Bad School/Good School?

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network.

at TheSteveNobleShow.com. And now, here's your host, Steve Noble. Okay, nanny, nanny, boo-boo. I'm gonna make a bet. All right, here's the bet.

Here's the bet for all of you, parents and grandparents, if you have, especially if you have sons or grandsons. Okay, here's my bet to you, whether they're in fourth grade or sixth grade or twelfth grade, any grade. Let's just go kindergarten through twelfth grade. Let's throw college in there.

Let's throw master's degrees in there, and let's throw PhD programs in there. Okay, so pretty much every student in America between kindergarten and 24 years of age. Here's my bet. So for most schools, and you've seen this, people are moving their kids back into college dorms, maybe for the first time, and kids are going back to school.

It's the back to school season. Here's my bet. I'll bet you $5,000 that when your kid goes back to school above the door or inside in the front entry, somewhere in the building, you're going to read something that sounds like this. I will always conduct myself as a gentleman, live pure, speak true, right wrong, and follow the game. Okay, you take a picture of that, and I'm not going to give you 5,000 bucks, but I might give you, I might donate $500 to your favorite Christian charity.

Okay, if you have something like that that exists inside of your school for your son or grandson, you give me a, give me a jingle, send me an email, steve at thestevenobleshow.com. You're going to have to prove it, but with my buddy today, Alan Hahn, who's back in the house from Iron Academy, ironacademy.org, you would take that bet, wouldn't you? I would take that bet. Because that's just the deal. That's the honor code.

That's just, that's just in the blood at Iron Academy. So it's good to see you. How are you? Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Welcome back. How do your old bones handle a week at a camp with a bunch of young men sleeping on bunks and doing all that fun stuff?

That was last week at Crucible Camp, which I mentioned on Friday, everybody, if you were a part of the show on Friday, I talked about it a little bit because I had the pleasure of playing a small role, but how's that go for you? It hurts a little bit more every year. Sleeping is a little more difficult.

Recovering from playing games with the guys is more difficult. I was scared to death because one of your co-teachers, Bruce Mack, who's just one of the most incredible men of God I've ever known, literally, I was sleeping pretty well, actually, Thursday night into Friday morning. And I heard him get up at oh dark 30. It was very dark.

So I'm like, well, I'm not going to try to be as godly as Bruce right now. And so I went back to sleep. But then at some point when I woke up, there was nobody in there. I was the only one. Then I thought, oh my goodness, is it like 830 or something? And nobody told me.

And then I walked outside of a 715 and there were guys around. But it was great to be there. So for people that aren't familiar, Alan, let's give them a little Iron Academy 101, the history and what it's all about, what God's been doing there. And then we're going to talk about Crucible Camp and what happened last week. Because this again, especially if you're here in the Triangle area, I had a conversation with somebody else over the weekend, who said there should be an Iron Academy in every city in America. And I said, I agree with you. And you'll know why if you haven't heard the Iron Academy story or aren't aware of what God's been doing there for the past 10 years. You're about to find out. But let's do the history. And then we'll talk about the nuts and bolts, talk about Crucible Camp, we'll talk about a bunch of stuff.

Okay. So believe it or not, we are starting our 10th year. That's crazy.

Right now. Yeah, it is crazy. And yeah, so the bones were much better 10 years ago. So we started it primarily for one reason. I looked around as I was working in Christian education and realized very quickly we were graduating boys from high schools. And so was everybody else. That's not something peculiar to this Christian school. It's everywhere.

I thought about it further. All our colleges are graduating boys. It's up to the young man at that point. But they're pretty much boys when they come out. But worse yet, most of our women are marrying boys, hoping they will become men.

My wife, unfortunately, had to do the exact same thing. But none of that should be true. So that's the real impetus behind Iron Academy. The second thing is, our classrooms are not set up for young men.

They are set up for automatons, people who can sit there, pay attention, not get in trouble, not have to fidget, move to the next class, pay attention. That's okay for young girls. Generally speaking, it is.

