Skip to main content

Stewarding Friendships, Part 1 by Pastor Kevin

By
Tonight I will be teaching our students (grade 6-12) on the topic of stewardship and friendship. The main course of this year is our study on Galatians/James. Supplementing this study is the string of lessons on stewardship. It is our desire as a church to help our junior and senior high students to begin understanding themselves as stewards in this world. 


What is a Steward? 

Stewardship is a lens through which an individual understands themselves and their existence. Rather than seeing themselves as owners (my possessions belong to me) they see their possessions belonging to God, which God has entrusted to them to be faithfully invested for His purposes. If an individual is to live with God in their lives they must come to view themselves as stewards of everything that is precious to them and everything that belongs to them. 


Another way to think of it comes from Randy Alcorn: "a steward manages assets for the owners's benefit...it is his job to find out what the owner wants done with his assets, then carry out his will." Mark Driscoll points out three distinguishing characteristics of a steward (Driscoll, Doctrine:What Christian Believe, 373):



1. "A steward gladly acknowledges that he or she belongs to the Lord" (Romans 1:6).

2. "A steward recognizes that everything ultimately belongs to the Lord." Consider the concept of stealing and how it implies ownership. 
3. "Stewards seek to faithfully oversees all that God has entrusted to their oversight."


Stewardship as Discipleship and Worship

According to Driscoll, stewards are always asking the question how should I be investing my "time, talents, and treasures." To be an individual who faithfully learns to steward these treasures is to worship the God who owns and gives. Stewardship is a key component of discipleship as an individual learns to plan, budget and utilize everything they have for the glory of God. Stewardship requires submission, it requires understanding, faith, trust, wisdom, and fellowship. 


Jesus, the Ultimate Steward

Ultimately, Jesus was the perfect example of stewardship. To quote from Driscoll one last time Jesus was the "most generous giver that the world has ever known. There, he took our sin and gave us his righteousness. He took our condemnation and gave us his salvation. He took our death and gave us his life...He gave us the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts for ministry service and is preparing for us a kingdom in which ewe will enjoy his generosity together with him forever" (Driscoll, 371).


Connecting Stewardship To Friendship

On the one hand it is questionable whether or not stewardship and friendship should really go together. After all, it is easier to think of measurable, objective things like money and time that we can possess and manage. Thus, friendships are not really something believers are called to steward. 


On the other hand, friendship and stewardship are two peas in a pod (see what I did there?). Friendships are provided by God and they do qualify as something we ought to treasure. God also has instructions for his people on how to manage friendship according to His purposes. I believe friendship is something believers must steward. 



More proof yet is pointing to Jesus as the ultimate steward. What did he steward and for what purpose? Wasn't it friendship with those whom he saved? When wetly about the generosity of Jesus on the cross wasn't it to make friends out of enemies? When he shed his blood and when he died and rose again wasn't it for the purpose of reconciliation with God? Consider this verse from John 15:12-15
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

Drop mic. In all honesty, Jesus was not only the ultimate steward, he was the ultimate friend and steward of friendships. To be friends with the living God is quite amazing and it is the result of Jesus stewarding the task His Father had given him. 

Well, this post is already getting long and we are only halfway through. I want to talk a little bit about what the Bible says about friendships. 

Come back for Part 2


In Christ,

Pastor Kevin

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord, by George Muller

By Anonymous
To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord By George Muller “It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Worship Songs, October 15, 2017

By
We post these worship songs leading up to the worship service so that parents may listen to them in the house or in the car within the days leading up to the worship service. Our hope is that children will hear the songs prior to and it will prepare them to participate in worship on Sunday mornings. My Redeemers Love Hope Has Come I Will Glory In My Redeemer Blessed Be Your Name Here In Your Presence Your Glory Be Still My Soul (In You I Rest) -- Sermon Text: John 11:1-16 That the next generation will set their hope in God and not forget the works of God (Psalm 78:7).
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations on the Glory of Christ: He Sits at the Right Hand of God

By
In Hebrews 1:2-4, the author makes seven claims about Jesus that when taken together greatly exalt his glory. The seventh claim the author makes about the Son is that, having made purification for sins, he now sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high. The words “he sat down” set the stage for chapter 7 where we’re taught that Jesus is both Priest and King. Prior to Jesus, no king offered his own sacrifices and no priest sat on the throne of David, for that wouldn’t be right. God had decreed that there should be a separation of powers between the priest and the king, but Jesus, unlike all before him, is worthy and able to fulfill both roles. So, on the one hand, Jesus sat down at the right hand of God after making purification for sins because the sacrifice he offered, namely himself, is sufficient. Other priests were always standing, as we see in chapter 10:11-14, because their work was never done. The blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins, so the priests could...
Post a Comment
Read more