Ep #05: God has Designed You to be a Cultivator

Episode Transcript

Spencer
Welcome back to Second Half Stewardship in this episode will be diving into God owning at all with respect to our gifts and experiences. Last time we had the pleasure of walking through a reflection on God owning our relationships and how that can be really challenging in a lot of ways. When we think about what it means to love God and to also love our neighbor as ourselves.
So as we dive in, I get the joke this time. So, Austin, where does a penguin keep its money?

Austin
Oh, you know, we said a fish, keeps it in a river. I don't know.

Spencer
It's a snow bank, snowbank.

Austin
A snow bank!

Spencer
Dad, jokes never end on our podcast here. So you want to launch a in with a quote?

Austin
Makoto Fujimura, in his book, “Art and Faith” says this “God does not need any of our institutions to exist, period; but God’s exuberant love invites us, broken vessels of God’s choosing, to co-create into the New Creation through Jesus.” And, you know, as we think about gifts and experiences and how uses us in the world around us, He uses us through creation.
He gives us gifts. He gives us experiences. He gives us opportunities to live into the world through being able to utilize those gifts and give them back to him. So, as we think about God owning our gifts and experiences, we think about ourselves as cultivators and creators. You don't have to be an artist. You don't have to be a painter to be a creator. But we take what God is given and we give it back to Him and we are able to cultivate and create. And so as I think about this, I think about Andy Crouch's book “Culture Making,” and in, in that he has five different C-words to think about how we interact with culture and how we can posture ourselves around culture.
So, the five are we can condemn culture. We can critique culture. We can copy it, we can consume it, or we can be culture creators. And each of those, let's be honest, has a place in our life. We can't only be creators. Nor can we only be condemners. So what are maybe some of those areas where we can utilize the gifts that God has given us to condemn some things in culture, to copy, to create, to cultivate.

Spencer
Well, I mean, one that comes to mind for us practically is we have a genocide free screen on investments, because that's something that we want to just be so far from. I mean, if there's one thing that hopefully all of us agree with is that genocide is not okay. And so for those institutions, those companies that are engaging with governments that perpetuate genocide, we want to condemn that and say that really has no place.

Austin
You know, as I think about other of those areas, I think about criticizing culture. You know, the easiest way to do this is we hear a song on the radio, we watch a movie, we actually go and look at artwork and we criticize it. We say what is actually good, and true, and beautiful about this piece of art.
And then where does it fall short of giving God His glory? Where does it fall short of God's intended design? And I think, you know, Andy Crouch brings it up in his book when he talks about critiquing. Oftentimes times we see critiquing as a way to show what's wrong about it. But what happens in that regard is it typically brings that medium, that art more publicity than it actually was intended.
So, I think critiquing is a way for us to really look at it and be like, is there are truth and beauty and goodness to a lot of things. But where is it falling short? And, and what does my response need to be to that? It doesn't always need to be consuming it. Sometimes it's staying away. But, you know, when I think about consuming culture, I'm like, I need shirts.
I don't grow cotton in my backyard. Even if I did, I don't have a loom to weave my own fabric. So, I have to buy shirts. I have to consume culture in some ways.

Spencer
Sure. Well, and if we don't, then we pick up one end of the stick you pick up the other end. So, we can make those choices to live independent of anything. But that's a whole different trajectory entirely. So, we have to get comfortable with there are things that I'm going to stand for, things that I will consume. Let's do that mindfully.