Yes. And so what we're seeing is now the percentages, over 60 percent of our valedictorians are females. Over 60 percent now of our post or our postgraduate students in colleges are females. And so we're seeing an educational environment that is increasingly hostile to how boys are made, created. It's not just problem boys. The educational system is not well suited for guys. Yeah, in general.

And by the way, we know the difference. Guys and girls, we don't have any gender issues here on the show or at Iron Academy. But that's one of the challenges out there. So whether you go to a public school, you're in a good area.

I went to a, quote unquote, good public school area, suburbs of Chicago, private school, private Christian school. That's not a system that's set up well for young men. And that's why we get so frustrated with young guys when they're in school, because they're fidgety and they don't pay attention, yada, yada, yada.

How do you work around that? Well, it's not okay just to not get in trouble. We don't want an environment where we reward complacency.

Yeah. So we start the school year with, if we want to have the best school year, we want to have the best results in the classroom, which we have extraordinary results numerically. We're crushing it educationally. But if we really want to do that, and if we're primarily a discipleship school, we have to begin with character. We have to begin with, what do we mean by honor? And everybody talks about honor, and everybody says, yeah, honor is a good thing. Well, what does it mean?

So we have to define that. So our first week of school is crucible camp. We take all our new students out there. We take our entire senior class, and we take a few other guys who apply to be Squires there, and we teach these young guys, these new recruits, what it means to be an Iron Academy young man, how we value them encouraging one another, how we value dependability, diligence, persistence. And we get in the word, and we talk about those virtues, and it's just, it can be transformative for their life, and it's a great way to start the school year.

Oh yeah, and you see, and we're going to talk more on the other side of the break about what happens at crucible camp, but that's the thing about it. We lower the bar because the whole system is kind of messed up, especially for young men. We lower the bar across the entire system, and then thinking you're being kind or whatever, but you're not. And so what you actually have to do is raise the bar, but you can raise the bar academically, but if you're not training hearts, and if you're not training integrity and character in these young men, you're just kind of wasting your time, aren't you?

Yes. I mean, would you rather Hayden go off to MIT and then do his graduate work at Harvard, but be an absolute atheist? You wouldn't want him to be a fool. You would rather him first be a godly man.

Fortunately, those two aren't mutually exclusive. You can be a godly man and then accomplish those things academically, but if you focus on the academic, well, you can't build a godly man by accident. That's right. It is very deliberate. It takes time, which is why they say in Iron Academy, biblical manhood is never an accident.

It isn't, and not a biblical manhood. You'll almost always find academic excellence because they train the character first and the rest will follow. We're talking to Allan Hahn, ironacademy.org. This is Steve Noble. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. It's Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show, today talking about education, specific to young men, which is so important and such a big problem in America today, whether you're talking about public education, which I think most of us understand, numerous problems there, but also Christian education. Christian education in and of itself is not the end all be all. And then you throw church in there.

Church in and of itself is not the end all be all. And I think that's why you have a lot of parents. And I'm here with Allan Hahn, the chief education officer at Iron Academy, ironacademy.org.

If you're here in the triangle area, you know, you do all the right things. We both went to a Bible believing church. We both tried to raise our kids in the fear and admonition of the Lord and all that's good.

But then they go out into the world. And then whether it's media or wherever they go to school, whatever they're exposed to, you've got this avalanche of non-Christian thinking. Sometimes that's anti-Christian thinking where it's aggressive, but other times it's just completely secular. And so, but we go to a great church and we love the Lord.

Well, those are great things in and of themselves. But in the inundation that occurs now, when you marinate, I shared this with somebody the other day at crucible camp. And this is a disgusting example, which is why I use it.

And I use it all my classes. Okay. I go to the butcher shop. I buy a $50 piece of steak. That's a pretty awesome steak, right?

50 bucks. And then I put it in a bucket of urine for 48 hours. So I'm going to marinate it, operative word. I'm going to marinate it in urine for 48 hours.

Then I take it out. What's it smell like? Urine. Urine.

Thank you. And then I throw it on the grill. And as it cooks, what is the odor I get coming off the grill? Urine.

