- Good stewards recognize their role and responsibility. They don’t wander aimlessly, without a sense of purpose. They take their job as a manager of the mission seriously.
- Good stewards realize everything belongs to God. They understand that what has been entrusted to them is on loan from the Lord, and hold all things loosely.
- Good stewards are trustworthy. They are reliable and responsible.
- Good stewards are faithful. They don’t give up but keep going forward by faith.
- Good stewards are mindful. They don’t mindlessly scroll social media or eat whatever garbage they want. They don’t waste money on frivolous things or fill their minds with filth from entertainment.
- Good stewards are truthful. They aren’t deceptive or dishonest.
- Good stewards are diligent. They are persistent and hardworking.
- Good stewards are prayerful. They aren’t self-willed but seek the Lord’s guidance and direction in all things.
- Good stewards are discerning. They are sensitive to the Spirit’s leading and exercise good judgment.
- Good stewards are proactive. They don’t wait until they feel like doing something.
Learn From Jesus How to Be a Good Steward
Jesus is our example to follow in everything the word instructs us to do. If you want to have these qualities of a good steward evident in your life, then learn from Jesus and live the way He did. Read through the gospels and see the way Jesus managed His ministry.
He didn’t waste time. He didn’t pursue His own will for His life. Jesus always did the will of the Father and invested in the eternal.
Don’t let drama, distractions, or any other devices of the devil draw you away from your God-given purpose. Be a good steward of your time, talent, treasure, temple, and the truth, today!
The Reward for Disciples With the Qualities of a Good Steward
Every believer faces the judgment seat of Christ, where we will give an account for our stewardship. Jesus will ask us what we did with what He gave us. (2Cor. 5:10) The longing of our hearts should be to hear “well done, my good and faithful servant!”. If we apply the word and accept our responsibility as stewards, following Jesus’ example of executing with excellence the job set before us, that is exactly what we will hear.
Are the qualities of a good steward evident in your life? Is stewardship something you’re mindful of? If not, pray for God to reveal your role, renew your mind, revive your heart, and restore your zeal for His mission. This wicked world desperately needs Christians who have the character of Christ and take their role as stewards of the good news seriously. Be one of those today!
The third characteristic that will commonly be seen in the life of a good and faithful steward is sacrifice. We simply cannot be good and faithful stewards if sacrifice is not a part of our lives. Paul calls us in Romans 12:1 to be a “living sacrifice.” Jesus challenges every steward who wants to follow Him in Luke 9:23, “let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.”The imagery He is giving us is quite dramatic. In Jesus’ day the cross was used for only one purpose—to kill someone. He is not calling us to a one-time, sacrificial death for “the cause.” He is describing here a daily sacrifice. Each day, we are to put to death our wishes, our desires, our agenda, our comforts, our free time, and our hopes for the greater good of the kingdom and the world we seek to win.
In his book The Kingdom and the Cross, James Bryan Smith suggests that, “If our God is self-sacrificing and seeks to bless others who have done nothing to merit it, then we should be people who are self-sacrificing and who bless others who have not earned it.” There is no more powerful demonstration of a good and faithful steward than to willingly and sacrificially give to others without any consideration of their worthiness to receive the gift. Regardless of how great or small the need or opportunity, he gladly sacrifices whatever he currently stewards for the good of others. John illustrates the lengths to which we must be willing to go in living a sacrificial life. He exhorts us in I John 3:16 (ESV), By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. If sacrificing our lives is the maximum sacrifice we might be called to make as a steward, it puts into a clear context the modest sacrifices we make when we give some of the money, time, or talents we have been entrusted to steward to help others. Would the word sacrificial describe your life?
If we want to be identified as a good and faithful steward and someday hear those wonderful words, “Well done,”we must routinely examine ourselves to be sure that our lives are on the right course that has been set by our Master. We need to be vigilant in controlling our appetites and impulses to ensure that they do not end up controlling us. We need to be regularly and generously sacrificing what we have been entrusted with in hopes of bringing a little bit of heaven to those who are here on earth. Living the life of a good and faithful steward is a tremendous challenge. Are you up to the challenge?
