Spiritual Disciplines-Stewardship

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

From the beginning of creation, we have been given the responsibility to be stewards of what God has created. This morning we are going to be looking at, what I believe are the

NEXT SLIDES

5 key areas God has called us to Steward.

The 1st thing He has called us to steward is: NEXT SLIDES

God has called us to Steward our Time.

To a certain degree we spent time discussing this area of Stewardship the past 2 Sundays when we looked at the Spiritual Discipline of Service, so we won’t spend much time on it this morning, but I do want to look at a passage of Scripture this morning that should provide motivation for us each day.

Ephesians 5:15-16

Ephesians 5:15–16 ESV

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

Paul makes it very clear to us here, that we are to make wise use of the time God has given us each day. I didn’t have the time to cover everything I wanted to last Sunday, and one of the things I didn’t get to was a very important question that was on the back of your bulletin insert last week. I’ve added it this morning, but changed it slightly. This question is important enough that I think we all ought to consider printing this and posting it somewhere you will see it each day. NEXT SLIDE

What did I do today that matters in light of eternity?

Perhaps you may change it to “What will I do today that will matter in light of eternity?”

I honestly believe that we have opportunities each day, to do something that makes a difference in light of eternity, and I think this needs to be the prayer of our hearts at the start of every day. Lord help me not to miss Your divine appointments.

By the way, I don’t want you to think that this will always be some HUGE accomplishment. Do you remember last week when Pam talked about God directing her to comfort a gal she saw crying in a parking lot? All Pam did was to give her a hug, nothing huge, just a hug. I am convinced that this was a divine appointment. You know what else I believe? I believe that the time will come when God will allow Pam to see His purpose behind that divine appointment.

Would you mind if I speculate for a moment?

In my mind I picture some point in eternity that some gal walks up to Pam and says something like this;

I know you don’t recognize me, you only saw me one time in a parking lot, but that encounter changed the course of my life. The day before I had buried my husband and I just couldn’t imagine going through life without him. I pulled in to that parking lot to go in to the store and buy a bottle of sleeping pills, I wanted to quietly end my life. I remembered, that at my husbands funeral, the Pastor had mentioned that there is a God, and that this God loves me and is even with me in the “valley of the shadow of death”. Before I pulled my keys out of the ignition, through my tears I pleaded with that God,

God, if You are truly real, and if You are with me even in the valley of the shadow of death, will You somehow let me know You are here?

All of the sudden you appeared, you mentioned that you saw me crying and wanted to give me a hug. Your hug was the answer to my prayer. Because of that hug, I contacted that Pastor, he and his wife began to meet with me and before long I trusted in Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

I know that you were just saying “Yes” to a divine appointment, but that hug changed my eternity.

Perhaps this isn’t what happened, but I am absolutely certain that God regularly gives us divine appointments, and I am certain that God gave Pam a divine appointment that day. NEXT SLIDE

When we say “Yes” to God’s divine appointments, we are living our life in light of eternity.

This brings us to the next thing God has called us to Steward: NEXT SLIDES

God has called us to Steward our Gifts, Talents & Abilities.

In Ephesians 2:10 we read;

Ephesians 2:10

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

There are 3 important keys for us in this verse.

We are God’s workmanship. This is really a powerful concept. It means that the God of the Universe is presently at work in our lives. Paul doesn’t write “We were His workmanship” as in His work in us ended at the point of our birth. He writes that “we are His workmanship”, meaning that this is an ongoing work. And if you team this up with what we read in Philippians 1:6 “ And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” That makes this concept that much more powerful. The 2nd key is:

We were created in Christ Jesus “for good works”. That basically means that this life we live is not our own, we are simply Stewards. The 3rd key is;

This was God’s plan for us before we were ever even born. Paul writes “which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”.

This means that the Gifts, Talents & Abilities God has given us are to be used in a way that is pleasing to Him.

I’d like to tell you about 2 different teen guys we had in our Youth Ministry when we were in Coos Bay, OR.

