What does stewardship mean to God?

“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Psalm 24:1)

            The word, stewardship, simply means to manage someone else’s property. For the Christian, as Scripture proclaims everything belongs to God, we manage the property of our Lord. Since everything belongs to Christ, we need to have the attitude and view that our things are His things, our stuff is His stuff, that all we could have now, all we have lost, all we will have, is His, including our very bodies and spiritual gifts. We are mere lessees of the property, money, relationships, talents, time, and even our lives. That means all that we are and all that we have are not really ours to begin with. They belong to God. So, the duty of the Christian is to learn how to become responsible stewards of our Lord’s resources entrusted into our care. It means to manage everything to the best of our abilities for His glory (1 Cor. 4:2).

Read each of these verses: Proverbs 3:9-10; Romans 12:6; 1 Corinthians 4:1-2; 6:19-20; Ephesians 5:15-16 

• What does Paul have to say? 
• What does stewardship mean in these verses? 

           Stewardship is a reflection of our spiritual condition! We should never separate money and finances from our spiritual life. The distinction that the material world is not for the Christian is an old heresy called Gnosticism. The material world is God’s too, and we are the stewards, the caretakers, of it.  So, how we allocate the resources that God places in our care is a prime Christian duty that has no separation from the spiritual depth of Biblical character and maturity. All the areas in our life of work, learning, relationships, spiritual gifts, and resources will come through our obedience or our laziness–to God’s glory or to waste.  

Try to see it like this: we are on a playground that God owns, building equipment for the furtherance of the kingdom. At the same time, the storms of the devil and our complacency cause a hindrance and breakdown to the work. With spiritual strength we can fend off the devil, but it takes diligence, and a will surrendered to God to build the park and play the game.