Proverbs 27:23 gives great wisdom: “Know well the condition of your flocks and give attention to your herds.” This one verse establishes a basic kingdom stewardship principle for all of us: Pay attention to how well you’re doing. Do the hard work of assessment, learning and application as it relates to whatever ventures you take part in. You must have a plan—and to have a plan, you must clearly comprehend your assets and strategies for growth.
Since God believes in planning, we should believe in planning. The Creator planned things out before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). Yet too many believers go to Him without doing the diligence of planning. We tend to dodge the reality that God works in concert and in cadence with plans. We regularly witness Him in Scripture responding to a plan, tweaking a plan or creating a plan.
Every family should be living according to a budget. This gives you the framework to remove debt and free up spending for all your needs as well as greater giving to God’s kingdom. A budget enables you to live within your means. “The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty (Proverbs 21:5).”
Don’t operate with the mindset of luck or undefined hope. God has given everyone a mind in order to plan. And it may be that it’s a wise friend or godly financial planner who helps in this area, especially when it comes to setting long-term goals. “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22).
Prioritizing: A kingdom steward values needs over wants.
Wise kingdom stewards prioritize financial freedom. One of the ways you do this is through discerning between wants and needs. Having a car is a need in most places in today’s culture, while that souped-up sports car is probably a want. So begin identifying any wants that you have falsely treated as needs. Once you do, you can begin to redirect your resources toward better uses such as the removal of excess debt and investment toward future needs.
Stewardship can be broken down into two parts: management of and accountability for something that belongs to someone else. To manage means to control, organize, and make decisions with resources. For example, a shoe store does not open by itself. The manager of the store makes sure that the doors are open, that the store is properly staffed, that employees are trained, that there are enough shoes to sell, that the sign is up outside so that customers will come inside. The manager, however, is accountable to someone else: the owner. Being accountable means being responsible, answering to someone, and then being judged by that someone as to whether we did a good job or not. As a manager, if we fulfill the expectations of the owner, we will receive a reward, and if not, we will receive negative consequences.
So, as managers here on earth, the first thing we need to figure out is who our boss is so we can take instructions from that boss, because the boss has expectations that we will be judged by. We need to know what these expectations are so that we can do the job right. We need to know whose door we need to knock on to say, “I’m here for that management job that I was hired for—what is it you want me to do, and what are the standards?” The Bible tells us who the ultimate boss is in Colossians 1:15-17: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
This means that God is the creator of everything; everything came from Him; He’s the maker of it all. God is our boss–so let’s call His company God Unlimited.
Now that we’ve figured out that God is the boss, what does He expect us to do as managers of God Unlimited? Genesis 2:15 tells us: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” So, at the beginning of the world, God put Adam into the garden that He had created to tend and to keep it. In fact, God created everything that is on the earth, visible and invisible, and so everything belongs to God. God gave Adam the Garden to take care of the same way your neighbor might ask you to take care of his dog for a week. The dog is your responsibility for that week, but the dog is not yours. When your neighbor returns, you don’t take the dog home with you and keep it, because it is his. So from this example, we can figure out that our boss is God because He made everything and put man on earth to take care of His things, including the Garden and everything in the world we have today.
Because God created us in His own image, we do have the capacity to choose what we will do with God’s things on earth. But really, we have only one choice to make. We can follow God and be obedient to Him, living in His will and allowing Him to live through us by the Holy Spirit, or we can choose not to. Unfortunately, God’s first manager on earth, Adam, was tricked by Satan in the Garden and chose to disobey God. Adam left God Unlimited to go work for Satan’s company– let’s call it Evil Enterprises. Adam and Eve’s sin caused humans to be separated from God and allowed Satan to indwell us. God kicked Satan out and bought us back from The Evil One when He paid the highest price by sacrificing His own Son. 1 Corinthians 7:23 says: “You were bought at a price….” The importance of being bought is that we are owned by someone else. Jesus Christ had to give His life as the price for us at His crucifixion. So, God does own us and is still in control, but we still have the choice to follow Him or not to follow Him.
