Ep. 088 - Returning to the Foundations of Biblical Stewardship

Episode Transcript

Austin
Having a firm foundation is critical when building a home. If your foundation is built on shifting sand, then you will have structural issues later. The same is true with stewarding God's money. Today we return to the foundations of biblical stewardship because it is critical that we know, believe, and act upon these principles.

Spencer
Austin, as we enter a new year, we thought it would be good to walk through the foundations of biblical stewardship, a good reminder for us as well as we try to live out these principles, and certainly as we convey these in our work with clients coming back to these three pieces, because our culture pulls us away. So often to these core principles.
And so today we get to talk about three of them. Essentially, God is our provider. God owns it all, and we are His stewards. And so we'll get to dive into each of those today. But as you think about it in your life, what's been perhaps as impactful as anything is you think about God as your provider.

Austin
Yeah, no, I think that's a great prompt as well to think about. Okay, we've got a new year. We need to come back. One of our pastors in Denver, when we were living there, said he was in the Navy for just a brief period of time. And he said, you have to constantly re anchor your ship because if you don't re anchor your ship, you're going to drift away.
And I think to your point, like that vision or that that picture has always stuck with me. And so as I think about God as my provider, Psalm 139:13-16 continues to come up. Because if I remember who made me, who knows my days, then it allows me to have a little bit more confidence in being able to either come to him and say, God, I trust you with my daily bread.
But Psalm 139:13-16 says, for you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written, every one of them. The days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. And I think that this is just a beautiful reality. If when we try to take control of our own lives, when we try to put ourselves on that throne and say, this world is revolving around me, it's about what I want, what I need, my desires.
Then I start to think I am the provider, whether that's for my own self or my family's needs. And it gets me skewed away from the reality that God is my provider. If we see in these verses, he was the one that formed us in our mother's womb. He was the one that looks on us and he rejoices over us.
He is the one who, when I was being made in secret, His eyes looked upon me. He wrote all of my days in His book before there was yet one of them. And if I start trying to take control and usurp that throne from the Lord, then I'm going to start thinking, well, what do I need to do to get mine?
Rather than, okay, I can be thankful that God is my provider. What sticks out to you as you think about God as your provider?

Spencer
Well, Psalm 139 is so powerful and these verses are fantastic. I think back also to the first five verses when the psalmist says that the Lord knows his going in and his coming out. He knows the words before they're on his lips. He's hemmed him in behind and before. So there's a view of life that God is going before and behind us.
He is the one that is truly providing, you know, for us in every way, not just even financially, but spiritually, relationally, all kinds of different pieces in life. So I think embracing it for me has been something that has helped me to release control of business and feel like I'm not so much white knuckling things anymore. I want to be diligent.
I want to be prudent. I want to be wise. But at the same time, knowing that God is ultimately the provider. I think particularly in some Christian subcultures and certainly our own, there can be this sense that, put on parents or particularly, husband or father that, you know, you have to provide for your family or something like that.
And I think that that can lead to all kind of energy that is really controlling and not necessarily helpful, where I think that the biblical vision of this is that we get down on our knees and we say, Lord, you are the provider. I do have a responsibility in being faithful to what you're calling me to. But there are passages that we've talked about in the past from 1 Timothy that they're not they're not applicable in, in some of the ways that I think that they're quoted.
So I think coming back to that idea as God is our provider, we release to him. We are called to be faithful. You know, I think about, Galatians 2:20 we live and exchanged life. There. So truly God has taken our sin. He has taken judgment. He has given us a new life, but our lives are surrendered to him.
If we if we take that posture and see His as our provider, then just that simple. Obedience is so often what what our posture needs to be rather than trying to, you know, latch on and control.

