doing today, April? Good. I'm doing good. Just been soaking in all the beauty around us and the views of the ocean and getting to visit our girls at camp.
So, it's [00:02:00] been a really, really nice time. Yeah, man. Yeah, we loved it. We're heading up to Orcas Island, uh, today. So, we're kind of island hopping, uh, this week. It's one of the fun things about the Northwest. Yes. Epic map of all the islands, uh, in the, in the Santa Juans and the Puget sound. I'm going to get one of these.
Awesome. All right. So I'm going to read this and then April, get your, your, your take, and then we'll discuss this a little bit before, um, yeah, uh, this goes out. So this is called every father, a prepper, um, the second part of chapter three in the book, they're a ruling household. So this is from Genesis six.
It says, and God said to Noah, make yourself an ark. And I'm sure most of you have met that special kind of guy who's always preparing for the apocalypse. That's the guy we laugh at when things are good and run to for help when things are bad. But one of the dynamics of building a multi generational family is that in some generation, probably not too far in the future, Things are going to get bad.[00:03:00]
So how does a family prepare for the chaos that hits society every hundred or so years? Be like Noah and build an arc with your adult sons. Fathers are built to think about contingency plans, contingencies when electricity goes, contingencies when there's a fire, contingencies when the food supply is threatened, contingencies or pandemics, depressions and wars.
Unfortunately, too many of us choose to trust the government. For every contingency, which works great, until it doesn't. The Jewish people have long memories and understand that disasters come in waves. That's why the Talmud, a series of books that make up the Jewish oral law, has this passage.
Rebbe Yitzhak said, A person should always divide his money into three. One third in land, one third in commerce. And one third at [00:04:00] hand, this approach often referred to as Talmudic investing creates stability for the family, because you have a third in business to take advantage of economic boom times a third in real estate to survive through economic bus and a third in something easy to transport for when things get so bad, you have to get out of dodge, but I have four little kids and we're living paycheck to paycheck.
And now you're saying I need to build an arc. No friend, if that's your situation, you are not in the season for this kind of arc building. We have to start with the issues most likely to cause family problems. Your pathway to arc building may be saving a few months of salary into an emergency fund. Next, it might be building a business to allow you to make money in a way not always tied to your time.
Then you may buy your first investment property. But when you're beginning to experience a greater degree of financial independence, don't lead your family into an ever changing future. [00:05:00] Increasing standard of living. Build an ark for a coming flood. So that's kind of the perspective from that Genesis 6 command given to Noah that I wanted to share.
And then here's a tool, how to build an ark. We live in an unstable world. Between the chaos of the world and the vulnerability of the family, God has placed a father. Seasons of instability are often blessings that help us see what really matters. But if we don't properly prepare these seasons of blessings, can be times of real danger.
I had this picture of looking down at a neighborhood of about 100 houses. Catastrophic events takes down the power grid. But a few seconds later, you see the lights flickering back in half a dozen houses. Those houses are arcs. Each one of these families is fathered by a man. Who has prepared to make his home self sufficient in times of chaos to protect his family and to bless his community.
Arc building is not a command that we [00:06:00] must follow, but Paul describes it as a goal each of us ought to have. He lists some goals in 1 Thessalonians 4, uh, 11 and 12. Make it your goal, and the final one is, quote, that you will not need to depend on others. This goal of physical self sufficiency is not for the purpose of being isolated.
But he makes clear it's to allow us to be maximally generous. By the way, that word self sufficiency, when I wrote this essay, originally people were kind of pushing back. Hey, shouldn't we just call this financial independence? That one of the problems is we don't actually have a really good word for this.
Um, self sufficiency, it sounds like not exactly biblical and I understand like we're always needed to be dependent on God, uh, dependent on, on his body, dependent on one another, that interdependence is better. Um, but, um, if you just say financial independence, that doesn't actually talk about things like electricity, independence, uh, water, independence, food, independence, and really what Paul is [00:07:00] describing here is, is all of those things, right?
So you will not have to be dependent on anyone. So I apologize for using the word self sufficiency. I don't like that phrase, but I don't think there's really a great phrase. Oh, if you guys have one or can think of one, please share it with me. But, um, that's kind of. The one, the one that most clearly describes what I'm, what I think we're talking about here.
