Ep #08: Stewardship Requires Reflection and Sacrifice

Episode Transcript

Austin
Welcome back to the Second Half Stewardship podcast. We are again so glad that you continue to listen in and join with us on this journey into the idea that God owns it all. We recognize that for some of you this is a new topic. For some you are fully aware of the God owns it all, but we're just really thankful that you would spend your time with us.
So again, last podcast, what we talked about is we looked at the idea of how much is enough, we're going through the Live, Give, Owe, Grow framework. If you don't know what that is, review the last couple of podcasts, we go in a little bit more depth about that framework, but we spent most of the last one talking about live. This idea of our lifestyle and how we use money to live.
And we looked at first Timothy 6, where it says godliness with contentment leads to great spiritual gain. And then it also talks about you cannot take what you have with you into eternity what we have here on the Earth, it's going to perish. It's future trash. It will burn your hand and we can't take it with us to eternity.
So why do we raise up all that stuff and try to just get more stuff right? We also talked about the idea that love of money is a root of evil. All kinds of evil. And then we finish with thinking about, well, God is the provider and we need to trust him as the steward and we get to be stewards of all that he provides for.

Spencer
Today we're going to get into a deeper reflection on that idea of live what is what is lifestyle look like for us. Again, we've got those four parts of what we can do with money as stewards. We can use it to live, we can use it to give, we can grow those resources. And of course, we owe the government and we owe any debt that we've taken on.
As we think about today the overarching framework is that stewardship requires a level of reflection, which we talked about a little bit last week. We'll dive in further, but also of sacrifice. And so as we think about that, you know, if God owns it all, then everything that we have, again, we've got to be open handed with Him.
There has to be that level or ideally we have a level of reflection to be able to listen to the Holy Spirit, because these are complicated decisions. We need to be praying. James one five again, that we've been encouraging you to memorize, to be able to ask God for wisdom in the moment. So you had a thought on the story that really relates to this?

Austin
When we lived in Denver, we had some friends that lived with us and they had two young kids at the time. They would say to their children, “we love people and we like things, but if we start to love things more than we love people, we need to give those things away.”
Because at the heart of it, again, the relationships will last far longer than stuff ever will. And so if we start loving things it's just it's not healthy. It's not good. It leads to greed, it leads to covetousness, it leads to a longing and desire for more. And God tells us to a similar attitude. We love God and we appreciate the gifts that He's given us.
If we start to love stuff more than God, then we definitely need to start giving that stuff away because it will only lead to ruin and it will only lead to death.

Spencer
And it seems like God invites us to take a look at the quality of our heart in that. You were talking about your friend's reflection really there. On what was he and what was his family loving more. But if we don't have space to reflect on that, if we don't have space to go before the Lord and and let him examine our hearts or be in community, very difficult to even have that awareness.

Austin
So, as we dive a little bit deeper into this idea of lifestyle and a lifestyle that requires reflection, I think about if our lifestyle is really grand today, then to sustain a grand lifestyle in the future, whether it's in retirement or in the next decade or whatever the next season is, I need to continue making more money to maintain a grand lifestyle as my lifestyle creeps up and it looks more and more like covetousness, more like greed, more like consumptionism that I'm going to need to make more money to maintain that lifestyle.
And similarly, if I have to have a bigger lifestyle and I have to have a bigger income, I'm going to owe more taxes. And if I have a bigger lifestyle, more likely than not, I will have more debt. And more likely than not, I will be giving more of my income to grow so that I can sustain that lifestyle for a long time, whether it's saving more or investing more or chasing the next thing that I can do to make more money to maintain that lifestyle.
And I think oftentimes what it also does is it hinders my ability to give because I'm chasing what is that next level of whether it's the next car, the next boat, the next house? I remember and some of the courses that I just went through for financial advising it, it often talks about clients that had multiple airplanes. I think one airplane is probably extravagant.

Three airplanes though, why do you need why do you need three airplanes? But it's just that once you get to a certain place, it's the expectation that you will continue to get more stuff right. And it hinders everything else.

Spencer
There's a reinforcing cycle. And then it becomes even harder to really listen to the Lord because we've already kind of set the grooves of our life. We can move back the other direction, but it takes more energy. It's that flywheel effect, you know, pushing the flywheel, you know, you get it going in a virtuous direction, then you have momentum on your side if it's going the opposite way.
And then you have to have conversations with your family about how you need to cut spending, about your with your friends, that maybe you can't do the trips or the activities or what have you, all those things that makes that the level of difficulty increases.

