The Treasure Principle

As much as I enjoyed posting to this blog, I have several blogs and could not maintain them all.

I have learned a lot in the past several years about stewardship and practically everything I have learned can be found in Randy Alcorn’s The Treasure Principle.

I highly recommend buying this book and reading and re-reading it. You will be blessed as you learn God’s principles so you might honor Him with the finances, possessions, time, and talents that He has given into your care.

Moving Posts Today for The Steward

Today, I moved all posts from this blog to another blog, The Sovereign.

As good stewards, we should have a right relationship with our Sovereign, so I decided one blog was better for all the content. I was not writing enough for each blog, but together, I should be writing more frequently.

Thank you for faithfully reading The Steward and I hope you enjoy The Sovereign. The Sovereign also contains topics related to the return of Christ.

Remaining Faithful to the End

Two men owned farms side by side. One was a bitter atheist, the other a devout Christian. Constantly annoyed at the Christian for his trust in God, the atheist said to him one winter, “Let’s plant our crops as usual this spring, each the same number of acres. You pray to your God and I’ll curse him. Then come October, let’s just see who has the bigger crop.”

When October came, the atheist was delighted because his crop was larger. “See, you fool,” he taunted. “What do you have to say for your God now?”

“My God,” replied the other farmer, “doesn’t settle all his accounts in October.”

God’s compensation for both believers and unbelievers is usually deferred. But a day is coming upon all men, when the announcement from heaven will ring out, “The time has come for judging … and for rewarding” (Revelation 11:18). This will be the “appointed time” of judgment (l Corinthians 4:5). “At the proper time,” Paul says elsewhere, “we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” So he encourages us, “Let us not become weary in doing good” (Galatians 6:9).

From In Light of Eternity by Randy Alcorn, page 129

The Dinner Plans

“Whenever you give to someone who is helpless or needy, you are serving Jesus and, in turn the Father. In addition, I can tell you from personal experience that serving those who can’t repay you brings the deepest satisfaction.

“Several years ago, Vonette and I were about to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I was trying to think of a special, elegant place to take her that would express how important she is to me. I wanted it to be a meaningful evening.

“But . . . after discussing the plans with Vonette, we agreed that instead of going to an elegant hotel . . . we would serve meals to the homeless. We knew a friend who ran a kitchen for the homeless, so he arranged for us to go.

“Soon after we arrived, we were given our assigned places in the serving line, and people began walking by cafeteria -style. Right away I noticed that these people carried an air of defeat. No on e looked me in the eye. I found myself identifying with them. I thought, But for the grace of God, what happened to them could happen to me, and I began to weep.

“I served for an entire hour with tears streaming down my cheeks. I thought about the compassion Jesus had for people as He ministered to them. I recalled . . . Matthew9:36: ‘[Jesus] felt great pity for the crowds that came, because their problems were so great and they didn’t know where to go for help.’ The experience . . . gave me a deeper compassion for people who are less fortunate than I am. “

–[Excerpt from Discover the Real Jesus by Bill Bright, pp. 107 -108]

Great Resource for Stewardship Research

I just found a great site today if you want to learn more about stewardship.

The Generous Giving website has three search functions that you might find useful:

• You can search the Bible about money and giving.
• You can search for sermons about stewardship (some are audio, some written out).
• You can search about money and giving by author as well.

The Exact Amount

Recently, our friends, Tom and Betsy, wrote us how God directed them to donate toward our ministry. We wanted to share what they wrote because God encouraged us very much through this letter.

“Tom and I wanted to share the following with you because we felt it would be a wonderful testimony to how God provides and works through his people.

“We have been praying about your situation for quite some time. You can imagine the requests we get for assistance each day . . . Each time Tom and I receive a request we pray about it separately and together, then after a period of time we come together and discuss what God has revealed to us. . . most of the time if God wants us to give he will give us both the same amount.

“. . . for the last month and a half our schedules have been extremely busy and neither one of us had been spending the quality time in prayer that we should have been. . . I was mowing the yard and talking to God and the two of you were on my mind. I told God that if he would provide extra funds, then I would take that as He wanted this for you. That day, . . when I greeted Tom I asked him to retrieve the mail and when he returned he said, ‘look at this.’ It was a check from the IRS for $329.47!

“I looked at Tom and told him it had to be fake and . . . I shared my conversation with God from the morning mowing.
Tom said, ‘Well now we have our answer.’

“Tom called [the IRS] on Tuesday and found out that the check was from 2005 from an over payment of $300.00 . . . and that the $29.47 was the interest.

“May God continue to bless us all in unexpected ways and may we always be the stewards that he created us to be.”

We could not have said it better!

The Wind Beneath the Wings

Mike and I just had the privilege of attending Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, where Chuck Swindoll is the senior pastor.

Pastor Chuck taught extensively from Romans 12: 3 – 8 this past Sunday. When he dug into verses 6 – 8 about spiritual gifts, he said “the giver is the wind beneath the wings of the visionary.”