As the owner of God Unlimited, God us going to hold us accountable for the choices we make while we are on the earth. He will hold us accountable for what we are to tend and keep. Businesses use an accounting sheet to give a quick idea of how the business is doing. On the accounting sheet, there are debts on one side balanced against the credits on the other. A debit is something going out and a credit is something coming in. Let’s put that into real world terms, thinking along the lines of being accountable to our boss God. Debits are sin, and credits are righteousness (the state of not being in sin). Our accountability will affect what our experience will be like after we die. After our life on earth, God is going to review our debits and credits–our sin and our righteousness.
One of the main things that accountants do is to perform audits. During an audit, an accountant comes in and looks at everything in the business. He checks all of the debits and credits and makes sure that no credits have been hidden and that no debits have been made up. The Bible promises that God will do the same thing. Romans 14:12 says: “Each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.” God, as our boss, is our Supreme Auditor in life. After our life on earth is over, He will look at everything that we have done in our lives, and He will look at every single debit and credit that we have. As the Supreme Auditor, He is going to hold us accountable for all of our actions. “For we must all appear and be revealed as we are before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may receive his pay according to what he has done in the body, whether good or evil, considering what his purpose and motive have been and what he has achieved, been busy with, and given himself and his attention to accomplishing” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
God lays out our employee handbook in front of us; it’s called the Bible. In it we find the model employee of God Unlimited described in detail. His name is Jesus. Since we get to read about Him in our manual, we do have somebody to copy in our work. Philippians 2:5-8 says, “Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though He was God,He did not deemed and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; He took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form, He obediently humbled Himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross.”
Here are some obvious characteristics of our model employee that we want to copy: obedience, humility, loyalty, and a good attitude. Let’s look at these more closely:
Obedience: a servant’s attitude. We do the job no matter what. And we always remember that we’re serving someone else. Yes, we are the bosses in a sense, but we have someone else that we have to answer to–someone else is the supervisor over us. That person is God, of course.
Humility: We are not all prideful about the job we do. Nor do we say, “Oh, we’re doing a great job for ourselves,” and, “Look at me, look at me, look at me.” We simply know, “We’re doing a great job for the glory of our boss,” and, “We’re really pleased to be able to do it for our Boss. This isn’t for my glory, this is for the Big Guy.”
Loyalty: We never jump ship even though there is another company out there. Remember the boss of the other company is Satan. He is constantly approaching us and saying “Hey, why don’t you come work for me? God’s a pretty good company, but He’s not telling you some things I can do for you.” So let’s beware. There’s another company out there, and its boss always tries to trick us to get us to work for him. Our loyal model employee never ever went to work for Satan’s company. He never moonlighted with his company. He never worked for him full-time or part-time. He stayed loyal to the Big Boss, GOD.
A Good Attitude: Our model employee, Jesus, did not once complain about jobs God gave him. He had some pretty tough jobs, didn’t He? He had some pretty tough assignments out there in the field. He had to die on the cross for our sins, even though he didn’t deserve to die; not once did He complain about it, not once!
So those are some good things to remember about our model employee, Jesus. We want to remain obedient to our Boss, we want to show a servant’s attitude, and we are humble in that we are working for our Boss and not for ourselves. We stay loyal and keep working for our Boss, and we do not go to work for the other company. Plus, we do it all with a fantastic attitude about the jobs God gives us. Remember, God gives us some hards jobs. If the model employee had to go to the Cross and die, we can expect that our job too is going to be pretty tough. It’s not easy; there aren’t a bunch of fringe benefits and a free ride. There are going to be some jobs out there that are going to be tough to do, be we must never complain about them (John 6:38).