Austin
You and I were talking a little bit earlier and lifestyle becomes generational. Yeah. And what I, what we experience with our kids now sets them up for and they can break out of it. But how much harder, like you were saying, is that flywheel once it's moving right. It's so much harder to break out of.
And if my kids are also in this flywheel, right, of we take lavish vacations, we do we go out to eat at the nicest restaurants we like. We don't say no to the things that we want. It sets them up to a longing for a lifestyle that they can have whatever they want. So our lifestyle becomes generational. So I know that we need to think about what lifestyle I living, but what lifestyle am I setting up my kids to anticipate that they deserve right?

Spencer
Well, and that it can pigeonhole them even into certain paths or professions because they feel that they've got to have a level of income for that. And I think the flipside is you have to be careful because we see in Jesus life that every now and then he was not against having a party.
He was one that would have a great time, would enjoy, you know, participating in big feasts and weddings. And so we want to balance that by saying it's not just we want to be frugal, we want to be thoughtful about how we're stewarding and how we're making these decisions. And the beautiful thing is, if we bring our kids into the decision, oftentimes, at least if we do it when they're young enough, they're moral conscience will help us because they can see people in need.
They can bring those elements up. So it's not as though our experience and our small experience, at least in this, is that we don't have to twist kids arms. They have a sense that when people are in need that that they're willing to make changes. But the conversation has to be started with the family, too, to unpack the trade off.

Austin
We were talking with our kids about giving a couple weeks ago and not 6 hours earlier. There's a friend of ours that is in need and they were talking about how they could pool their resources together to give to this friend. They see the needy and they want to help those in need.
And so if we in our lifestyle separate ourselves both from the needy and opportunities to give to the needy, right, then it limits that. And you know, as you were talking about, we have to balance this and Jesus loved a good party. I go back to that passage from Ecclesiastes that we looked at a couple of weeks ago where it says that for apart from a life with God, you can eat and drink and have enjoyment.
It's not that eating and drinking and having enjoyment is bad, it's that we need to enjoy it with the Lord because He is the one that so graciously gives us the opportunity to to have those things. So let's have extravagant parties because it can be good if it's celebrated with Jesus. I think of our wedding feast that we go to and there's extravagant parties and it's beautiful because we're celebrating this beautiful union of man and wife that reflects Christ and his bride.
It's a foretaste and we get to look ahead. We can't do that all the time. And we can't covet that and say, I can only wait for when that is all I do. But it is a good thing in times of celebration and in seasons of celebration. So let's go ahead and shift into our first passage for today.
Our first passage is 1 Timothy 6, again, this time we're going to look at verses 17-19. So, last week, I believe we looked at 6 to 10. Our last episode was 6 to 10. Now we're looking at 17 through 19. And again, Paul is writing to Timothy. So when he actually calls his child in the faith and again, we're building off of that passage last week where it talked about that contentment leads to great spiritual gain.
The love of money is a root of all evil, and Paul again precedes those verses to tell Timothy to flee from the love of money and other list of sins, and pursue righteousness, pursue godliness, pursuit, pursue faith, love, perseverance and gentleness. So Spencer, you want to read off the text and unpack it a little bit for us?

Spencer
So again, 1 Timothy 6, starting with verse 17. “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” So a lot to unpack there. We see Paul moves in towards compelling Timothy to ensuring that the riches that that he's looking towards would come from God not, from, not from putting hope in riches. That would be temporal riches there.

Austin
Reminds me back of that Exodus passage that we looked at last week that God was reminding his people, you are not the one that earned this income to build this house. I God, I'm the one that provides for you. Don't forget that God is a provider and the instruction is that the wealthy be rich in good works.
It's not just that they be rich in earthly treasures because they can't take that with them. We look back at that passage from 1 Timothy 6 from last week. You came into this world with nothing. You leave this world with nothing. So why become rich in earthly treasures? Become rich and good works, become rich and service godliness and contentment is going to lead us into those rich good works.

Spencer
Well, and there's, there's a charge or a real warning to the rich that we just can't get around here. It is something that Paul puts extra emphasis on, you know, here and in a similar way Jesus does this. I mean, we find this all over the Gospels. You know, we were just going through a course together, kind of a seminary type of course, related to what God says about money. It just really, really strikes him how many times Jesus goes back to the dangers of riches.

Austin
Oh, so frequently.