I especially liked that word picture of how important giving is and how the giver is a part of the ministry.

Do I know a ministry that speaks to my heart? Do I support that ministry in prayer and financially?

If the answer to either question is “no,” then I need to find a ministry that shares the same vision that I have for reaching people and I need to begin supporting it.

If the answer to both questions is “yes,” then I am sharing in that ministry’s impact on people’s lives.

A Jubilee

I decided a few days ago to have my own version of a Sabbath Rest. Every seven years, the Hebrews were to allow the land to rest. On the fiftieth year, the Jubilee, slaves were freed and all debts canceled.

I could use a rest and the freedom that goes with it! I have such a backlog of paperwork and other things to do that it is impossible to catch up, so I am starting over.

I spent a good part of 2007 tossing things out from various closets and am now mostly left with unfinished paperwork. And yet, I felt chained when I looked at all the things that were left undone.

Now that I have a Jubilee mindset, each day for the last few days, I have gone into various areas of the house where paper is stashed and cleaned them out to what is only a few weeks old. I am giving myself the freedom to have a fresh, new start for 2008.

My goal will be to have the stray piles of stuff gone by the end of the year, as well as some new good habits to keep things under control so I am managing myself well. I am expecting to be freed from pressing and nagging to do’s. I am hoping to have more time for what I really want to be doing. I may even think about doing this again in seven years.

The Walkie-Talkies

I kept looking toward the roller coasters, nervously tapping my foot. I had waited more than a half an hour, instead of enjoying the theme park. I needed to meet up with the rest of the family, but time crawled as I fidgeted on the bench. It was only natural that I asked for walkie-talkies that next Christmas.

For several years after that, the walkie-talkies were a great help on a lot of our vacation trips. Now in 2007, we use our cell phones when we need to connect, but actually our kids really don’t want us to split up anymore. They want us to spend the day together when we go to a park.

The walkie-talkies waited silently in a drawer for two years until last month when I came across them and knew it was time to find a new home for them. They were still in good condition and worth a little bit. However, I don’t do yard sales anymore, so I did not even think about selling them. Instead, I started thinking about who might use some walkie-talkies.

I tried our church because our campus is getting more spread out, but they already have some. I was getting a little tired of the time and effort of looking for new owners when I thought of friends of ours who were expecting their fifth child. This little princess is due soon and will find herself in a homeschool family with four active brothers, ages four to fifteen.

I sent an e-mail off to Jo. She was thrilled and so was I. Now she can stay inside when she needs to rest or watch little ones and know she can easily reach her active boys. The boys will have a lot of fun with the walkie-talkies, too.

Of course, I could have just donated these to a charity. It would have been easier, but it is a lot more fun and rewarding to find a need and help to meet it.

Too Busy With Things

“We have too much stuff!” I fumed as I stumbled past a pile of stuff in the garage.

This wasn’t the first time I had hit my limit on the things we had accumulated. I had been trying to “purge” the house for several years now. I felt like Eustace in C. S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Eustace was unsuccessful in removing his dragon skin. Only Aslan could do it. For Eustace, the skin symbolized his sin that only Christ could remove. For me, the clinging dragon skin represents all the trivial possessions and projects that consume my time and energy. I have been pruning things out of my life and home with a goal to simplify my life, but it is now time to let Jesus dig deeper than I had been able to do on my own.

It was a revelation to me to learn recently that my struggles to downsize my possessions affect my availability to share Christ. The top four hindrances, in order, that keep Christian workers from sharing their faith are exactly in reverse order from Christians in general (The Top Four – Part One). They are:

1. Busyness
2. Not knowing nonbelievers
3. Lack of know-how
4. Fear

Busyness is definitely an issue for me. I am often too busy with possessions and projects to give people a little droplet of my time that can mean an ocean of eternity for them! I remember experiencing real freedom in this area during Hurricane Frances in 2004. We had evacuated to my son’s apartment, taking only the bare essentials with us. I finally had time that weekend! Without all the things to distract me, I had lots of time available for my family. Unfortunately, we returned home to an unwanted skylight and a puddle of brown water, with blobs of soggy pink insulation in the kitchen, so we were more-than-our-usual busy for a long time after that.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus explains that the seed sown among thorns symbolized “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things.” What was the result of sowing seed among thorns? The thorns choked the plant, “making it unfruitful.”

Some very good questions to ponder from this parable are:
• Am I caught up in the concerns of this life? And in desires for more things?
• Am I deceived by what I own? Is something taking the place of God in my life?
• Am I unfruitful because of what I own? Or because of how much I own?
• Am I willing to let Jesus help me “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” so I can more easily run the race God has given me? (See Hebrews 12: 1 – 3)

As Eustace explained after his experience with Aslan: “Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt . . .”

I want to be free to serve, not entangled by so many things. To go deeper may be painful in some respects, but I am ready. It’s not worth holding on to things if they are hindering me in my availability and usefulness.

P. S. If you would like encouragement in sharing your faith, you might be interested in my blog on Way-of-Life witnessing, The Sower.