Austin
Right. Exactly. And I think that that tension between provider and I have a responsibility to diligently work is something we really need to hone in on as believers, like it is not our responsibility to provide. It is our responsibility to diligently work, and trust that the Lord will provide. Yes. I think we've lost sight of this in some ways, because we're not an agrarian society, by and large, in the West, agrarian societies.
You have to wait for the Lord to provide the rain. You can make aqueducts. You can do these other things. But the Lord still has to provide the rain. And we've gotten so far away from that. But I think our grass has said you need to provide not. It is your responsibility to diligently work. And I think we see this in 2 Thessalonians 3, where Paul is commending them, don't just provide for these lazy gluttons like they need to do their work.
They need to participate with the body of faith. And I think if we reframe our mindset to where I get to go to work, I get to get up every day and serve the Lord as He has given me life. He has given me breath. He upholds the universe by the word of His power. As we see in Hebrews 1.
Just this reality that He is the one that owns it all. He is the one that gives us the things that are in our hands, and it's simply our responsibility to trust him and move in faith to what He’s doing, rather than try to grab control.

Spencer
Well, and you lead right in there to the second point. God owns it all. And not only is He’s the provider for us, which that shift in posture is so important, I think for all of us. But, you know, I think about as a business owner, not I'm providing or I'm making things happen, but I'm being faithful. Also, I think for a lot of our clients who are heading towards retirement or they're in retirement and maybe they're not, working in the same way they don't have W-2 income or a paycheck showing up every two weeks or four weeks or whatever it might be.
There's a different level of trust and rest in the Lord. Oftentimes that has to happen because you're not even, you know, working 40 hours a week or whatever it might have been, there. So that that has to really reframe to have a level of spiritual depth, I think, and dependency on the Lord. But it comes back to also God owns it all.
And this, I think, can help reframe, not just Him as provider, but because He owns it all. Our posture towards what we receive from Him as provider also needs to be a little bit different. You want to unpack that a little bit?

Austin
Yeah, absolutely. And as I think about that, you know, if God owns it all, I always have to reframe this is my time here on this earth is temporary. God's time in all universe and space is eternal, right? He has created it all, and therefore it all is His. And we are simply stewards that manage it. And so I always have to come back to when I think about God owning it all, it's because I have a temporary management here on this earth.
And so all of these resources are His. He's placing them in our hands. And I look at this from again, Hebrews one three. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sin, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
The reality is Jesus, with God the Father was creating the universe. And then he is upholding the universe by the word of his power. If he stops speaking, we all stop existing. And so he is holding it all in. And so he owns all of these resources. Everything that we touch, we have to start thinking it and seeing it in light that God is the owner and he can call me to do whatever he will with these resources that he's placed in my hands.
And so I think if I have a temporal nature and if I look at my life as I am the, I get to own everything again, it comes back to Well, I get to do whatever I want to do with it. If I am the owner, at the end of the day, I get to make the decisions based on what I want, but the reality is, if God is the owner, he makes the decisions and I have to follow him as to what is good and true and beautiful.
That's the real anchoring that we got to come back to. Is that this, this building, this, these spaces that we live in, our homes, our cars, our everything, our bank accounts, they are all in subjection to whatever the Lord would do. And I think we've again, as I think about socio-politically, economically, historically, where we're at, we live in an incredibly safe, incredibly stable time and space where there's not a lot of danger that we fear.
And so I think we try to grasp for control. Rather than continuing to have an open posture where maybe again, if I lived 200 years ago, where things were maybe a lot more dangerous in some ways, I might have less of a grasp on, on these resources. It might be more tangibly easier for me to say I have enough, because God provides for me every day.
But I think releasing that, that's where we have to start moving from our head to our heart to our hands, to saying, okay, I know that God owns it all. I know that he's provider. What does that then mean for me to actually trust him that he is the owner of all.

Spencer
Yeah. So often it's, it's we take the world's perspective which is everything should be structured to fulfill my wants and desires and needs. And so I own everything. And then let me just sprinkle a little Jesus on top. We'll do like 10% to the church or maybe that's too aggressive. Maybe we'll just start with 5% and we'll just give away that.
And that'll keep God happy.

Austin
Yeah.

Spencer
Whereas God says, no, I have something far greater for you because I, like you, said, I uphold the universe by the word of my power. That is a vastly different perspective and worldview. When you say, no, he's he's keeping all things together. And I am a steward of his, you know, we're we're princes and princesses of the king.
We have access to all of these resources. All of this relationship capital, that oftentimes we don't tap into. And what we cling to then is the control of this small amount of resources and and the utilization thereof. And, you know, we cling to that, and, and we give away a little bit of it and we think that we're fine, but we miss so much more.