One other thing to remember about our model employee, Jesus, is that He had a couple of specific parts of His job description that we really don’t have in our job description. He was appointed to do His job by the Boss for some very specific things. Take a quick look: “For I have come down from Heaven not to do my will but to do the will of Him who sent me.” When Jesus came down, God didn’t just say, “Well the world’s kind of gotten into a mess and I don’t know what to do with it. You go try to fix it–make some studies, make some advisory committees and let’s see if we can just committee this thing to death and make the world work out”–that’s not what He did. God sent His agent, Jesus, down to do exactly what He wanted done. He wasn’t to make decisions on His own–not to do what He thought should be done–but only what God had for Him to do. In Hebrews 10:7 Jesus said, “Then look I said, I have come to do your will, oh God. Just as it is written about me in the scriptures.” God sent Jesus down to do His will, and Jesus said, “Yes, Sir. I’ve come to do your will; just give me the word.” Here is more proof that the model employee was obedient, had a servant’s attitude, was quite humble, remained loyal, and He did not complain about any of it.
Okay, now we have a pretty good idea of what’s expected of us as employees and managers in God’s big company. When starting a new job, the most important thing is to train. Of course, it would be very unfair just to bring in a new employee and say, “Get to work. I expect results by the end of the day.” No, new employees don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know how to operate the equipment. That would be crazy. Every good company has an excellent training program. God’s big company has an excellent training program, too; help us along, and show us the right way to work. Then God is ready to send us out to do our job. We’ve seen the model employee, Jesus, and how He works. And the Holy Spirit is with us to tell us what we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to do it. (Look at John 16:8-11).
All right, we’ve got the Holy Spirit–He’s our number one trainer. God doesn’t just overwhelm us with directions on the first day or expects us to memorize the entire employee manual right then. He gives us the Holy Spirit to walk us through day to day as we’re going along in life. The Spirit knows the difference between right and wrong, and that’s His number one job.
He knows and tells us the difference between righteousness and sin. That’s the number one reason God gave us the Holy Spirit to live in us–to show us the difference between righteousness and sin. Remember, if we’re going to be held accountable (debts on the left, credits on the right), we want to have all credits and no debits. For us to know what those credits and debits are, we need someone telling us the difference between right and wrong, and that’s the Holy Spirit’s job. According to John 16:13, “So when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you in to all truth… He guides us, and He will not make up His own rules. This is very important to the work relationship with our Boss, because we know that the Holy Spirit is not going to tell us the wrong thing. He will only take direction from His Boss, God. He speaks by God’s authority only. If we remain obedient in our lives and listen to the Holy Spirit, then we cannot go wrong because He speaks only with God’s permission and authority. If you ever get any kind of message inside your conscience that tells you something that goes against our employee manual, the Bible, then that is not the employee trainer, the Holy Spirit. That is the other boss, Satan, who we should not listen to. He wants to sell us a great song and dance about his company, but there is absolutely no profit in the end. When we listen to our Trainer, He is speaking with God’s authority only, and we cannot go wrong that way (Romans 5:5).
The Boss has given us the Holy Spirit to train us well because He loves us; He is concerned about our well-being and about what is best for us. Because He really does love us, He gives us such an excellent trainer. Now, look at what we are going to be able to do in our job. Our trainer is so good that He is going to train us in the ways of our Boss, God. And we’re going to be able to accept the love that God has for us because we’re so well trained. God is love, and the Holy Spirit is God.
So, since the Holy Spirit is inside us living out His life through us, WE ARE LOVE. We are like lightning-rods for God’s love going through us. He loves us so much that He joins the Holy Spirit (which is Himself) to our spirits so that we can become love! (Romans 8:14, 16-26). The Holy Spirit, the Trainer, stays inside us and speaks to us deep inside our hearts; He does not go away, He stays connected with our spirit. He is constantly telling us the difference between right and wrong. He shows His love to us by continuing to tell us the difference between right and wrong (Romans 8:26). Sometimes we’re going along in our job and we hit a road block, but our Trainer stays with us, Our understanding is limited, but The Trainer will guide us, He will start to work things out through us. He will always be there in the most difficult times in our job, in the toughest parts of our job description, As you can see, God has given us everything we need to do a great job in His company: the Holy Spirit as our Trainer, Jesus as our model to follow, and the Bible as our employee handbook.