The first was Wayne. Wayne came from a stable 2 parent home, I’m pretty sure his parents are coming up on 50 years of marriage. He had been raised in the church. To this day, Wayne was the most gifted musician I have ever know. It seemed like there wasn’t an instrument Wayne couldn’t play, and play with excellence. He had an amazing voice, could act, played the role of the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera and was voted Most Likely to Succeed by his fellow Senior class members.

I had regular conversations with Wayne challenging him to surrender his many skills to the God Who had given them to him. As long as I kept prodding him, he did a pretty good job, but I had to constantly prod him.

The second was Harley. Harley was literally named after the motorcycle. I was never certain who his biological father was, I’m not even sure Harley knew. His mom was on at least her 4th or 5th man when we first met her. She and Harley fled her 2nd husband, or maybe it was her third? Anyways, they had to flee because he had put a hit out on them. As a baby, his parents would laugh as Harley would walk around their living-room the morning after a party, drinking what remained in the bottom of beer bottles left over from the night before. His mom had made somewhat of a turn by the time we met them. Her arms were covered with scars from profane tattoos she had had removed. She was now back involved in the church. Then something happened at the start of Harley’s Senior year. She tried to take her life, ended up spending most of his Senior year confined to the psyche unit of the local hospital. I was his parent representative for Parent Teacher conferences that entire year. While Harley didn’t have the gifts, talents and skills Wayne had, Harley had something Wayne didn’t have, a passionate relationship with Jesus. I never had to prod Harley the I did Wayne.

Harley and Wayne were both very close friends and very actively involved in our youth ministry. They both graduated the same year, and both went on to Moody Bible College the following year. Initially Moody turned Harley down for admission. I placed a phone call to the registrar at Moody and challenged them to reconsider, while Harley may have had some strikes against him academically, God had His hand on Harley. They reconsidered and accepted him.

One of the first phone calls I made when Pam and I were getting ready to head to Liberty was to Harley. He wept when I told him I was now following in his footsteps as a Pastor. My last contact with Wayne he had turned his back on God and was an agnostic.

Our Gifts, Talents & Abilities are of little value if we don’t surrender them to the King of Kings.

The next thing God has called us to Steward is: NEXT SLIDES

God has called us to Steward our Possessions.

In Psalm 24:1 we read; NEXT SLIDE

Psalm 24:1

Psalm 24:1 ESV

1 The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein,

Everything we possess doesn’t really belong to us, it is on loan to us from God to be used for his purposes.

When Pam and I were in the Youth Ministry in Scottsbluff, NE, we were very fortunate to have people in the church who faithfully made their vehicles available for youth ministry trips. After living there for a year or 2, one of the families we could always count on for a vehicle bought a brand new van. They spent a great deal on the van and initially decided not to loan it for trips anymore. I remember getting a holier than thou type of attitude towards them, thinking “I would never do that!” That following winter Pam and I bought a new van. It was the nicest and most expensive vehicle we had ever owned. It was an All Wheel drive van and was excellent in the snow. About a week or so after we bought the van, Pastor Jake had a close friend at a church he had pastored in WI pass away, and the family asked Jake to do the funeral for her. If I remember correctly, Jake and Sherry had an early 80’s Ford LTD. It was terrible in the snow! I recall very clearly very clearly God speaking to my heart and telling me to let Jake and Sherry use it for the snowy drive to WI. It took me about a week to say “Yes” to the Lord. Somewhere along the way I forgot that I own nothing, NOTHING, everything I have belongs to God.

The sooner we learn this truth the better; NEXT SLIDE

Every possession we have is on loan from God and is to be used for His glory and His purposes.

In my minds eye this is one of the most freeing principles in all of Scripture. It means that our only responsibilities when it comes to our possessions, it to properly care for them. Anything, bad or good, that may happen to them when we are led by God to loan them out or give them away is God’s responsibility.

The next thing God has called us to be Stewards of is: NEXT SLIDES

God has called us to Steward our Relationships.