And then when I put it on my plate with my freshly baked potato with all the fixings and some roasted broccoli, whatever, and I cut a little slice off and I stick it in my mouth, what's it generally going to taste like? My guess is urine. Urine. Right.

So that's because the marination process works. So our kids between kindergarten and 12th grade marinate in about 32,000 hours of mostly godless, sometimes anti-Christian urine, if you want to call it that. And then so many parents are shocked. We went to a great church, Alan. We raised them in a Christian home.

I mean, we follow the Lord. We do the best we can to impart that to our kids. And then they go off to college.

And then two years later, we're like, what happened to our kid? So you had two stools there, but one stool is missing for most people. And that's what Iron Academy is all about, right? That's these three stools.

So what stool is missing? Yeah. So you can send your kids to so many places for a school.

Sure. And there are free options. There are almost free options.

There are expensive options. But I would rather eat a urine marinated steak than allow my son or daughter to be brainwashed out of their biblical worldview. Right.

Yeah, exactly. There's nothing more important about a person than what they believe about the creator of the universe. And if everything you're learning in school is undermining that, or if you're just going to a school for a safe environment that's not really building them up that way, that's better than some things. But if you have that third leg of the stool, you have a school that is actively supporting what your family believes about Christ, about creation, about what a young man is, what a young woman is, what we believe about biology and biological sex, which is increasingly a topic in the schools, you have the best chance for success with your young man or woman. So we've got all these stereotypes about young people.

And they're basically, you know, stereotypes exist for a reason. All we have to do is reveal God's perfect design within each of our sons and daughters. If we can do that, they're going to flourish in this world.

They're going to be recognized for the virtue of the exhibit, for the dispositions they show, and they're going to flourish. But if you take that biblical worldview out of them, the worst thing you should do is pay for that. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Whether you're tax dollars or otherwise. And that's the thing about a intentionality and a good. And again, there's public school, then there's private school, private Christian school, and then like an Iron Academy or homeschool. But again, even with homeschooling, most of us, most homeschool parents, if you have multiple kids, you know, it's a juggling routine. It's not easy to do. And so you don't have generally the focus and the time like you guys do at Iron Academy.

So this is the best leg of the stool. And again, for some people, we know it's an economic challenge. And for other people, you just don't think about it or you're afraid to kind of pull out of the system or you're worried that if you pull your son out of seventh grade and they go to Iron Academy, if they're here in the Triangle area, then all of a sudden they're ostracized. But that's part of the deal of following the king. We're not supposed to fit in.

I talked about that the other day at Crucible Camp. We're not supposed to fit in. You're not supposed to be comfortable here. So if you're really comfortable, something's wrong. Yeah.

Well, I think many of us are after that comfort. I used to work in fine dining restaurants and we would make beef stock or vegetable stock and we'd start with a large pot of water with some chicken parts in it. And you'd cook it down over the next 18 or 24 hours and the water vapor would leave and you would end up with the essential stock and it would be flavorful.

It would be something you could use in your next day's soup or for another recipe. That's the modern church. It's full of water and we have this heat that's now being applied to it.

The water vapor is leaving, but what we're going to end up with is the true size of the church. And I don't dare guess what that is, but the heat is coming and we have to be able to face that. Yeah, that's right. And that's part of the training with these young men at Iron Academy. So Crucible Camp was last week. What's the goal of Crucible Camp? It's fun, but it's intense.