These two words have helped me understand the meaning of stewardship more than any other:
- Possession and Use
You are a good steward when you learn how to possess and use, appropriately.
The opposite of possession with use is also a part of good stewardship:
- Stewarding what you cannot use.
What does it all mean?
Stewardship is complicated—like your life.
Seeing these stewardship examples from the Bible and disciples of the past will hopefully help you connect some dots in the good steward life you are currently involved in… because it’s beautiful.
Let’s dive in.
Stewardship Examples
Adam
God’s first checklist?
- Create the world with words.
- Form man with my hands and breathe life into him.
- Give him something to do with his mind, words, and hands—life.
Biblical stewardship begins with Adam in Genesis 2:15: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
Through Adam and Eve, the first stewards, man is also given a specific pursuit in the Bible—stewardship of the earth.
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28.
With a creative mind, powerful words, and able hands, Adam and Eve’s (mans) initial job—“Work” and “Keep” the Garden—and their ongoing vocation is to:
- Fill the earth and subdue, possess and use, it.
- Have dominion
This is “reigning” language that reveals—you have been given an earthly kingdom to steward because you are human.
David
There a few examples of stewardship we can grab onto from King David, and 1 Samuel 17:20 shows us two of them—the message translates this verse this way:
“David was up at the crack of dawn and, having arranged for someone to tend his flock, took the food and was on his way just as Jesse had directed him.”
What are the lessons in stewardship from David?
- “Up at the crack of dawn”—being a steward of his time.
- “Arranging for someone to tend his flock,” ownership of the mundane—“whatsoever you do.”
“Whatsoever ye do, work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men” Colossians 3:23.
Another ownership example of David appears in 1 Samuel 18:5:
“So David went out wherever Saul sent him, and behaved wisely. And Saul set him over the men of war, and he was accepted in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul’s servants.”
The NLT translation may show the “whatsoever ye do, do it heartily” ownership spirit a little more clearly:
“Whatever Saul asked David to do, David did it successfully. So Saul made him a commander over the men of war, an appointment that was welcomed by the people and Saul’s officers alike.”
Before most of the Psalms, before killing Goliath, before becoming King— from being responsible for sheep to delivering cheese, David embodied an ownership spirit.
A key element of “Whatsoever ye do, work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men.”
Joseph and Mary
When raising Jesus, Joseph was a carpenter. This reveals Mary and Joseph were one of the best examples of a steward.
How?
When Jesus was around 3-years old, he received gold, frankincense, and myrrh from wise men.
Joseph and Mary possessed, but likely did not use, these gifts for themselves; they stewarded them.
Note:
Some say the gifts were “used up” to fund their journey to Egypt. Since these gifts were potentially worth millions of dollars, I find their complete use unlikely.
Mary and Joseph show the possession but not using stewardship principle in two straightforward ways:
- Stewarding the Life of Jesus
- Possession of these valuable gifts
A convicting question arose for me after seeing this.
If I received gifts when one of my kids were three, gifts that would make it possible to not work ever again in my life:
- Would I have been a carpenter to take care of my family?
- Instead of living off of just some of this cash?
The 3 & 5 Talent Stewards
It’s tough to connect the dots from biblical steward examples like Mary & Joseph in daily life.
Pretty unique situations.
The three and five talent stewards are quite different, though.
While there are many lessons in stewardship from this parable, here are two of the most impactful:
One:
In this parable, everyday 8-5ers were handed large sums of money and received no direction on what they should do.
