Being a good steward = being generous?

This post is dedicated to Jayne Ling, who has been helping me think through how to live out these thoughts.

I haven’t blogged for so long that I feel like I never blogged before!  That’s not very good, is it?  Well, life does happen, and continues to do so…and there have been many times where I’ve had a ‘oooo I think this is something worth blogging about!’ moment, but then I reflect on it and can’t think of putting it into something substantial.  Anyway, I’ve been thinking about, hearing about, discussing with people and praying about something that people take for granted (at least I do).  If you’re a follower of Jesus, I encourage you to keep reading and am keen to hear what you think!  If you’re not, I hope you will keep reading too and that this will cause you to be thankful to the God who holds all things and to whom belongs all things.

Psalm number 24 verse 1 says: ‘The earth belongs to God and so does everything in it; the world belongs to God and so does all its people’.  This was the verse that we learnt in the children’s talk at Church today, and it’s been something that has very nicely summed up what I’ve been thinking about these last few weeks.  See, I started working again, helping a family home school their boy a few hours a week, and so a bit of cash is rolling into my bank account.  It suddenly became so ‘easy’ to spend money!  When you’ve got more of it, you’ve got more ‘freedom’ with how you spend it.  But I think there’s something much more profound in that than at first glance.  If everything does belong to God, then I have great cause to give thanks to Him that He gives me what I have right now!  What a great cause for celebration: God’s huge generosity in providing for me!  But there’s also a great challenge in that: if every does belong to God, then they don’t really belong to me.  They are His and I’m His steward of these things.

What does it mean for me to be a steward of things that belong to another?  Well, if you were an investor for a company, then your job is to work out how to use someone else’s money/possessions to gain them even more money/possessions that have the best ‘potential’ for more!  I don’t think this is far from what being a steward means, actually.  In fact, I think this is exactly what makes a good steward.  ‘Earning’ money has this weird effect – it makes me feel that I really did earn it and I’m therefore free to spend it however I want.  But following the king who ‘though he was rich, yet for [our] sake he became poor, so that [we] by his poverty might become rich’ (2 Corinthians 8:9) means my freedom really is freedom to spend in the service and way of my king!  Romans 8:17 says that we are heirs with Jesus (Imagine that!  I dare you!  To share in the glory that Jesus receives in his resurrection and ascension to the Father’s right hand…!) if we choose to suffer with him – to sacrifice all.  That could mean not buying your lunch everyday, but rather, bring it to uni or work or school.  That could mean not buying an upgrade for your laptop or ipod, but being content with what you have.  That could mean not buying the latest CD of an artist you like.  But I have to be careful here – it’s not about denial of pleasures, but realising that it costs to be generous, and more so, it’s about seeking pleasure in Jesus and not in these things (which really is the key to finding joy in generosity).  It would be pointless to do the above if the money we save from doing them stays in that ‘savings’ account.

I think when we get paid we get excited by seeing the numbers increase in our ‘savings’ accounts.  (I should really explain why I keep quotation-marking ‘savings’ – I think it’s more of a hoarding account.)  But what use is seeing growing numbers in our savings accounts when we compare it with what it could be?  Comparing the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) with Jesus’ description of what the kingdom of God is like (Mark 4:30-34), I’m blown away by what could happen if we invested our ‘talents’ (our possession, money, time, skills, energy) in this kingdom!  It would obviously look like Mark 4:30-34!  I think it’s an image that really excites me, more and more as I learn about and grow to understand what God is trying to achieve through Jesus, not in what He did on the cross, but what he continues to do now as initiated by what happened then.  He’s saving people from the dead to full life!  There can’t be anything else more worthy of spending on.

This all doesn’t mean anything if they’re just thoughts – it’s got to show in my life if this really means anything.  I think I won’t do anything unless there’s some external thing to keeps me accountable, like a monthly deduction from my ‘savings’ account.  I’m wired that way, but you might not be.  No matter how you’re wired though, I hope and pray that I might encourage you and you will encourage me to give generously to see Mark4:30-34 happen through us!  Another idea I had was selling everything I don’t need on Ebay and giving the money that comes from that to someone in need or an organisation that someone has thoughtfully set up to do that.  William Wilberforce once said that generosity must hurt the giver in order for it to be generosity.  I think him a wise and very practical man for saying so.  And I hope and pray that we would be both, not just in our stewardship of God’s money, but in everything.

So let your creativity flow into proactive practicality!