So the family who is struggling to survive through. Continual financial dependence will be unable to be maximally generous with those in need. So building an arc begins by simply making it a long term goal. Our family has has a series of steps toward preparing our arc. And here are the steps. Number one, you start by creating an emergency fund of 2 to 3 months of living expenses.
So Dave Ramsey has talked about that. Make sure that You're not just living paycheck to paycheck. So once you have that number to have a month's worth of emergency food in the house, so the food supply in most places, um, is about a three day supply before it completely runs out. And so you don't want to [00:08:00] be in that much dependence.
Um, on the food supply in your area, if something were to happen, number three, get out of any debt, not secured by assets. So one of the things that any kind of debt that's not, that's unsecured debt, like credit cards or whatever, those things, um, are oftentimes things that are going to kind of take, take the arc down.
Um, um, so we want to be careful of those things for stop living paycheck to paycheck by making most of our money through cash flowing assets. So part of what we want to be moving towards. Is to have a way of, of making income from the assets themselves. When your money makes money, um, that creates a lot more stability for a family, but have a secondary heat source for the house.
So like a wood burning stove or like how, what would you do in a winter? And of course, if you live in a hot area, that's not a big deal, but. Many of us live in places where this could be a serious issue. Um, number six, install a secondary electricity source. Um, and this is one of the things that [00:09:00] I love that technology.
So it is improving that this is becoming easier and easier to do. So generators, whole house batteries, you know, obviously using things like solar. Um, so the combination between like finding an, another electricity source like solar and then storing it in batteries, um, like whole house batteries, uh, is something that is getting cheaper and more popular.
Uh, in areas. So and then I would say number seven install a secondary water source. So one of these that we did was we Put a cistern, a 3000 gallon cistern that is fed by our gutters. So, um, you don't have to be totally dependent on city water, even if you're living in a city number eight, have a means of food production, um, that is under your control.
So this could be like having chickens, having a garden canning. One of the things we got really into is indoor micro farming, which we can get into, but we've got all, we've got a whole setup for that. You can, you can basically [00:10:00] grow about, you know, 10 of produce a week against one wall of your house. Um, it's crazy.
So we live in a great day and age, uh, to create a house, turn a house into an arc. Um, and again, this is a fun project. So, um, last thing our family hasn't felt led to go full homestead for ministry reasons, we live in a central location in our city and our street adjoins an urban area. So We've had to get creative about how to move our family toward increasing physical self sufficiency.
As a father, I love going to bed at night, knowing that my family is sleeping in a kind of arc that can withstand some tough storms and rocky times ahead. We don't live in fear. We seek first the kingdom of God, and we follow Paul's command to move towards a lifestyle of self sufficiency plus generosity.
And again, I know that word is kind of weird for some people, but, um, you know, you guys hear my heart when I'm saying, yeah, April, uh, anything in that that's, uh, sticking out to you. Well, I think, um, Jesus said to us, I think it was [00:11:00] in Matthew where he says, like, no, the times in which you live, am I saying that right?
Is that in Matthew where we're supposed to be paying attention to, we don't know exactly when he's coming. We don't know exactly when things are going to turn weird, but, um, that we should be aware somehow. And so I think, um, as believers, we walk this fine line of, um, Pushing forward and what today has for us and then figuring out how to be preparing for the future and what that looks like and what our responsibility is and how much we should take on and all that, all the stuff that you're saying.
And so I feel like there is the tension, the tension does exist, but I think that this is an encouragement to people who maybe have been resisting that because it, it does, it could sound a little weird. We all know that movies where. There's these crazy people that have like bunkers and you know, they've like, you know, [00:12:00] they're way out there and they're isolated and have weapons and we could think that they're weird or something like that.
So I think that there's, um, some legitimacy to this and I, it's, I'm having flashbacks of Y2K for those of you who are old enough to remember that, that when the year 2000 came, there was this big scare leading up to it. Um, in the late nineties that the computer systems when they have been built wouldn't be able to handle the year changing from 19.
And so, um, there was this whole, this all like, we don't know what's going to happen. It could crash all these systems. We should all be ready. We don't know what's going to happen to commerce and food production and all this stuff. And so that was my first, I was a young adult then. And so that was like the first awareness of, oh, wow, we should be somewhat aware of these things and, and as prepared as we can for these things.
