We are Stewards, Not Owners, of Life’s Resources – Part I

Blog Series

Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble

It is said that you cannot break the laws of God. You can only break yourself against them when you violate them. In this series we are looking at some of the simple and clear “laws of God” – that is to say, “biblical principles” – that we must follow if we do not want to bring very negative cause-effect consequences into our lives.

Lesson from a chicken-plucker

Some years ago, when I was teaching at a Christian college, an older student told of a time when he was working in a chicken processing plant in Alaska. The chickens were terminated, dipped in scalding water, and placed on a conveyor belt. The belt fed the chickens into a box-shaped gizmo at the end that had a million rubber fingers whirling madly on the top, bottom, left and right, with only a small hole in the middle for the chickens to pass through. They came out the other side without a feather on them, ready for additional processing.

One of the co-workers at the time was relentlessly obnoxious and spent a great deal of time harassing other workers and his boss. It was not merely irritating, but truly insufferable. The boss was a very quiet man who rarely spoke, but one day he was the brunt of an unrelenting verbal assault. He reached his limit. He picked the offender up and threw him onto the conveyor belt which immediately fed the man through the whirling gizmo. According to eyewitness reports, he quickly came out the other side beet-red with not a stitch of clothes on!

For many of us, that is a parable of life. Sometimes things build up and make us feel as though someone has picked us up and thrown us on the conveyor belt of life, feeding us through a whirling gizmo (which includes our work, the house, the car, the family, the lawn, the neighbors, the daily news, our finances, our health, etc. etc.), and we end up on the other side, beet-red, with nothing left to give.

So, what do we do when life tries to take more from us than we can give?

We are stewards, not owners

To begin with, we must understand and accept that we are stewards, not owners, of life’s resources, and we are to invest them to fulfill God’s will, not our own. That way, God determines our consequences in life, not us. He does not ask us to be successful. He only asks us to be faithful.

A steward is someone who administers the possessions and affairs of another. Properly seen, we have nothing of our own. Everything we have belongs to God, and is to be managed according to God’s priorities (Matthew 25:14-30).

Everyone has been given the same set of resources: time, talent and treasures. We don’t all have the same measure or degree, but we all have some of each. So, we are each to use our time as the Lord wants us to, our talent as the Lord wants us to, and our treasure as the Lord wants us to. That is the essence of being a steward.

Stewardship of time: We all have bad “time” days. I heard a story about a man whose secretary buzzed him one day and asked who was in his office with him. He said, “It’s me. I’m beside myself.” Shortly after that, he got his tie caught in his fax machine and ended up in Los Angeles. Later, he got in his rental car and drove off in all directions!

The time pressures can get so great, and our world moves so fast, that managing our time according to our priorities can be a significant challenge. Yet, we each have an equal amount of time: twenty-four hours a day. In the Scriptures, we read concerning time:

• Be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, redeeming the time for the days are evil (Ephesians 5:15-16).
• Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, redeeming the time (Colossians 4:5).
• Teach us to number our days that we may present to Thee a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12).

This blog is not a time-management seminar, so we cannot go into detail on time-management principles. But we just make the point that it matters to God how we use our time. Our affairs are His affairs.

Likely, we fall into one of two camps:

1. We are careless about our use of time, and need to be more disciplined to use our time according to God’s priorities and not our own.
2. We are diligent about our use of time, and need to guard against getting overwhelmed with our inability to get as much done as we would like.

No matter which camp we are in, we can fall back on key biblical principles.  God expects us to be responsible and do our best, but He does not expect us to do better than we are able.

Several tag lines have been helpful for me:

• All we can do is all we can do; and then we can’t do anymore.
• There is always time to do the will of God.
• We are called, not to be successful but to be faithful.

So, use your time wisely, but do not embrace the burden of trying to do more than you are able. Finding God’s balance is the key.

Next week, we will look at the final two areas of stewardship for a Christian, stewardship of talent and stewardship of treasure.  I look forward to seeing you then.

Two helpful resources for the stewardship of time are:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey, is a mega-bestselling guide to time and life management from a very high perspective.
• Organizing Your Day, by Sandra Felton and Marsha Simms, is a detailed and practical guide to daily time management from a Christian perspective.

In case you’re new here

The entire “Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble” series is in the archives, beginning with the first post on July 26, 2022. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives.

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