- How they should live
- The best way to increase the investment
- Or any other specific instructions.
You see, I can not count how many times I have asked God, “What specifically I should do with my life?” or “How can I be a steward and serve?”
Since no direction was ever given—I basically buried my talents and went on with life instead of doing this:
“Although it is God’s power and presence that will bring health and peace to the earth, that does not mean that we are mere spectators… There is a human instrumentality involved, which is why God waits for a fullness of time determined by our capacities to receive what he would give…
The key to understanding our part is the realization that God only moves forward with his redemptive plan through people who are prepared to receive freely and cooperate with him in the next step.
This is as true today as it was for Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist.” Dallas Willard.
Like David, the successful stewards worked “heartily as unto the master” in appearingly mundane duties.
- Job
- Business
- Kids
- Sheep
- Delivering Cheese
- Laundry
Tasks likely instrumental in preparing for “a fulness of time determined by our capacities to receive”—their” for such a time as this.”
Two:
In Matthew 25:15, we read: “To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.”
According to your abilities, another way of saying “capacities to receive” which will determine if you are a
- “People who are prepared to receive freely and cooperate with him in the next step.”
Look:
It wasn’t a random selection, lottery thing that handed out the “talents.” It was “according to his abilities.”
Stewardship lessons from this parable?
- It’s necessary to steward the “sheep” you have been given, and,
- Until you steward the “sheep” currently in your possession—you’re not going to be prepared to be given any more important “flocks” to steward.
Again from what I now call the hope book, Dallas Willard affirms this takeaway for stewardship:
“The key to understanding our part is the realization that God only moves forward with his redemptive plan through people who are prepared to receive freely and cooperate with him in the next step.”
Here’s a more recent, inspiring example.
Katharina Bovey
Katharina Bovey lived from 1669–1726 and became the mistress of Flaxley Abbey in 1691, at the age of twenty-two.
Her legacy is a philanthropist, though—and these words are on her memorial in Westminster Abbey.
“It pleased God to bless her with a considerable estate, which with a liberal hand guided by wisdom and piety, she employed to His glory & the good of her neighbours. Her domestic expenses were managed with a decency & dignity suitable to her fortune; but with a frugality that made her income abound to all proper objects of charity; to the relief of the necessitous, the encouragement of the industrious & instruction of the ignorant. She distributed not only with cheerfulness but with joy, which upon some occasions of raising & refreshing the spirit of the afflicted, she could not refrain from breaking forth into tears flowing from a heart thoroughly affected with compassion & benevolence.”
Often, the stewardship conversation focuses heavily on money, specifically tithing.
Katharina Bovey shows us that being a wealthy steward may be one of the best ways to impact the world.
How do You Become a Good Steward?
To not bury your talents and instead be a “good steward”—you only need to take the first step of faith and do anything.
The first step of all stewardship endeavors is to act on a thought you already possess. Because you care about understanding stewardship, you already have ample creative good steward ideas.
When you take these small steps of faith that currently feel large, you can then steward more considerable talents that you don’t even see as possible yet.
Incrementally, you will begin “to understand our part is the realization that God only moves forward with his redemptive plan through people who are prepared to receive freely and cooperate with him in the next step.”
Stewarding one step at a time is the only way.
- One foot planted where you are right now,
- And the other foot one step ahead.
Should you steward money and teams and make more money?
Should you devote tons of time and energy to rescuing wildlife, cleaning water, or leading an army to accomplish these ends?
Or, steward your kids, instead of possess and use them, to be some of the most epic adults ever to walk this earth?
Or create and inspire by writing, woodworking, inventing a board game, or other “arts”?
Only you know the talents you currently possess that, when stewarded, gain the “well done good and faithful” at the end.
Though, at the core of every good steward endeavor is this:
“The disciple will become a disciple when he determines to direct his time, regardless of how un-spiritual that thing he does in the time directed, this discipline will over time permeate all areas of his life.” William Law from A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment