The Importance Of Stewardship In America
A steward is a person who is employed to manage another person's property. the idea here is that Christians are given the world, we are given time, we are given health, we are given money, we are given abilities and we are given energy and all of these things are given by God, all of these ultimately belong to God and we are to then invest these things generously in to God's purposes in the world. In other words, we are supposed to be investing in eternity.
But the idea of stewardship is not real popular with Americans, because we think of our lives in terms of our rights. We have the right to do what we want with what we earn. We have the right to use or abuse our bodies anyway we want. We have the right to spend our time doing whatever …show more content…
We want a church where all of our desires are catered to. We want a job where we can do just what we want to do and no more. We want a life where all of our resources: time, talent, energy, money, where all of our resources are for our use for any choice we choose no questions asked. That's what we want.
But does that kind of life really work? You know it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to look around our society for examples of people who have lived that kind of life and we have to ask ourselves, does it work? Are they happy? Are they content? Are they fulfilled?
A good example of a person who lived exactly the "me first" life was Howard Hughes who was a billionaire back when a billion dollars was a lot of money and he had political influence. He could date just about any woman he wanted. He controlled massive parts of the business world. He was on the cutting edge of aeronautical research. He was famous and yet by the end of his life he was a drug abusing, confused, insane person who couldn't even care for himself.
Our culture has bought into this "me first" mentality, but when we look at the lives around us, does it really seem like this is the way we were meant to
But the idea of stewardship is not real popular with Americans, because we think of our lives in terms of our rights. We have the right to do what we want with what we earn. We have the right to use or abuse our bodies anyway we want. We have the right to spend our time doing whatever …show more content…
We want a church where all of our desires are catered to. We want a job where we can do just what we want to do and no more. We want a life where all of our resources: time, talent, energy, money, where all of our resources are for our use for any choice we choose no questions asked. That's what we want.
But does that kind of life really work? You know it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to look around our society for examples of people who have lived that kind of life and we have to ask ourselves, does it work? Are they happy? Are they content? Are they fulfilled?
A good example of a person who lived exactly the "me first" life was Howard Hughes who was a billionaire back when a billion dollars was a lot of money and he had political influence. He could date just about any woman he wanted. He controlled massive parts of the business world. He was on the cutting edge of aeronautical research. He was famous and yet by the end of his life he was a drug abusing, confused, insane person who couldn't even care for himself.
Our culture has bought into this "me first" mentality, but when we look at the lives around us, does it really seem like this is the way we were meant to