Austin
So, I think these five C’s, they've been helpful to me as I think about, okay, this is part of culture. We are part of culture. I heard at one time, culture is like the Mississippi River. It's going to flow in one direction. I'm not going to change the Mississippi River. I can kind of bounce around within it and I can have little impacts here and there.
But I'm not going to change the flow of the river. Me, as an individual, I'm not going to change the entire stream. So, what does it look like to live within that that stream, that that gigantic river of the Mississippi, which if you've crossed over the Mississippi River, it is big and fast. Let's just be honest.
And I don't want to get caught in it. So, we're going to take a look at Genesis 1-2. We're not going to read the whole thing. If you want to read the whole thing, it's a beautiful unpacking of the creation story. But we're going to focus on a couple of the verses in Genesis 1-2, because I believe that it really shows us what does it look like to be placed in a beautiful world that God has created?
And again, hearkening back to some of this language that Andy Crouch uses, God makes us very good. He takes what is good and it makes it very good. And part of our response and our ability as creators is to take these things that God has given us, that are good, and make them very good. To work with God to make the creation a more beautiful creation.
You know, I think about bread. I'm not a great baker, but I don't like to eat wheat. I much prefer to eat bread. I don't like to eat raw wheat. But that's a part of culture making. And so I'm going to read off a couple of the verses from Genesis 1-2.
So, Genesis 1:28-31 says, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
And then he goes on in Chapter 2:15, 19-20, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” The new American standard says to work and to cultivate it.
Verses 19-20, “Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.”
It's this beautiful picture that God has created the world He has placed us within the world. And then He said, okay, go take what the world has given you, what I have already made, and see it to its full fruition.
God makes grapes, and grapes make wine, but grapes don't just become wine. Just like wheat doesn't just become bread. It takes a culture maker, a human made in the image of God to interact with the land. And I think what's so astounding, even about these verses in chapter two, that God gives us the ability to name the animals.
God could have just said, that's a fish, that's a tiger, that's a lion. But he invites us into the process. And you know, Spencer, you and I have very different gifts and talents. God has created us in His own image, but He's created us very differently in His image. And if we were both the same, then we would create a lot of the same things.
But God has created us as different and unique individuals within this beautiful cosmos that we get to work with Him and with what He's provided to then see a world flourishing. What are some of the things that you see from these passages in Genesis?

Spencer
Well, first, we need to get straight that if you're looking for an expertly prepared cup of coffee, that's Austin's gifting. So, don't put that to me. We'll have some drip coffee for you if you come over to my home. But, if you want an amazing cup of coffee, then Austin is your guy. But, you know, there is that sense of God inviting us in a beautiful thing.
And for this gifting to be different in such a way that we can really bless one another as well, because there are all kinds of different pieces to that. And I think our second text really gets into that, you know, Romans 12:4-8. Paul, speaking to the church in Rome. And before we even dove into that, you know, again, we think about Chapter 12 and what an amazing opening it is.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies is living sacrifices.” So, in that theme of what we've been talking about, God owns it all. Paul is inviting the church in Rome to see themselves as giving all of their lives to the Lord and so all of their gifts and experiences in that. And then as we dove into verses 4-8, it's in light of that giving that Paul is really saying.
So, he says, “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”
So, there's this sense that the Lord is equipping. He is giving gifts to be able to bless the entire body. And so, if I see someone else and they do an amazing work in a certain area, painting, you know, we brought it up, that's not my forte. I can observe that, I can enjoy that person's giftedness and what they create, but I shouldn't look inwardly and feel insufficient or unloved by God because He didn't give me those gifts. There are other things that He's put there, but it's that sense of serving one another and looking at our gifts, our experiences in light of what is the Lord up to? He's weaving this story, He's given them to me for a reason. How do I lay them down?

Austin
Paul goes on and he talks about we're not all a hand are all afoot. How awkward would it be if we were all feet? Yeah, like, let's just be honest. It's just awkward. You're rubbing in different ways. And so there has to be this beauty of. Of a multitude of people.
So, love that passage. Lastly, we're going to take a look at Exodus 36:1. Again, we want to continue to remind each other and remind ourselves that that God speaks of these things throughout the entirety of Scripture. And so, we want to continue to come back and be reminded that God owns our gifts and experiences, He ushers us in to be cultivators, and then He shows us people that have done it. And so, in Exodus 36, we are seeing how God has commanded Moses to start crafting these aspects of the Tabernacle. And the passage says, “Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whom the Lord has put skill and intelligence to know how to do any work in the construction of the sanctuary shall work in accordance with all that the Lord has commanded.”
He has given people these natural gifts to be able to do the work and also in a lot of ways to lead others in doing the work. As I think about times in my life, I don't just learn in isolation. I learn from other people. There's other people that are really gifted at making coffee that I have learned from.
I didn't just learn by going and picking some beans in Ethiopia and then being like, “What do I do with this?” It's somebody else has done an amazing work before me. I remember reading “Every Good Endeavor” by Tim Keller and being struck by this reality that if I were just to try to make a chair, he uses this example. I may be able to saw the wood and build the chair, but where did the saw come from? Well, I definitely cannot make a saw because I don't know how to work with metal. Well, where am I going to get the metal? I don't have an iron ore, he kind of starts expounding this and there are craftsmen that do every little thing that allow me to do it.
And there's people that have come before me that know how to do these things. And so, these two craftsmen and every craftsman in whom the Lord is put skill, Exodus says they're the ones that are going to get work in the construction of the temple. God lays out the plans, but He allows humans to enter it and cultivate and create from the gifts that He's given us.
It's just a beautiful picture that God gives resources, but then we get to enter that story with Him. He is the one that ultimately gives us the gifts, but we respond out of faith in stewarding those gifts that he's given by serving him in a variety of ways. So, where some things ways that you've maybe seen this play out, Spencer.

