Growing up in the church, specifically Southern Baptist churches, I have always heard a lot about stewardship, at least one part of stewardship. If you would have asked me 10 years ago what it meant to be a good steward, I would have said something about tithing and giving your money to the church. And while that is part of it, I believe the Bible has so much more to say about stewardship. Now, I want to preface this by saying that I have heard other pastors talk about this same thing and not everyone in the church is a money only steward.
According to dictionary.com the word steward has a lot of different meanings. My personal favorite is: a person who manages another's property or financial affairs; one who administers anything as the agent of another or others. And isn't that exactly what we are doing in this world? As Christians we are the agents of our Father and what we have was given to us by Him.
Lately, I have been challenged to be a good steward with all the blessings in my life. Time, resources, marriage, children, family, environment, money, these are all areas where we are to be agents for Christ. What good am I as a witness if I raise my children to love God but don't tithe, or I love my husband as a Christian wife should but spend no time in the Word, or I use my talents to praise the Lord but take no concern for the Earth He has given to us? It is no easy task being a follower of Christ, we are (and rightly so!) held to a higher standard. We are judged by the outside world every second of every day. We are supposed to take these things into consideration daily. 2 Corinthians 6:3-4a says, "We live in such a way that no one will stumble because of us, and no one will find fault with our ministry. In everything we do, we show that we are true ministers of God." (NLT)
One of the biggest problems that people have with the church, both Christian and non-Christians, is hypocrisy. We say we love God, yet we use curse His name; we say we believe God created the universe and all the life in it, yet we support the death penalty, forgetting those we are fatally injecting are His children, someone He knit together in the mother's womb (rough paraphrase of Psalm 139:13).
But I digress, I am trying to hold myself accountable for the choices I make. Choices with my children, my husband, my money, and my time. I'm not going to get a second chance to get this right and I won't have another chance to be the kind of witness I desire to be. I'll have to check-in in about 6 months and update you on my progress, but feel free to send me reminders of what I should be doing!
If you want to see all the definitions of the word steward, follow this link: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steward
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