Austin
Right. Well, and I think even to your point, we are so worried about that tithe piece that we don't take the warnings of Scripture really seriously. We try to say, well, that was an Old Testament mandate, so we don't really need to do it now. It's all freewill gift. But if we look and we say God is the same yesterday, today and forever, and we look at the book of Malachi and where God is telling the Levites you are robbing from me by not bringing the tithe into the storehouse, like this is actually a really serious thing where we try to say, this box is all of mine and I'm gonna sprinkle a little Jesus
on top. I don't believe that makes God happy, I think because again it tries to say, well, I gotta hold on to all of this and it forgets that God is my provider. It forgets that he is actually the owner and I am the steward. If I put myself as the owner, it allows me to sprinkle a little Jesus on wherever I want to or okay, I see the the gift catalog come in at the end of the year and I think, oh man, I haven't given anything this year.
I'll go ahead and write a small check and neglecting that, maybe we've made hundreds of thousands of dollars and $100 check to the church. Maybe that's not commensurate with what God is desiring. And I think it's it's because we have this vision of the good life and how I should deserve the good life to be given to me.
I was struck recently. I was listening to a podcast and Jonathan Pageau, he's an orthodox icon carver of all things. But he suggests, as he's looking at the entire narrative of Scripture, that when we looked for freedom, he says, freedom is only found in understanding the laws of Christ. That our truest freedom is really found when we know who God is and we follow under his law.
I think we can see within the world around us. If no one knows what is good and true and beautiful, and we're all trying to create this own picture for ourselves, then we're actually not free. And so by choosing to submit to a God who loves us, who has breathed life into us, who upholds us with the word of his power, actually submitting to what the scriptures say about managing God's resources is actually going to bring true freedom.
Submission to God's ordinance, submission to okay, God, this is not mine. How do I live in a way that honors you as a steward? And so, Spencer, you want to start us off talking about that idea that man is a steward. Our role is not the owner. It's not the one that gets to decide and pull the strings wherever it goes.
It is simply, okay, I'm going to submit to the Lord he has provided. These are his resources. How do I steward them? Well, what are questions that we typically ask there?

Spencer
Well, I think sometimes we come back to the question of even what is a steward, because it's an older type of word that we maybe don't use quite as much in our culture these days. But a steward is just one that's been entrusted with a set of decisions on behalf of an owner. And so, just like John Wesley pointed out, we don't get to make the decisions.
We are entrusted with resources. And so as steward, we are listening to the master, knowing the master's heart, knowing the master's intent. And then we translate that into our action. Now, as stewards, the goal, the responsibility is not perfection. Yeah, the goal is the best effort and the best set of decisions that we can. The master knows us better than we know ourselves.
And so the master is going to know the limitations that we might have in making excellent decisions. So the bar is not set that we have to be perfect, but the bar is set in such a way that we have to know our role, which is not the owner. And that is the fundamental difference. So a couple of passages that we look at here, 1 Timothy 6:7 says, for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.
This gets back to that idea of us being limited, bound by time, Austin, that you were highlighting earlier. And it's so important because we are only stewards for a season if even if we have a tremendous amount of financial resources or we have a huge level of influence, we're only going to have that for a season. You look at folks as they age, even the presidents or the senators.
The tremendous church leaders. As they get older, their influence really wanes. I think even a Billy Graham, you know, as he got into his 90s, he didn't have the energy. He didn't have the capacity to have as many conversations. And so he had been one of the key leaders of a movement for decades. But his influence waned as he got towards the end of his life.
Because that's the way of humanity. We pass away there. We have to look to the Lord, as the real owner of all things and just a giver of whether it's influence or resources. A second passage that we look at, Ecclesiastes 3:19-24, what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same as one dies, so dies the other.
They all have the same breath and man has no advantage over the beasts. For all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust and to dust. All return. So this is even a more sober vision of what's going to happen. It's also hearkens back to the biblical language of us coming from the dust and having the life of God breathed into us, which is beautiful because none of the beasts actually have that.
But it does recognize that our end will be in the dust, just like all the beasts. I think one of the things that is so helpful in the Anglican tradition, every year we come to Ash Wednesday and we have ashes imposed on us, and we're reminded that we will return to dust in a very visceral way. So I think as we reflect on these pieces, we have a temporary amount of time that we can use, whether it's the relational capital, the financial capital, whether it is the time that we have, we can use that and we can we can do so with joy because God's given it to us.
And he didn't have to give us that. He didn't have to give us these days. He didn't have to give us the financial capital, the relationships that we have, so we can be grateful and really joyful that we have this time, that we do. And we can, listen to the master and then employ those approaches that he would take with it.