Well, it's very intense, but it's a ton of fun. We are trying to build Iron Academy students so that when they come in day one of the classes, one, they are known by their teachers, they're known by their peers, they know all their teachers, but they know what the expectations of being a godly young man are. They know what it means to conduct themselves as a gentleman, to live pure, speak true, right, wrong, and follow the king. So we're establishing that culture and they're seeing it from the staff, they're seeing it from me, they're seeing it from the other students. And when they come back to class and we start, we actually start class Wednesday, they're going to start and they're going to see it. When they come in, they're going to behave, they might behave like they would have otherwise. When they see the older students saying, oh no, we don't do your mama jokes here, that's not right, oh no, we don't do that here at Iron Academy, they will see that that's truly who we are. But that's a jump start into seeing who they are, building on their character, and then we move forward. Right, yeah, it sets the tone and it makes them understand. I mean, they go through the process to get in, but they really have to spend that time, especially with their peers. That's why I wrote that down and circled the word peers. That's a huge part of this. When you go to any school, the teachers and the administration runs everything. Not so at Iron Academy. Peers are a big deal, which I think it makes a huge difference because these guys generally don't see themselves between sixth grade and 12th grade as leaders or leadership material are going to get any responsibility whatsoever. But that's certainly not the deal there.

No, it's not. We have a mantra that if the students can do it, have them do it. Doesn't mean they can do it better. Sometimes they don't and that's okay.

That's part of the learning process. But we started our, what we call our keeper program that comes from Genesis chapter four. I believe when God is talking to Cain, he says, where's your brother? And Cain says, well, am I my brother's keeper?

And our answer is yes and will always be yes. You are your brother's keeper. So our 10th, 11th, and 12th graders who have their challenge coins, they're allowed to be keepers and they have one, two, or perhaps three students that they own the outcomes for. And they talk with them after convocation three times a week. They eat lunch with them twice a week. They clean the school with them every day. So they spend a lot of quality time with them. They dig into them and they're passing down the Iron Academy culture to them. We started it for the young guys, but we will keep it because it's so good for the older guys. It does build leadership skills and it tells them they always have to be on. They can't turn off and turn off and be somebody else. That's right.

Well, the one really incredible thing about that, and I remember I was having memories flood into my mind as you were describing that is what you're in sixth grade, 10th grader, 11th grader, 12th grader. They might as well be on another planet. You have nothing to do. You use, you actually hide from them. You stay away from them because you think they're going to tease you. But what if they actually took up your case and came alongside? That's what happens in Iron Academy.

Welcome back. It's Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show here with my buddy Alan Hahn, the chief education officer and the founder of Iron Academy here in the Raleigh area, ironacademy.org. By the way, most people will end up saying, wow, I wish we had an Iron Academy near us. Okay, well, when that happens, when you have knowledge with it comes responsibility. That's the challenging part. I can't imagine that the Lord wouldn't want to see Iron Academy multiplied, not only all over North Carolina, but all around the country. And you never know. And so most people never find out because they don't bother that things look out of reach.

So if you're somewhere outside of the triangle area and you're like, wow, I'd really like to see an Iron Academy start here. Well, maybe that starts with you, a conversation. Maybe you know some people that know some people. I've seen it time and time again. We tend to, oh, we have little faith, right?

But you don't know what the Lord can do and nothing's impossible for him. So, but especially if you're here in the triangle area and you have sons or grandsons, sixth through 12th grade, you definitely want to do them a service, yourself a service, the future of this country a service, and your Lord a service and check out Iron Academy. When people do, they can just walk through, right? You bring them in for tours. You let them talk to students. Oh yeah.

Yep. And just set them loose with a student, ask them anything you want. Well, as long as I know who they are.

Right, right. Our students in dangerous situations, but yes, no, I trust our guys from sixth grade to 12th grade to be able to talk to visitors and to be able to answer questions without staff members there. Well, I'm always, whenever we've had students on the show, I'm always dumbfounded by that. I shouldn't be, but I am because the bar is, it's unfortunately for most of us, we're not expecting much from a sixth grader or eighth grader or 11th grader or 12th grader. But every time we've had a student in here and sometimes, and we've done a show when none of you adult guys came, it was just students.

And I remember people telling me afterwards, I can't believe, like what's going on here? Exactly. That's the whole point. So how do you, how do you develop character? Like, like how do you do that at Iron Academy? So we do focus on the honor code. Obviously we do the crucible camp for that.

So this has been our 10th year. We didn't have a playbook to open Iron Academy. We had to make everything up. And with the honor code, you know, the two parts of the honor code were written in 1867 and 1871, we just put them together. But now we have to make it real because every school has an honor code and nobody knows what it is.