Spencer
He doesn't talk about the dangers of poverty in the same way. He actually reframes the conversation usually to say, well, blessed are poor because they understand their need. Yeah, he doesn't say that about the rich. And in fact, there are many times that rich people come to him, whether it's the rich young ruler or other people who they can't square their current lifestyle with what Jesus is calling them to, it's very difficult for them to leave.
Our second passage that we're getting into today, Matthew 6:19-21 says, and this is Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount kind of an unpacking of his core teaching to his disciples towards the beginning of Matthew, he says, right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, “19 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. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
And I love this because Jesus, in effect, is saying, don't make a dumb investment. We like to think that we're smart investors. There's not anybody that I think I know I shouldn't say that. There are very few people that will say I'm a dumb investor. I have no idea what I'm doing. You know, most people, they say, well, I've got this idea.
You know, they kind of think of themselves as an above average investor. Just like all the children of Lake Woebegon. So, you know, we have this sense that we've got this capacity for good investment. And yet Jesus is saying if it's in this world, if you were just accumulating, that is not a good investment. Don't lay up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, saying this is all going to pass away.
It's future junk, you know, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. So it's that shift in focus where, you know, as Randy Alcorn says, so succinctly, we can't take it with us, but we can send it on a head. And so it's that focus of saying, okay, as a steward, Lord, what would you put into my hands?
And then how do I take as much of that as I can for the purposes that you would have? And getting that into a kingdom place. Because at the end of the day, you know, one of the things that we'll get into more at the end of the day, if we keep more as a steward, then would be wise.
We're typically investing in things that don't really align with God's kingdom yet. I've yet to find a publicly traded company that was that did anything that was really aligned with God's kingdom. They're awesome. You know some good things about publicly traded companies. You could buy, you know, stock in all kinds of different companies, but they don't really align with God's kingdom.
But if we take those resources and we distribute them in the manner that God tells us, be it to the church or a charitable institution or a friend in need or helping the poor more generally then we are fulfilling that. We are being a wise steward of that right? So much more.

Austin
So much more often. And Jesus continues to say, like, you can't serve God in money. And you know, when we think about publicly traded companies, I think all through my time in undergraduate and business school and they said the principal job of a for profit publicly traded company is to make money. No matter what, that is your only responsibility as a for profit publicly traded company is to make money. And if it is the only end is to make money, then they are serving money.

Spencer
Yeah, well and I would even interject there in the MBA program at University of North Carolina, I loved my time there had a professor who I think very rightly said, if we are investors and we have a thousand different investors or 10,000 different investors in a publicly traded company or a million investors, however many it may be, the only thing that we're really going to agree on is that we want the company to make money.
You know, we're not going to necessarily agree that they take this moral stance or prioritize this over here. But we can all come back to say, okay, I want to be rewarded as a shareholder. So to him, he said the only moral obligation these companies have is to pursue making as much money as they can.
And you know, he had a very logical presentation, argumentation that now again, I'm not adopting that, but I'm just saying that is the trajectory of our publicly traded companies and that is not the ethos of God's kingdom. There are a lot of different pieces beyond just making money right there are. We want to we want to highlight.
So there is an inherent conflict. If we keep extra resources, yeah, we keep resources above and beyond what we might ever need. Yeah. We're going to be holding those resources in a place that is at least somewhat at variance with what God would have there.

Austin
Yeah. And I think continuing what Jesus finishes those verses, but then he goes on and he reminds the people in the Sermon on the Mount, don't be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you'll drink or your body, what you'll put on it. Look at the birds in the air. They neither sown or reap or gather into barns like he is saying.
Look like your father feeds them. He will provide for you. So he's looking at this. He's saying you cannot serve God in money. You cannot store up all these things in like don't sort of in excess because then it's just going to be a hindrance. You don't need it. Your kids don't need it.
Then why do you continue to store it up? And oftentimes it leads to that anxiety of the question of do I have enough. If you already have enough, then why not give it away. Rather than being anxious about what's going to happen to it. The bigger the nest egg, the harder it's going to fall when it falls.
And if it's so much more than what you need, it's going to feel a lot more. And so how how much more to be stewards to then say, okay, God, I have enough. I don't have to be anxious about my life. You have clothed the lilies of the field greater than Solomon and all his splendor.
And we looked at Solomon and he had a lot of splendor with the lilies of the field were provided their clothing by God. And Jesus calls us in the midst of this conversation about where is your heart again? He says, your father will provide for you. And I think out of an anxiety, out of a societal anxiety, that we will never have enough.
We continue to build bigger barns, to continue to allow lifestyle to say you need more, you need more anymore. Push the envelope, make it much money, save as much money as you can because you don't know what tomorrow holds. Rather than saying, Lord, I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I'm going to open it and I'm going to trust you.
I'm going to give us this day our daily bread. I'm going to say that every day. Lord, I need you to give me my daily bread. I don't need to bake my daily bread.