Austin
Yeah, absolutely. Well and, even as you were talking, I was thinking about this video from faith driven Investor that Tim Tebow is on, and he's talking about risk and, and his investments. And he's like, actually, I think the greatest risk is if we do nothing, if we do nothing to steward the master's money. Well, if we're too concerned with doing it perfectly, like you're saying, the risk there is not deploying the resources, deploying master's resources to his heart, to the things that draw him and give him joy and exuberant abundance.
I think this is the risk that we have as stewards, if we continue to put it, trying to get it into our nice little box, that the man that dies with the most toys wins, it's like, well, you're still dead, and you're dead with a bunch of stuff that's going to rot away versus sending on those treasures into the kingdom by investing in companies or people or image bearers of God that are seeking good things, like the restore all of humanity to Christ.
I think this is what it means to be a steward is that we lay down our lives and say, God, how would you have me use these resources? And what is the risk if I sit on the sidelines and I don't do anything? I think I thought that was such a strong and powerful way to think about this.
I think the greater risk is not doing anything versus risking and maybe taking a step of faith for the Lord. And maybe it not going the way that we expected it to, but we say, God, I followed you and I trusted you, and I sent these resources on ahead to something that, man, you did some incredible stuff with it, and maybe the balance went to zero.
But the risk is not that I, I think the greater risk is that we build too many barns. And what we'll continue to talk about this in future episodes, we'll come back to this over and over and over again. But there's just so many commendations in Scripture, whether it's from Christ or Paul or just across the board of, wealth can really rot and destroy our soul.
And so the risk is building too much wealth versus deploying our wealth for kingdom causes that may or may not pan out for our own good.

Spencer
Well, and even the level of wealth allows us a level of decisions sometimes to be able to do some of the fun things that I don't think in and of themselves are necessarily bad. But if our greatest joy is taking that vacation every year, that's the thing that we look forward to the most. We need to recognize that perhaps the level of wealth that we've accumulated has given us some choices that are slowly leading our hearts away from God rather than, okay, if, the Lord takes away that capacity to have that vacation every year, or, I need to have some constraints that are a bit different.
That doesn't take away the chief joy that I have, because the chief joy that I have is in listening to the Lord walking with him, serving him in the context of community, those kinds of things. It doesn't take money to be able to do that well. But some of the things that are the trappings of, the world, that's where our hearts, I think can get, can get pulled over such that we may fear the loss of some of, the resources to be able to do those things when in reality, in a more biblical view, I think if we have open hands and thank God for those opportunities that we do have
to use those resources but not cling to them as our identity, that's a better posture.

Austin
Absolutely. Well, Spencer, thanks for talking through this idea of just those foundations that God is our provider, he owns it all and we are stewards. And our next episode we're going to talk more about foundations. But really, how do we use God's money? We come back to this idea. We can use it to live, give, owe, or grow.
So clients, if you have questions about what does it mean to be a steward, we would love to have those conversations with you and we'll see you again next time. Take care. If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss the next episode.

Disclaimer
This content was provided by Second Half Stewardship. We are in Knoxville, Tennessee and you can visit our website at www.secondhalfstewardship.com. The information in this recording is intended for general, educational and informational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment advisory, financial planning, legal, tax, or other professional advice based on your specific situation. Please consult your professional advisor before taking any action based on its contents.