Why am I so hung up on stewardship? Nobody has ever asked that directly, but I often feel like some of the comments and attitudes aimed in my direction are dancing all around that question. So here are three quick reasons I get hung up on stewardship.
1 – Our life is not our own.
Living my life to bring honor to God, managing Gods blessing Gods way for Gods glory (as Chris Brown says it) – whatever you want to call it if we claim to be followers of Jesus then we should be stewarding everything in our life for Him. I’ve seen how financial stewardship affects my own walk with Jesus and I don’t ever want to let being a poor steward hinder my faith. AND I want other Christians to experience the same peace and joy in their walk with Him.
2 – We’re called to share the gospel.
The gospel itself is an act of generosity where Jesus gave His life for our sins. We’re supposed to share it by how we live it. The early church shared Gods love through extravagant acts of generosity and people were so blown away they knew there was something different about followers of Jesus and they wanted to experience it. Being generous requires being good stewards. Sadly not enough of us have let the 2350 money/possession related verses in the bible get into our head and hearts deep enough for our behavior to demonstrate our belief in those scriptures. The world is watching and our generosity is the gospel for a lot of the world. I don’t have to be the one leading people through the prayer for salvation to know that how I steward my resources is part of their experience with the gospel.
3 – Ministry costs money.
A lot of people are vocational ministers and evangelists and, as the body of Christ, it is our responsibility to take care of the needs of those vocations as well as the needs of the ministry organizations they work for. God’s church has to be funded and that requires the diligent stewardship and generosity of His people. We often hear “God doesn’t need your money” followed by “it’s not about what God wants from you but for you” etc. That’s true. God’s plan is gonna happen either way, but shouldn’t we want to be a part of it anyway?
So the short answer is that teaching financial stewardship is part of my calling for spreading the gospel. If the reasons above aren’t good enough to get every Christian a little bit hung up on stewardship shouldn’t we be concerned why not?
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