There are a few exceptions to that. If you go to UVA or the service academies, you know what it is. But at Iron Academy, it's fundamental. And you talked about issues you might have with students, but you said it might be in 10th, 11th, 12th grade. But it turns out we start to see, so when a sixth or seventh grader comes to us, they believe everything their parents have taught them, everything their church has taught them. But it's in eighth grade that you really start to see people, one, they're pushing away mom and dad. They are looking for weaknesses in their teachers and they're going to have to own or reject their faith.

They're going to test, is this God real? So eighth grade, we do something called eighth grade unplugged. And all of this is going to tie together. But so with eighth grade unplugged last year, we took them away for four days of camping out at Falls Lake and we focused on character. And they came away with two things.

They said, Mr. Hahn, we want to do two things. We want, we're going to stop tearing each other down and we're not going to do selfish things that hurt the community. And if we do it, we'll do burpees. And you know, for the first five or six days, they had a lot of burpees, but they stopped tearing each other down.

And that sounds like such a low bar to have to get over. But that's what you do in sixth and seventh, well, eighth grade, especially in ninth grade. And they stopped doing it. They started encouraging one another. And I hope the audience can understand how powerful that is with a group of eighth graders. But it transformed their class from the most, probably the most difficult class to teach to one of the favorite classes to teach. But one of the things we realized about our honor code is not all of it is appropriate for a sixth grader. So this year we're doing something called targeted manhood. So education, we've always had targeted learning.

That's our educational philosophy and it works. But targeted manhood, we know a sixth grader can learn how to conduct himself as a gentleman. But a seventh and an eighth grader, they're going to be, they're going to be hit with, they're starting to look at young ladies. They're starting to talk about body parts.

They're starting to be exposed to all kinds of, and all those kinds of things that we can't talk too much about on the radio. But so in the seventh and eighth grade, we're going to focus on, you have to know how to conduct yourself as a gentleman, but what does it mean to speak true? And part of that is not to tear one another, but to speak life to people and to live pure. And there are all kinds of things about purity, but there's also that emphasis on sexual purity, what they're looking at, and why they're, they're, they're not doing those things. And then by the ninth grade, they have to know what it means to conduct yourself as a gentleman, live pure, and speak true.

But in ninth grade, what does it mean to right wrong? And how do we devise good for people? Now they're starting to become leaders. But then in 10th through 12th grade, we're really focused on what it means to follow the king. They can tell us they're following the king and they can do all the right things, but how are you shepherding and leading other people well? How are you leading them to the creator of the universe?

How are you conducting yourself in a way that draws people that's, that's winsome? And as we do this, as is developmentally appropriate, I think we're going to have better outcomes than ever. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, there comes a time to put away childish things.

You start with milk, then you go to meat. And so that, that should be part, that's a part of the discipleship process too. I mean, I do a Bible study through the summer on Wednesday nights with my son and his friends. They're all like 20, 21, 22. And most of them grew up in church, but their biblical knowledge is weak. And so I start with the basic stuff.

Last summer, we just did like 24 basic tenets of Christianity. And you start at the foundation and you build up from there and it gets more mature and more in depth, which is exactly what's happening. And then in terms of discipline and stuff, and again, I just want to remind everybody, if you're looking for a place to go get your kid fixed, that's not what you're there for. No. This is, this is building.

This is intentional. You have to have the intentionality of the church and you and your family, and then come alongside with Iron Academy. So this is all about building young men. It's not about taking care of your challenge and fixing your kid and sending them back home at four o'clock.

But in terms of like discipline, this has always been amazing to me that a lot of the discipline comes through the student body itself. Yes. Well, we, we, we ask for a biblical model. So if I have an issue with you, and, and I go to a buddy, I said, do you know what Steve's doing? Well, my question is, have you talked to Steve about it?

Matthew 18. Yes. So if we encourage that, unless it's something dangerous, then it goes directly to staff. So we encourage that one-on-one. We encourage them to do that within their tribe. And that's their smaller family within our academy. And then if it becomes, comes to the staff, and then it might go to a round table, but we issue it there.

