Good stewardship is looking to God and not to Self

       Some Christians will have a big problem with what I am trying to get across here. Perhaps their will, pride, and assumptions have clouded their thinking. All we need to do is carefully and honestly examine what God’s Word has to say!

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.

• Stewardship honors God with all of the relationships and resources in our life! Thus, we are able to give Him gratitude for what He did for us and recognize His sovereignty, which is His control and ownership of all things. In this way we can honor Him with our worship as well as with our material goods and abilities.

• Stewardship is a priority! We need to take what we have and put it to the right use.

• Stewardship is exercising the gifts He gives, not letting them waste away. We are to find them and put them to use with joy. To do otherwise is a big waste and a travesty.

• Stewardship is being His faithful servant. It is the understanding of who we are in Him and being grateful for that. In addition, it is being willing to put forth the effort to please Him, even though we do not have to.

• Stewardship is recognizing that we belong to Him as a human being in His grace, that the church is not the building, but the body that gathers for worship and leaves for ministry! Those who just dwell in a building end up doing nothing there.

• Stewardship is being wise to the ways of the world, so we do not fall prey to it.