Stewardship Jesus' Way - question 5

So what does stewardship Jesus' way mean for you?

Jesus calls people differently to use what they have been given for His purposes.  For some he may call them to give everything material away.  For others He calls them to give up that certain thing, knowing it’s a barrier to a full life.  A doctor doesn’t prescribe the same medicine for every patient.  The “doctor” we are to follow proclaims, “What good is it to gain the whole world and loose your soul?”  How crazy would that be.  Whatever He calls us to give, at whatever moment, His end goal is for us to follow/love Him completely – with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor with that same completeness.

So can I have both? Having wealth and still seek and align my life with God’s will? Yes and No. Yes, you can from the perspective of a surrendered heart that wants to use what we’ve been given for His purposes.  No, you can’t from the perspective of wanting to keep your lifestyle and fit God into it somehow.  It doesn’t really matter if you have a house in the Hamptons or a hovel in the Bronx, both can be a stumbling block or used as a blessing. In our minds we need to give it all away and our actions test this resolve whether we are truly sold out to God. Who is our Master?  Who do we ultimately depend on – our bank account, our effort or our Lord Jesus?  We cannot love or serve two different Masters.

Certainly people can have wealth and love God...look at Abraham and countless others in the Bible.  The question is: does wealth have us? To whom have we given our heart? It's our heart that God is after.  We must watch our step around wealth, knowing our tendency for it to capture our hearts and become ensnared by it if we don't intentionally and continually forfeit our desires and adopt His.  That being said, God does want us to enjoy things and find contentment. I do believe we cannot find true contentment unless we own a perspective that everything is a gift from God.  Unless He occupies our hearts with joy we grow restless in our selfishness and bored with our striving.  Apart from God, and our purposes found in Him, everything turns meaningless.

On one side of the spectrum people manage their finances in a way that gives them what they want.  The driving force is to get ahead, acquire a certain lifestyle, attaining a mark that we believe will make us happy.  On the other side of the spectrum there are people who simply don’t manage their finances and link it to holiness.  They don’t want to think about it. They believe making money and handling material wealth is somehow worldly and unspiritual.  In reality they may be acting like a lazy, irresponsible steward, covering their sin with a veneer of holiness. Neglecting stewardship of material things, our very lives or creation itself is like giving back the keys to a shiny new car from our earthly father and saying, “No thanks, I don’t want to enjoy your gift because I don’t want to wash it or care for it.”

Surrendering our hearts to God does not devoid us of being a responsible partner in how material things are managed.  It’s a constant struggle to try to find balance, to wrestle with these gifts and figure out how to enjoy them and bless others.  We must learn and keep learning, not avoiding stewardship no matter how hopeless it may seem or what kind of financial mess we find ourselves in. God wants us to participate with Him.  Since we are children of the King we are invited into responsibility of the Kingdom.  If we decide to neglect this responsibility, in this case, neglect stewardship, we become spoiled children who not only want everything, but also want our Father to do everything for us.  That’s not relationship. That’s a recipe for an unhealthy, unfulfilled and unhappy child that no good parent would allow anymore than a restaurant tantrum if they had anything to say about it.