Spencer
Well, you know, even one of them, it just strikes me as just my own personal journey, you know, to becoming a financial advisor. You know, Emily and I were missionaries over in Asia for four years. I didn't pick up the language nearly as quickly as she did. There were aspects of that that were challenging. They were growth opportunities for me, for sure.
But as I took steps over time to be able to discern what the Lord was up to, it's like, okay, well I really enjoy numbers and processes and working with people and getting into deep conversations. And so, there's this discernment process of, okay, well this maybe is where the Lord's leading you, you know, into financial advising so that discernment process of seeing gifts, trying to lay those before the Lord coming back, that entire process just strikes me as one that I can see as I look back on my own life.
It took a long time to get to a point where it felt like the Lord was doing some different things and utilizing those. And there has to be a level of patience and continuing to lay down our lives. But I can see His hand, along the way in that. How about for yourself?

Austin
You know, even as you were saying that, I think working in ministry for ten years, I started working with some students when they were 18 and 20. And then I got to my quarter life crisis. I started realizing like, oh, maybe I'm not great at this in long term, but then I'm able to see that somebody else went ahead of me in a quarter life crisis.
And I think, you know, your late twenties, it's really that time of God, I see that I have gifts, but I don't know how to use them. And so, it's funny that you say that because my journey to becoming a financial advisor is very winding and that's in a very circuitous way. But how God has set those steps up and continuing down that path is just a beautiful thing.
But, you know when I think about myself, I am very critical at times. As I think of those C’s from Andy Crouch earlier, I am quick to critique culture, whether it's just micro culture, whether it's in our office, whether it's in the formal organization that I worked for it was really easy for me to complain and be like, “This just isn't working, why are we doing it this way?” As a data analyst, I learned how to program in the Python language and it's like, why would we ever do things slow when we can have a computer, do it for us fast and just these things that I'm quick to complain about that I find to be pain points, but often I don't move past that to creating and cultivating. It just stops at the complaining because I don't really want to get my hands dirty. And when you think about gardening, when you think about putting your hands to the soil, it's like crops are going to grow, but you've got to actually get in there and dig in and work the land for them to grow.
For relationships with clients, like we have to get into their life with them. It just isn't going to happen that they just start trusting us. Day one. It's like, no, we've got to get in there and like work these things out day in and day out in the lives of these clients. And so, I can't just be someone that criticizes and complains.
I have to be willing to let God say no, Austin enter into this place to be a creator, not just a complainer.

Spencer
I find it's easy for me when I think about the weaknesses or shortcomings that I have in this area. It's easy enough for me to take those gifts and experiences and say, these are really mine. You know, I worked for them. I should be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor with the business if we've done well or, you know, in various things in life, this is this is really about me.
And it's not. You know, we see again in that Romans passage, it's just so convicting that we lay our lives before the Lord. We are a sacrifice. We before Him and our gifts and experiences really need to be seen in light of that. And that's hard to do. You know, as there's some measure of success, you know, we start to kind of drink our own Kool-Aid, and that's why I think, again, we come back to being in community and particularly, you know, having spouses that have seen that journey.
And they can remind us lovingly that, you know, there's some, points where we can continue to grow and there's some, a lot of things that the Lord's done, in life that it hasn't been us. So, all good things there. So, Austin, next steps for the audience?

