Image via WikipediaThe God of the universe invites you to discover that you are His unique creation. He urges you to accept Him as Lord in all that you are and all that you do.
When you acknowledge God’s Lordship of your life you give Him the right to rule over your life. But, simultaneously, when you call Him Lord, He gives you a new responsibility called "stewardship." Stewardship means "to manage and administrate resources belonging to someone else." As Lord, God is the owner of your talents and abilities. As steward you are responsible for their wise use and investment.
Many of Jesus' parables provide insight into the meaning of stewardship. Let's look at one that is especially helpful.
What Is Stewardship?: A Parable
In Matthew 25:14-29, Jesus tells the parable of the talents. Take a few minutes and read the parable. This parable teaches some important lessons about stewardship. First, stewardship means entrusting what is rightfully yours to another. This is exactly what God does with you when you present your life to Him. Presenting your life to Him means you acknowledge His ownership. By entrusting your life back to you, God makes you a steward.
Second, though we have different talents (abilities, not money) entrusted to us, we are each responsible for the wise investment of precisely those talents that are given to us.
God only expects you to achieve results in your life that are consistent with the measure of skills and abilities He's built into you. Yet, at the same time, "To whom much is given much is expected." This phrase doesn't just refer to your abilities. It can also refer to your knowledge of God and His Word, your citizenship in a free country, your income, or hundreds of other resources God allows you to manage.
The more God invests in you, the more He expects of you. It was true in the parable of the talents, and it's true today. This has staggering implications for those of us who God has richly blessed.
Third, the goal of a steward is to meet the Lord's expectations. Two of these stewards knew the master well enough to know that he expected them to invest his money; the third either understood the master's expectations and disregarded them or did not know what the master expected. Either way, the third steward failed.
God has invested talents in you, not only in the form of money, as in the parable of the talents, but in the form of skills and abilities. He expects you to invest those talents in work that meets His expectations.
Understanding the principles in the parable of the talents should help you understand stewardship better. It provides important insight regarding who is responsible in your career decisions. Yet understanding how to make life decisions as a steward requires knowing what your Master expects and who He holds responsible for making decisions.
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