We deal with it there. But I would say the most important thing is our whole disciplinary system, which fits on one page. We wanted a one page is from Psalm 23, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. So I look back at my life and Christ has guided me. He's protected me. He's nudged me in this way or the other. And that's all with the staff.

Yeah. But there've been times he's had to use the rod and he's had to correct me. I've had to use the rod.

I want him to build me, and this is my prayer daily, that he builds me in the kind of man for whom the people in my life can take comfort in my rod and staff. But for the staff at Iron Academy, we don't want to use the rod. We want to use the staff, and I'll make up a number, 95% of the time.

Yeah. If you never have to use the rod, sometimes you do, it has to be effective. But we're trying to build the flock. We're trying to get everybody walking on that path of righteousness. The times we use the rod are when they're in serious danger or endangering the community. But most of the time we're trying to draw them in, hey, let's do this together. We'll walk in the path of Christ.

We've got to do it together. And so we're using that staff, not the rod. Yeah. And the older students are involved with the younger ones. Yes.

To help build each other up and carry each other along. And we never say punishment. We always say consequences. Right. Yeah. Well, that's the deal. I mean, that's a consequence is what we all need.

And the Lord chastises those he loves. We're talking to Alan Hahn from Iron Academy, ironacademy.org here in the Triangle area, 6th through 12th grade for young men. So if this is pricking your heart and you're like, okay, I need to find out more about this. And you never know what the Lord might call you to do, but we certainly owe it to our future. We owe it to our posterity to be as intentional as we possibly can. There's a lot of swords at Iron Academy.

So we've got about a minute and a half left. So just explain the whole point of why the swords are there. We're talking about real swords as well. We're not talking about play things here.

We are. So the sword provides a great metaphor for our rites of passage and what we're trying to do. Tell you what, you mentioned Michelangelo's David. You mentioned the statue of David. Yeah. Yeah.

Before. And, you know, a lady asked him saying, well, how do you, how do you carve that out of, out of rock? And he told this lady, he said, no, it's less about me shaping it.

It's rather me. It's more about me removing what's not supposed to be there. So when we're shaping these guys, we're trying to reveal what the creator of the universe has already put in there. And the world is, is putting fault lines in his design and, and we're trying to get that out. But the, the sword metaphor goes through several processes. The first one is the crucible where you get rid of the dross and you end up with the metal you're going to use. The second step is called the forging where you're pounding it, you're shaping it, you're making it into something useful. And then the third process for a blacksmith would be the finishing where he's, he's deburring it, he's sharpening, he's polishing, and he's got something presentable to society. And all of that takes expertise, but we expect our men to just come about magically like, like a 747 is going to assemble itself. Men, just biblical men, when that's our, our, our, our saying is biblical manhood is never an accident. And if you think of all the really godly men, you know, in your life and godly women, they're people who study the word. They're people who have people who hold them accountable.

They're people who are diligent and persistent, but they have to work at it. That's right. Why would we not do that for our young people at an early age? Yeah. And they go through the same exact process, the crucible, the forging and the finishing. And that's exactly what happens at Iron Academy with these young men, 6th through 12th grade. So again, if you're in the triangle area, you owe it to them. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to the future of this nation to investigate.

Ironacademy.org. Alan, great scene as always. We'll have you back as soon as possible. Thank you, Steve.

You're welcome. Okay, gang. We'll be right back right after this. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back.

It's Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show. And great to have Alan Hahn in here talking about building young men. What do you think would happen in this country, by the way, if we had a bunch of Iron Academies taking 6th to 12th grade young men, iron sharpening iron, an intentional discipleship plus academic excellence. These are things that I didn't even contemplate or thinking about, especially from a character development side until, you know, after I was saved. And then that was at 28.