Austin
We're going to continue memorizing 1 Corinthians 4:2. Let these verses sink into your soul. “Moreover, it is required that stewards be found faithful.” Just sit in it, and ask, where am I being faithful? And am I being a faithful steward? And then continue to pray that prayer attributed to Saint Francis. “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”
We'll put the rest of it in the show notes. We've repeated it a couple of times but continue to pray that pray it every day. Pray multiple times a day. Let the words sink into you. I remember hearing a friend of mine preach a sermon through the Psalms at one point, and he was saying, I can't remember what Psalm it was.
He said, we sing for joy and we sing from joy. And so sometimes we don't feel joy when we sing. And so we sing for joy to be able to be brought in, to be reminded of God's goodness and faithfulness. And there's times that we sing from joy. And I think it's similar to praying prayers that have been prayed over and over and over.
Sometimes we need to pray for God to make us an instrument of peace. Yeah, sometimes we can pray from a place of I feel like God is using me to be an instrument of peace. And so I think that's a beauty of saying the same prayer over and over. Is it forms us and it reminds us in those times where when I am feeling injury, okay, or when I'm seeing someone that's injured, I want to offer pardon.

Spencer
Amen. Well, and then that last piece, you know, if you think about these episodes that we've had, God owning it all, what we've tried to do is give some specifics there that we line out. The resources that God has given us, the relationships that He's given us, the time that He's given us, the gifts and experiences.
This exercise would be one in light of the ones that we've walked through the last few episodes, but just inventorying and listing out those key gifts and experiences that the Lord's given you, and then taking a moment to reflect on how He might use those and laying those before Him on a consistent basis in prayer.
Because if we see, for instance, that He has given us a gift of tenderness or compassion in a particular area. Well, it would be great to be able to pray and leave that before the Lord each day and ask Him to fan that into a flame that He uses in a deeper and greater way. So, being able to list those out and then lay those before the Lord on a consistent basis would be another step.

Austin
A couple of books that we would recommend in the space. We've said it a couple of times, but “Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling” by Andy Crouch. It's a great one. I'm about halfway through listening to it. I've heard Andy speak a couple of times, brilliant author in this space. Then “Art and Faith” by Makoto Fujimura. Makoto is a painter and he's really able to see kind of that liminal space of what does it mean to both be an artist in the space of arts, but also to see myself as a Christian and to create good, beautiful things in this world that God has given us. So Spencer, as we've thought about this and as we've thought about what does it mean to be a creator? What does it mean to utilize our gifts? Who are some people, that we can look to that have in the past and history shown us what it looks like to be diligent cultivators?

Spencer
I would go from the gifts and experience side, the guy that always comes to me in this example is William Wilberforce, and if you don't know his story, then I encourage you to look more deeply. There's a movie that was made about his life called “Amazing Grace,” but essentially he was the one that the Lord used in the 19th century in England to abolish the slave trade and then abolish slavery.
In the House of Lords, he was the one who brought legislation forward year after year after year and was just unwavering in his push to abolish slavery, in essence. But the conversation that I would highlight there is the author of Amazing Grace, John Newton, who is a pastor several years older than Wilberforce. Wilberforce went to him at the time and said, you know, I'm a new Christian, what should I do with my life?
And he was already a member of Parliament and Wilberforce felt like he should probably become a pastor or go into ministry in some way. And Newton said, no, William, what you need to do is you need to work for the abolition of slavery. And so, he used his life for that. And what an amazing gift to both his nation, our world, that he labored so diligently for decades, you know, in that path.
What I love about that conversation was that Newton could see the Lord was already up to something. He had been up to something in Wilberforce's life far before Wilberforce came to faith. He was seeing as a counselor that that he had that opportunity to step into something that was going to be powerful based on the gifts and experiences that the Lord had already put in him.
As we understand more of our story and what the Lord is doing to put our small piece into His overall story, I think as we parse that out, we have an opportunity to see what He's up to and to be able to be faithful in the midst of that.

Austin
Well, again, as always, if you guys found this helpful or just exploring that idea or are challenged by it, maybe who is someone that you want to share this with that you can explore these topics together. Listen to it together or listen to it separately and talk about it. But we really think that we want this to be something that impacts you, that challenges you to live in such a way that we are trying to live into as well.

But we want to believe that God owns it all, that He owns our time, He owns our money, He owns our relationships, He owns our gifts and experiences. He owns it all. And it's a struggle every day to truly live into it. But as we work this out in community, we feel like God makes us look a little bit more like Jesus.
So share with a friend, talk about it with a friend, and we'll see you next time.