ReVision

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

The Work of Stewardship

Work Matters (3)

For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? 1 Corinthians 4.7

A stewardship of boasting
Scripture teaches that every good and perfect gift comes down to us from our heavenly Father, out of the sheer enormity of His love for us, and the delight He takes in lavishing us with good things (Jms. 1.17).

These good gifts include our work, as we have seen. And, like every good gift, we want to take care of those we receive, using them as intended, and with a view to honoring the One Who gave them to us. Work is a form of stewardship, and God requires that all His stewards be faithful in serving Him with the many gifts He provides.                      

As with our work, our lives are filled with other good and excellent gifts from God, and we are called to be good stewards over them, using them, in some way, to boast about and honor the Giver of every good and perfect gift, and to further His good and holy plan – His economy – for the world.

Exercising good stewardship over all the gifts God has given us takes time, energy, and care – in other words, work. A work of stewardship is entrusted to us with respect to all the good gifts we receive from the Lord. Like the talents in Jesus’ parable, God gives us good and perfect gifts so that we will work hard to use them in serving others and in bringing honor and glory to His Name (Matt. 25.14-30; Jn. 17.4).

But we will need to be good stewards of those gifts for this to be so.

The mindset of a steward
Stewardship is first of all a frame of mind. Christians understand that we are not our own; we have been bought with a price. Paul puts this eloquently in 1 Corinthians 6.19, 20: “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” You are not your own. Your time is not your own. Your talents, tools, treasure, possessions, and job are not your own. You belong to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ belongs to God (1 Cor. 3.23). Whatever may be your hopes or expectations for all these good and perfect gifts, if they do not line up with God’s, you cannot expect to know maximum fruitfulness or pleasure from His investment.

The steward of God’s good and perfect gifts knows that it takes work to make those gifts refract the glory God is seeking from them. But we are not likely to take up the work such stewardship requires unless we nurture and live from the mind of Christ, and not our own minds, about the work we’ve been given to do.

What kind of stewardship?
The stewardship of our work is a gem with many facets. What’s included in this work of stewardship? First, the proper care and use of our bodies, and the health in which we must preserve them. God is not indifferent to things like what we eat and drink, and how we eat and drink them. Indeed, we have a specific instruction from the Apostle Paul to use our food and drink as ways of glorifying God (1 Cor. 10.31). Food that does not strengthen our bodies cannot glorify this temple of the Lord; and ways of eating that do not express appreciation for the food we eat and the company among whom we eat it will not honor Him, either. Diet and manners matter as signs that we operate within an economy that seeks to glorify God in all things.

Next come our material possessions – our home and cars, clothes, tools, personal items, computers, televisions, and on and on. God allows us to have these things, and He is not indifferent concerning how we are to use them or the manner in which we must care for them. I have a book in my library entitled, House as a Mirror of Self. The author argues that everything about our homes has meaning, and says something about who we are and what’s important to us. The way we keep our homes, maintain our property, and use our treasure and our possessions, sends a signal to God, concerning our gratitude and love, and to the watching world, that in our lives, everything matters as a way of expressing and advancing our deepest convictions.

What does the décor of your house say about your ultimate convictions? The books on your shelves? The use you make of the television? How you keep your yard? The hospitality you show to others? Does the way you regard and use your many material possessions indicate that you serve a King Who provides you with all these things in order to further His rule of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit?

Wealth and time
Beyond this we have a stewardship of wealth – the money we make. Do we honor the Lord with our money by giving our tithes and offerings, laying up for the future, and refusing to cast the “pearls” of our paycheck before the “swine” paraded before us by advertisers? It should be apparent that we need to take up this aspect of the work of stewardship as seriously as we do the work we accomplish on our jobs, for in each case the potential for doing good to others and bringing glory to God is real and great.

And with all this there is a stewardship of time – making the most of every moment of time to bring honor and glory to the Lord (Eph. 5.15-17; Ps. 90.12, 16, 17). As we have seen, time is a most precious gift, and we must be careful not to squander it on things which do not contribute to the blessing of others and the honor of God.

We are called to be stewards of all the many and varied gifts of God. Clearly, it matters to God that we work hard at our stewardship of His good gifts, so that we may glorify Him in the work we’ve been given to do.

For reflection
1.  We do not want the gifts God has given us, including all the work we do, to be mirrors of ourselves, but of His glory. Explain.

2.  “The way we keep our homes, maintain our property, and use our treasure and our possessions, sends a signal to God, concerning our gratitude and love, and to the watching world, that in our lives, everything matters as a way of expressing and advancing our deepest convictions.” Do you agree? Explain.

3.  How can prayer help us to develop the mindset of a steward?

Next steps – Preparation: Write a prayer that you might use each day to prepare you for the work of stewardship that day. Begin praying it regularly. You might follow Psalm 90.12, 16, 17 as a kind of template for writing such a prayer.

T. M. Moore

This week’s ReVision study is Part 3 of a 10-part series, “The Kingdom Economy.” You can download “Work Matters” as a free PDF, prepared for personal or group study. Simply click here. Start your day in the Word of God. Study with T. M. in our daily Scriptorium newsletter, as he walks us through the ongoing work of Christ in the book of Acts. You can subscribe to receive Scriptorium each day at 5:00 am Eastern, or go to the website to download each week’s study in a free PDF.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.