Of all the things God has called us to Steward, this is quite possibly the most difficult one to accomplish. To start with, we need to see our relationships in the same way we see our possessions. So what does that mean? It means that;

Every relationship we are a part ultimately belongs to God and our relationships are to be used for His glory and His purposes.

In every relationship we are a part of, we are God’s representatives, God’s ambassadors. In other words our actions are to reflect Him. That thought ought to color how we handle our relationships and what we do in our relationships. It should color our conversations, our activities, what we watch when we are together, where we go and how we act.

It also means that His light is to be constantly shining through us when we are together.

If these things are not true in the relationships we are a part of, it means there has to be a change in those relationships. That change could mean that they have to end, if we are not able to positively reflect the image God.

The fact that God has called us to Steward our Relationships, dictates that our highest priority in any relationship we have with someone who has not yet trusted Christ, should be that His light shines through us at all times. That is to be our constant prayer and the motivating factor behind our conversations with them.

This brings us to the last thing we are called to Steward:

NEXT SLIDES

God has called us to Steward our Money.

There may be a few here that were hopeful that we would run out of time before we got to this one! To many, this ones really difficult!

One of the best indicators of the depth of an individuals relationship with God is to look through their checkbook register, bank account statement or credit card statement. In looking through these financial indicators the treasure of an individuals heart comes to the forefront. Jesus said in

Matthew 6:21

Matthew 6:21 ESV

21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

This verse is towards the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. In this particular part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has moved in to a special discourse on the individuals relationship to their money. In verse 19 & 20 Jesus says; “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” These verses really fit quite well with the rope illustration we looked at last week. You know every dime we put into the Kingdom of God is an investment into eternity, into the white part of the rope. And;

R.C Sproul pointed out that:

The kingdom of God has never experienced a depression.

The kingdom of God has never experienced a recession.

The kingdom of God has never experienced a bear market.

Because the one who manages everything in the kingdom of God’s never allows there to be a loss.

You can make no better investment than what you invest in the kingdom of God, yet for the vast majority of believers it is the last investment we consider.

A big part of that is addressed by Jesus in verse 24; “24 No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Our natural tendency, if we are not careful, is to allow our money and our possessions to become a god to us, to allow them to rule our lives. We have to make a concerted effort not to allow our desire for money to grow to the point where it becomes our god.

In many ways the concept of the tithe has been forgotten in this church today. In fact some teach that it was limited to the Old Testament Law period. The truth is, the tithe existed before Moses ever gave the Law, and it is also addressed specifically by Jesus in the New Testament.

The Tithe literally is defined as “a tenth”. Pam and I were both taught the importance of giving a tenth of all our earnings from the time we were small children. Neither of us came from homes with much money, and that didn’t matter. From time to time Pam’s parents would give the kids $1. That dollar was broken up into 10 pennies and they always knew that the first penny went in to a bandaid tin to be brought to church the following Sunday to be put into the offering in Sunday School. I recall my parents telling us kids stories of when they were in college. At the time dad was making about $20 a week. The first $2 was always designated for the the Lord.

2 things I want us all to understand, the first is that as parents, one of our most key duties is to train our children about the importance of the tithe. We do this by showing them our commitment to the tithe, and by teaching them in the same way Pam,’s parent taught her.

By the way, for those of you who are struggling financially and think that the tithe is something you cannot afford, I want to point out that the poorest person here today is wealthier than 99% of the rest of the world. And if you read Malachi 3:10 you will understand that you can’t afford not to tithe.

Malachi 3:10 ESV

10 Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.

I believe that ignoring the tithe puts us at a disadvantage financially. Pam and I have always had a commitment to tithing and God has blessed us and always met every need we have had as a result, and there have been many times where our bills were higher than our income.

Stewardship, God has blessed all of us in significant ways, and He has given us the responsibility to be good Stewards of each of the 5 areas we looked at this morning;

Our Time

Our Gifts, Talents and Abilities.

Our Possessions.

Our Relationships. And

Our Tithe

My prayer is that we will commit wholeheartedly to these areas and watch and see as God moves in and blesses us in ways that will amaze us.