Stewardship for Life

Stewardship for Life

Jack Benny told a story about being accosted by a thief who gave him two choices…”Your money or your life!”  Jack’s reply did not come immediately.  There was a long silent pause, but, at the insistence of the hold-up man Benny finally responded with some irritation, “Wait a minute.  I’m thinking.  I’m thinking.”  Today this intersection of money and life remains a key concern for Christians.  Like Jack Benny, we’re thinking, we’re thinking.  We believe that the two terms, money and life, belong in the same sentence, especially when it comes to Christian stewardship, for stewardship is more than money…it’s your life!

Christian stewardship is life lived in Christ.  It takes seriously the words of the psalmist that “the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”  (Psalm 24:1)  All of life relates to stewardship.  Thus, worship is stewardship of the faith God has given us.  Worship in its fullest sense is our response to and expression of that gift.  It is more than a weekend obligation.  It’s the stewardship of our relationship with God…creature connecting with Creator…the giving of ourselves to God through praise, prayer, and acts of commitment.

So, too, service can be understood as the stewardship of life.  It is more than isolated acts of ministry…caring for congregants, feeding hungry people, advocating for justice, and protecting our environment.  It is more than an attitude.  It is a way of life.  It includes caring for those we love and attending to the bodily, spiritual, material, emotional, and social needs of the people God has placed in our care and keeping, whether they are in our family, our family of faith, or our community.  It is obeying Christ’s commandment to love the unloved and the unlovable, to pray for our enemies, and to care for the outsiders, outcasts, and outlaws.

Stewardship has to do with money, but it has to do with more than each individual’s money.  It has to do with the corporate stewardship of the church as well as the stewardship of individuals.  The mission and ministry of the church is an expression of its corporate stewardship.  Congregations and their members study, take positions, and engage appropriately in efforts to solve the larger issues confronting our community and our world…global warming, domestic abuse, protection of God’s creation, issues surrounding peace, justice, poverty, hunger, disease, and all the other problems besetting humankind.  It is the stewardship of the life of the church.

The Spiritual Discipline of Stewardship

Scripture declares that God is the owner of all.  When we steward God’s possessions, we take responsibility for the things God has entrusted to us. 

A steward is a person who manages property that belongs to someone else.   When a person is put in charge of things that belong to someone else, they handle things with care…thus, another word for steward is caretaker.

From beginning to end scripture declares that God owns everything and that everything we have belongs to God.

Exodus 19:5 - “…all the earth is mine.”

Leviticus 25:23 - “the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine.  For you are strangers and sojourners with me.”

Deuteronomy 10:14 - “Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.”

Job 41:11 - “Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?  Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.”

Even we belong to God!

1 Corinthians 6:19 - “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?  You are not your own.”

1 Corinthians 7:23 - “You were bought with a price…”

1 Timothy 6:7 - “For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.”

If you should search the entire Bible you will not find a single verse that even suggests that God has surrendered ownership of anything to us.

Jesus taught about stewardship.  One example is the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) where the master rewards those who steward his resources well and punishes those who do not.  This parable emphasizes the importance of being accountable for the resources God entrusts to us.  But, Jesus not only taught stewardship he lived it clearly and powerfully and modeled it during his earthly ministry.  The pinnacle of his stewardship is found in his sacrificial death on the cross.  “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45)

The Bible is full of passages instructing us to use the resources God has given us to care for the poor  and  those who are in need. (1 John 3:17-18, Proverbs 28:27, and 1 Timothy 5:8)

First Peter 4:10 says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”  This verse encourages believers in Christ to use the various gifts given to them in service to one another, reflecting the grace of God.  In other words, God owns everything we “own,” and God calls us to use the gifts God has given us wisely and faithfully, for God’s glory.

As a spiritual discipline, stewardship is managing God’s treasures in God’s way, for God’s purposes, and always for God’s glory.  It’s about using our God-given time, talents, and treasure to accomplish something that matters…God’s kingdom work.