And so, um, [00:13:00] It makes me think of that. And then I feel like, so I think that's kind of when you and I started doing a little bit of more intentional preparation, but I feel like through our whole entire marriage, 26 years, we have been You know, dabbling with different things that would make it so that we feel more prepared for this kind of thing.
And then I think we all experienced it in 2020 with, um, the COVID situation and how just absolutely shocking when you look back, it's like, did that really happen worldwide? Um, Breaks in the supply chain, like running out of toilet paper of all things, like the bizarre situation that we all just went through and had health risks, um, all those things, the, the, the question marks of who to trust on the news and like, what was the government doing in the vaccine and all these things that were just so hard to figure out.
But, um, figuring out that I feel like that was almost like a [00:14:00] practice for. Sure. Perhaps what's to come or maybe just like a taste of like what this could look like and it was a good test to see like, okay, where, where are gaps. What hadn't we thought of that kind of thing. So, yeah, yeah. Oh, I think that's, you know, so confusing.
I think for a lot of Christians is, I think that there's, there's sort of a, um, I would say it's similar to The short sighted one generation strategy that so many Christians have. Um, uh, they also, I think, tend to have a hyper dependence strategy, you know, on, on all the things that, that happen in society.
Like there, there, I just see Christians being like in debt or living paycheck to paycheck and feeling like there's almost, because there's, there's like, I don't want to be wealthy. I don't want to, I don't want to have extra resources. And so a lot of those, those ideas that I think that poverty mindset that has really infected, um, our faith, uh, [00:15:00] from, I would say sort of a missionary perspective on everyone, even fathers of lots of young children, our grandfathers who are responsible for, you know, caring for multi generations, like we don't want to have, um, there's, there's not a value like you have in the Jewish community of like, no, we need to be really thinking about resources, contingency plans.
Um, and so I think that, you know, the tension that a lot of Christians feel between, you know, versus like 1st Thessalonians 4, which is telling us make your goal to be, um, essentially self sufficient as a household, which was everyone understood that and Paul is advocating for that, you know, we feel a tension between that and what Jesus is saying and, you know, places like Matthew 6 where he says, You know, seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Um, and it's interesting. Recently, uh, Jordan Peterson's been quoting that verse a lot, and he's been sharing an interpretation, which is, if you are seeking first the kingdom of God, everything is going to be provided for you. And so it's really [00:16:00] about proper orientation, as opposed to a strategy, uh, for, for like a father's.
Provision. Um, because you could say anyone is going to college is not is thinking about tomorrow because the reverse ends with and don't think about tomorrow to worry about tomorrow really is what it's he's saying. It's really it's really a kind of relationship with God that is you're so obsessed with the kingdom of God that you are able to be in this mindset of total trust.
Um, I think that's what Jesus is describing there, but I think that there is an extreme interpretation which tells fathers to don't plan anything. Um, and I think that, I think that, you know, similar to the joke, you know, where God is, someone's crying out to God and saying, you know, um, is stranded or whatever, and all these different boats or people come by to rescue him.
He just says, I'm waiting for God and then he gets to heaven and God says, I try to save you three times. Um, when you look at like what is supposed to, what is supposed to save your family from, um, major events that are, that [00:17:00] are likely to, to hit, um, like waves, like I said, they might only come every 100 years, but they're gonna, they're gonna come.
Um, and the thing that really is designed it that the person who's designed to save that family is the father, um, and the idea of getting to build an arc with your adult sons to, like, getting to have conversations with your sons or sons in law as you're getting older, because I do think that a lot of this arc building is going to really come into play in a season.
where you're a little bit older. Um, it's very difficult to do this when you have little kids and you're just like, I'm just trying to like figure out how to, how to survive. Um, and so if, you know, many of, many people listening to this, who might be in their early, early twenties or early thirties, if a apocalyptic event were to happen, they would probably move in with their parents in a lot of cases.
Um, because their parents have had way more time. To pay off a house or, you know, create some kind of stability. And I think that's totally great. Like that's exactly what, what I feel responsible to do. [00:18:00] Like if something were to happen, I would expect our kids and grandkids would, you know, but that means that we have to be preparing ourselves for, but those events, had a time of resources to start to do that.
We saw that during COVID, right, where people kind of collapsed back into their, um, like young, young adults or young families kind of collapsed back into their parents realm of things. And, of course, the government had a word for it with everyone being in their bubble or something like that, but just the idea that there is a place where you can fall back, creating that for your kids for your generations.
Um, it's much more, it takes us back to the days when survival was kind of like a daily thing, when, of course, the more of you there were, the safer, the better, the more men to defend or whatever, you know, back then, it's, it does make more sense of having a place [00:19:00] where the generations below you can kind of fall back into the safety of numbers and togetherness and, you know, Yeah.
And if you're, if you're listening to this and you don't have parents that are in that situation, they haven't necessarily provided or can't really help you in a case of a real kind of emergency. What we're describing here is, you know, take, take this small steps and just move that direction over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years.
Um, see that as a goal. That's why I love Paul's word. For making your goal to become self sufficient, right? Um, so that you can be maximally generous. This is an actual kingdom value. It's not, this is not anti kingdom. Um, and so, uh, being maximally dependent on the government is going to make you, um, not only just another, um, person at risk who the government somehow or, or other organizations have to, or other families have to somehow [00:20:00] provide for, um, but it also puts your, your whole family both up and downstream that might need you to be.
You know, a a real rock in the midst of a turbulent storm. Um, it makes you vulnerable and just another dependent person. Um, and so I think I think this obsession or assumption of dependence is really such a problem. Um, and I think it creates this is actually I think it subtly creates one generational families.
You know, part of what this whole thing is about, we're trying to encourage you guys, we're writing this book is look, um, if God really has designed the family to be fruitful, multiply, fill subdue and rule, then every time you think about, um, if you're not really taking seriously the kinds of Catastrophes that are going to that come in these waves, you say to yourself, like you're saying April about COVID, I don't, I'll never need my family.
I don't need a multi generational family. I can just, we can all spread [00:21:00] out. Our kids can all, you know, we can have the nest version of family. The kids will be everywhere around the country or the world. Um, and we're, we're completely safe. And the reason why, historically, that was incredibly unusual wasn't because of a vision of multigenerational family that they had to create, it was because of all of the dangers that they were preparing for.
Um, and so the assumption of stability is what has been probably the most underrated, um, the under, most underrated variable that has destroyed the multigenerational family. Yes. When you think you, you can go anywhere and survive anywhere. then you're, then you start to think about yourself as an individual primarily.
But when things start to happen, like when COVID hit, all of a sudden people are like, do I have a tribe? And then there were people that literally were left completely alone. They hadn't done anything to, to form deep, uh, bonds with other, Uh friends or family and because of that they were sitting there they were sitting in a bubble of one [00:22:00] Um, which is terribly sad.
Um, but predict but preventable, right? Um in terms of like a structure like we we don't want to be in a bubble of one Like we don't want to be in a bubble of like two parents and four little kids You want to be in a tribe you want to be in a clan you want to be in a multi generational family Um in a time like that and that's why I think sometimes god lets You Major waves of chaos hit.
Because these are actually huge blessings, um, because they wake us up to why God designed things this way. Um, but if we're not embracing God's design, if we're embracing some other design, if we're saying, Oh, I, I love hyper individualism, um, and I'm going to both experience that myself and then train my children in that, um, then you're not going to experience all the goodness that God has.
And I do think the generosity thing has two edges to it. We're talking about the catastrophic edge. But there's a, there's a, there's a another edge on the other side, which is abundance [00:23:00] creates the opportunity to maximally give hospitality to people to be maximally generous and Paul's constantly referring to, to this side of things is really, there's a spectrum on one side of the spectrum.
You're not dependent. You're self sufficient in such a way that you can, um, protect the vulnerable members of your family from catastrophe. And then that also allows you to be maximally generous because now you can show hospitality to much larger groups of people. Um, and you can, you can create a real kingdom experience.
These things are related. Um, they're all part of the spectrum. Yeah. I wanted to address the generosity piece of this, because if you think, if you play it out to like, you know, a. apocalyptic type event. Um, there's so much fear in that, in the what ifs about that. And I feel like, um, fear could prevent you from being generous in a time when, you know, your neighbor needs an extra blanket or an extra can of food [00:24:00] or all of a sudden a group shows up at your door and you, you know, they're obviously in need of many things.
Do you let them in? Do you, you know, all of those things you have to kind of think through. Um, and I, I do feel like generosity takes a couple of things. It takes some preparation like for those moments so that you have extra, so that you have more, so you have the just in case, um, without going too overboard in your daily life, but you also want to, um, not be living in fear and still trusting the Lord.
And so I think that those things aren't always super easy to navigate. They can be gray. They're not black and white. Sometimes. And I can imagine in like a dire situation that where that's the case that could be, um, maybe hard to navigate of an isolated situation, but just having this. Heart towards generosity and practicing now while things are not scary and not, um, you know, not [00:25:00] risky to be able to practice hospitality, practice generosity, um, kind of prepares your way of thinking so that when it comes time for like when the rubber meets the road, it's like, okay, here we go.
Are we going to be generous in the situation or we're going to be fearful and hold back? Because we have to take care of our, um, you know, so I think that that's something as believers, we really have to wrestle with almost ahead of time and get some reps in so that we understand God's heart behind the phrase or the word generosity.
That's right. Yeah. So I encourage you guys, um, to think about, you know, these steps, like how, how, how to plan. And I think the right way to sort of balance the like obsessive prepper, you know, urgency, Oh my gosh, you know, the world's going to go to hell and I'm, I'm terribly vulnerable and I'm responsible versus the lackadaisical attitude of, Oh, who cares?
This will never happen. God will always protect us. The father as a father, I don't, I don't have any, you know, extra [00:26:00] responsibility to be preparing for contingencies like if that's the spectrum, I think kind of a balanced position that I really like is every year, do one thing a year to kind of get your family closer to this goal that Paul is describing in first S line is for that.
I've calling self sufficiency. Um, you know, again, I hate that, that phrase, but you guys know what I mean. Like, is the goal this year, well, let's just have, you know, an emergency fund. Let's next year, let's, let's like look at food, like, uh, like we, we don't want to be, you know, a food security problem to, to happen in our family.
Like, let's, let's stockpile some, some basic foods, even things like things that you constantly go through. Like if you go through peanut butter, um, you go through pasta. Like what I like to do is take the most. The things that we go through right now, um, that are kind of on the non perishable or the, or they don't perish as easy and, you know, have a year supply or six months supply of that stuff and just kind of like put it in the back and then you're kind of, you're grabbing from the front.
[00:27:00] Yeah, you're just rotating on it. So if something were to happen, it's not like, you don't, you don't even, you don't necessarily have to have like stockpiles of, you know, freeze dried, you know, food. You could just have. Lots of the food that you already eat that you're just cycling through. Um, and so it's actually not actually costing you more money.
You're just spending a little bit more in advance. Um, so that might be a goal this year. Let's let's create kind of a place in our basement where we have this kind of rotating food supply. Um, you know, and then, like I said, if then you can, you can think about heat, you can think about water, you can think about first aid, you can think about, you know, defense, you can think about all these things.
Um, as an annual project that you're like, and then you involve your kids in it. You talk about it, you talk about this value, you talk about the school. We're slowly moving this direction. Um, I like that as a, you know, now, if you see a giant, you know, problem on the horizon, you could be more aggressive. Um, but I don't, you know, it's difficult to know.
There's always somebody who's out there. Doing the chicken little thing. Um, but, but someday they're gonna be right. [00:28:00] So you want to be, you know, carefully thinking about that. So those, those are some of our thoughts. I dunno if you have any last thoughts about this April, but yeah, no, I don't think so.
That's it. Okay. Awesome guys. Well, good luck with, uh, building an arc, um, and, and being like Noah and learning actual practical lessons from these historical times that we are, um, that, that are described for us. You know, in this massive sort of symbolic archetypal way that we have in the story of Noah, I think that, I think that there's sort of micro ways that we can, you know, we could begin to learn from Noah, learn from these stories, and this is one of them that to me has been really inspirational.
So thank you guys all for listening today. Thanks April.
Well friends, thanks for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to learn more about a thousand houses or discover what a season of coaching might look like for you [00:29:00] and your household, visit one k h. org. We'll see you for the next episode.