And you know, so 30, 35, 40, 45. But these guys are learning, starting in the 6th grade. It really is an amazing thing. So I can't encourage you or challenge you enough. If you're here in the triangle area and you have a son or grandson, 6th through 12th grade, you need to check out ironacademy.org, where they do great training. And we also do some more training here every Monday with our good friend David Fisher, where we talk about finances, what's going on in banking, what's going on in the market, what's going on with precious metals.

And so education is always a part of the deal. And always great to have you back on, my friend. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, my brother.

You're very welcome. And so I love our Money Monday updates because we get to start with the passage of Scripture. This is a great one that was preached over me many years ago and a challenge in my life. So let's start there and then we'll move on.

But Luke 638, what a powerful passage. Give and it will be given to you a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For what the measure you use it will be measured to you.

It will be measured to you. So there's obviously multiple ways of giving. The obvious is tithing. The obvious is a gift, financial gift. But there's other ways of giving too. And I don't want to minimize what I just said. That is ultimately the best way of giving.

I don't want to say the best, but really important because we're commanded to do that. Sometimes when you're throwing a loop, a financial loop or a health loop or something surprises and there's a big challenge in our life and we want to say this must not be God's will and we say let's get out of this. Start praying and that's actually what God is destined for is that that time for such a time as this because out of that we can be used by the Lord to give back.

And sometimes it's a measure more than you actually receive. And I hate to use a personal experience, but everyone knows my health heart challenge I had and I've had a complete recovery just a miracle less than three percent chance. Just over the weekend I got the chance to share my story with a person who ironically had heart surgery today and I got to pray for them and I just got a text from his wife saying thank you so much for your prayers. It meant the whole world to them and he just came out of surgery successful as a six-hour surgery. So when we have challenges embrace them because God has a bigger plan for us and he's asking us to give back. That's right and so when we see that word give I mean I think literally but also I think in our flesh we tend to think monetarily but there's so many other things that you can give beyond monetarily that will make a bigger difference in people's lives actually and whether we're talking about being a stewardship of the stewardship of an affliction something you've gone through your time or just listening you can give your time and listening to people can have a huge impact and whenever you you bring that up David I always I just flip to it on my phone second Corinthians chapter one starting in verse three blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ the father of mercies and God of all comfort who verse four comforts us in all our afflictions so that so here's here's where it comes so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves were comforted with God so you pass on what he's done in your life and and for you going through the health scare with your heart and everything that the Lord did over those couple of years and continues to do now you become a steward of that story and in that testimony and you pass it along to other people and and that's a way that you give a perfect example what you brought up today so that that's just a challenge to all of us whatever affliction or trouble you have think of it more in terms of the Lord has allowed this into your life with the hopes that you'll be a good steward of it and we'll use it to be a blessing to other people you become his hands and feet and affliction teaches us things that prosperity cannot and so you become a steward of it I think it's a beautiful passage and a beautiful example as always thanks for sharing that buddy I love your passage excellent we partnered together iron sharpens iron amen that's exactly right so last week I mean I'm popping the cork on the champagne I'm not worried about anything anymore because the last because last week the senate passed the inflation reduction bill then the the this week the house passed it the president's gonna sign it and so I guess we can hang up our hats we're done with all this crazy enough craziness but what do the markets think of this I mean it's a it's a fascinating bill and a big clunker we were pretty exercised about it when we talked about it a week ago so the market loves government spending and the market loves this bill uh earlier today stocks were down because the bad news in China going through a massive recession China lowered interest rates and having all kinds of problems over there something we haven't really talked about we probably will talk about that in the future but the market loves this uh and the market is looking for reasons to go up but it's don't uh get too overly zealous in this market still Goldman Sachs again reiterated that they're not buying this rally in there and Jamie Dimon again CEO of uh JP Morgan says we're in the eye of the storm uh so many people are saying take advantage of this bear market rally even former president Trump came out and spoke here recently he said he's warning something worse than a recession here's his quote we're going now excuse me where excuse me where we're going now could be a very bad place not a recession recession is a nice word we're going to have a much bigger problem than recession we'll have a depression now for those thinking I'm going political on us let's go back to the financial here's here's the guy max borders the financial guy he's saying the US economy could experience a total collapse due to his unsustainable debt levels even Ron Paul I want to go political but he came out first time ever heard this a previous congressman saying the word default collapse yeah Ron Paul's talked over the weekend saying the only way out of this mess is to liquidate which is a default is what we're going to experience the default he says the collapse will come quote unquote the debt has to be liquidated in other words he's saying default there's the only way out there has to be quote there has to be a default in quote I am shocked but we'll get into some numbers here we'll see that might be the case well and that's you know that the Biden administration is going to push whatever it can to make things sound better than they are the mainstream media will trumpet that for him and so we need great wisdom and discernment and I would add skepticism I am so skeptical about everything I was talking to a buddy earlier today who works with a a major media company and I'm you know he's talking about the Trump thing and Mar-a-Lago and I'm like listen I really don't believe a hundred percent or fifty percent of anything I'm being told anymore from any source and that's why we have to be very very careful to pay attention to the facts and sometimes David you have to wait you have to wait and see how these things develop and no matter what they would matter what a headline might be or some pundit says we really need to be patient and wait and see what's going on one part of this bill going on I talked about this briefly last week is the doubling of the IRS workforce I think they talked about adding 87,000 IRS agents by the way you've got less than 800 billionaires in America so I'm not quite sure what they're going to do with 87,000 new agents are you no because well they're not going to target the billionaires they're going to target the people making less than 400,000 everything I'm reading is targeting that they're saying this is going to bring in 124 billion dollars and they're paying adding to this bill 80 billion that's a 1.5 times return on your investment that's not a very good return on your investments like I don't think the bill's going to pay for itself anyway one thing I found disturbing I saw the actual job posting online called the incredible investigating special yeah one part of it agents carry a firearm be willing to use deadly force if necessary and be willing to participate in arrests execution of search warrants and other dangerous assignments they're not they're not joking around with this thing they're coming after Americans yeah it's a dangerous precedent that they you know hey that but we'll collect 134 billion or whatever it is by going after people but again they're not going to be able to go after the top because the top can lawyer up they all know all the loopholes and everything that's in the 60,000 plus pages of the IRS tax code it's going to be after normal people that can't really defend themselves it might make a mistake here or there but you can't defend yourself and they're going to they're going to come after people I mean the only reason they're going to add all this is because they want to go after that revenue and the more desperate it gets it's kind of like the bail-in conversation David the more desperate they get the more willing they are to do crazy stuff well this bill definitely won't curb inflation maybe it'll even make it worse uh have we re is are we because lat you know Biden came out recently and said zero percent inflation which was he was misspeaking he was talking about the growth of inflation from June to July nevertheless the fact that 12 months July over July was eight and a half percent but have we reached the worst or is it going to get or is it going to get uh even steeper and is the Fed going to be able to get it under control they just keep raising rates well I think we reached peak inflation but it's like a person who is 200 pounds gained 600 pounds and maybe they lost 10 pounds they're still not back down to what they need to be and that's kind of where we're at we've lost a little bit of inflation which is good but that doesn't mean we're going to lose it all and get back down to where we should be where the Fed wants us at two percent in fact a whole bunch of people like John Cochran he's a senior fellow at Hoover Institute and a professor at Stanford he's saying that the markets seem to believe that we're going to only have two more interest rate hikes he's saying to get this thing under control they need to be at 10 11 or 12 percent interest so that means gold's going to make a big run when they don't raise rates Mark Clavinow says shift away from stocks buy commodities and gold is on the dip right now call my company and learn some more yeah and that's the trick here is education to understand how do you react to the situation on the ground so when people want to understand diversity bringing precious metals like gold and silver into their portfolio as a way to hedge against what's going on in the market how do they find that out simple call us 844-604-2575 844-604-2575 or go to landmarkgold.com excellent god bless you David always great to hear from me look forward to talking again next week god bless you my brother all right bud we'll talk soon god bless you this is steve noble on the steve noble show god willing we'll talk again real soon and like my dad always used to say ever forward another program powered by the truth network