Spencer
Well, when we come back, you know, there is a place for saving. There is a place for growth that that category that I've talked about. But as we talked about earlier, we need to have more grow if our lifestyle is that much bigger. And so if we laid our lifestyle before the Lord and we feel like he's leading us in a particular way, then we have a sense of how much is enough because we can do some good financial projections.
We can, you know, we probably need to have some investments, you know, in stocks and bonds. And, you know, there's a reason that that we want to do that. But we think about how much is enough for us in our lifetime and kind of what we sense the Lord is calling us to. And then how much is enough, to pass on to other people that we love. Because if we're really serious with scripture and outcome of lives, we see that having resources is a burden, you know, having too much, being entrusted with too much. It changes lifestyle, it changes our trust in God. And so, you know, I would love to be able to help our kids get into a home, get their education paid for.
There's lots of different things that I want to be able to get behind them and help them. And I'm also aware that I'm a saver, you know, by nature, I want to I have a tendency to save more than I would need. And so I need to really look at that and say, okay, am I saving more than I really need?
Am I starting to shift that conversation where I'm not depending on God so much? But I'm just looking at this financial projection and saying, well, I'm okay because I've saved so much. And that's a fine line. But it's one that is very real there because we don't want to go back to Deuteronomy 8, which we saw on the last episode where the people of God, we're going to walk away.
Moses knew that their hearts were going to become hardened when they had success. Yeah, you know, and we see that so much in our own culture with the successes that we've had, you start to say, Do we really need God? You know, this is just from my own brilliance.

Austin
Well, and I think when we have that conversation of how much is enough, I think we have to be very honest that the line is probably a lot lower than we think it is. And I think we just have to wrestle with that. If there are neighbors in my neighborhood that live on a third of my salary.
How much is enough is a very different conversation. And it doesn't say I need to live like they do. But I think we get into a mindset because of the lifestyle creep, because of the thousands of ads that we see, because of who I'm around, then I think, Oh, enough is this. When enough may be less than that.
And again, that is a place where you wrestle with the Lord and you wrestle with your community. And to figure those things out. But I think if I, if I honestly take it before the Lord, I will most often times probably be surprised that how much is enough is probably less than I think it is.

Spencer
Well, I mean, having examples in our lives so helpful. I think of Rich Mullins, brilliant Christian singer songwriter that passed away in a tragic car accident many, many years ago. But he was one of the most sought after singers and singer songwriters of his generation. And yet, for a season there, every year he would give away half of the clothes in his closet.
And they were the clothes that were the best of the clothes, because he wanted to come back and say, I can live on less. I don't need a lifestyle that continues to creep up. I need to have rhythms in my life to pull me back to center, to know that I've got believers, Christian brothers and sisters around the world that are living on almost nothing.
And then we don't do this out of just a sense of obligation or a sense of a Father that is is angry at us. But we do it from a Father that loves us, that is reminding us that he's going to cloth and he's he's going to do that and that he invites us into that faith, which we really have to do choose to move towards.

Austin
Faith in some in a lot of ways means obedience. And obedience is oftentimes hard because sometimes I'm going to admit, I don't always love to be obedient to what God calls me. To be sure, it's much easier to want to do it my way. But obedience to the father is far better in the long run than obedience to my desires.
So, a couple next steps that we've got just to think through is we're going to shift to memorizing. Matthew 6:24 “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.” And so I'm just going to sit in that for a little bit.
We can't serve two masters. We're going to be devoted to the one and despise the other. It's going to be God or money. So, sit in that, try to memorize it and wrestle with it with the Lord. The other thing we'd recommend is just journal one thought about money. Anything that you've noticed in the last 24 hours, anything that God might have revealed a purchase that God either led you to or didn't lead you through.
And just journal about it. Wrestle with God, talk about with the friend. What else you got, Spencer?

Spencer
Yeah, I think. I think, again, as we carve out space to become aware of what the Holy Spirit might be leading us towards, then that can be a really fertile place that God can can do work in our heart. But we've got to have the space to do that. If we pack our lives so full with activity and distraction and purchasing, we, we, we lose that opportunity for silence, for for solitude, for reflection, for hearing on something like this.

Austin
So in the next couple of episodes we're going to continue looking at this Live, Give, Owe, Grow framework. We're going to talk about the giving piece of it next because if we do limit our lifestyle it frees to give. Similarly, because Jesus cares about what we keep, we want to be generous givers.
And giving breaks the power of money. And so, again, that's kind of where we're looking to go. If you've got a friend share this with a friend and talk about it together and we'll leave you with Randy Alcorn. Quote again, You can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. So as we as we end the day, think about that. You can't take anything with you, but you can send it on ahead. See you next time.