It’s Mine

 I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. John 17:9 NIV

 Our one-year-old grandson was recently playing with the toy of his three-year-old sister. She spied his activity from afar, hastily ran over, snatched the toy from his hands and yelled, “Mine!” Sound familiar? YES! Question: Do we ever really change?

 People commonly say, “It is my life. It is my time. It is my money. My house. My car. My church. My ministry. My desire. My retirement. My children.” The rich man in Luke 12 spoke of “my barns, my crops, and my goods.” One of the 10 Commandments even addresses the sin of coveting. What is coveting? It is wanting more of the pie for ME! What is the businessman taught? “It’s a dog-eat-dog world. So eat them and take from them before they do it to you.”

 Much of this coveting emphasis has carried into our Christian lives…and soured us in many respects. It has poisoned how we view life in general…and people in specific.

 Ajith Fernando writes about today’s verse: “If Jesus, the Lord of all creation, could speak as he did about the Father owning the children, how much more should this be true of us. We do not own anyone, even our own children. They belong to God, and they have been entrusted to our care for a time. So our relationship with them could be described as STEWARDSHIP rather than OWNERSHIP. “ (Jesus Driven Ministry, pg. 160)

 What is a steward? “A steward is one to whose care is committed the management of the household.” Jesus devoted a lengthy parable to explain our role as stewards in the kingdom of God (Matthew 25:14-30). I encourage you to take three minutes to read that passage today.

 Stewardship living (viewing everything as belonging to God rather than us) is a much different way of living than what is pushed by Western society…and swallowed by us. It is what I describe as vertical living (everything in my possession is borrowed for a short time from the hand of God) versus horizontal living (everything in my possession is mine and primarily for my distribution or enjoyment). 

 Wonder which will make us freer and less stressed? Stewardship living draws from God’s bank account called grace, lives by faith rather than sight or emotions, trusts and obeys in even the darkest hour, treats everything and everyone as God’s rather than ours, and brings everything and everyone in our personal universe into the right eternal perspective…that this world will soon pass away but he that does the will of God will abide forever…and part of doing the will of God is planting God in the lives of those around us. It is heavenly living in an earthly world.

 Let us pray for more than a vocabulary change. Let us pray for an attitude change into that of a steward of our heavenly Father.

Tom Swartzwelder was born again at the age of nine in an old-fashioned revival meeting. Tom received his B.A. from Tennessee Temple University and his M. Div from Luther Rice Seminary. He has pastored for nearly forty years in both bi-vocational and full-time roles. He provides practical how-to-do-ministry resources for the disciples of Jesus Christ at http://www.godsgreenhouse.net. Tom’s latest book is “God Speaks–Today!”