Sermon: What is Good Stewardship?

Scripture Text: 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 12:13-21

Quotes for Reflection

Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions, and Eternity
Water is a gift of God. Used properly, it gives life. Out of control, it floods, drowns, and destroys. Fire is a gift of God. Out of control, it brings horrible destruction and death. The greater a thing's potential for good when used rightly, the greater its potential for evil when used wrongly. So it is with money—it has vast potential to be used for either good or evil.

Kim King, When Women Give
Money is simply a tool. Right? How do we use this tool? There are only three options: We can save. We can spend. We can give. None of these choices is inherently good or bad. What makes money good or bad is its use.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
If our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little.

Thomas Merton, The Seven Storrey Mountain
As the week went on, the house began to fill, and the evening before Holy Thursday there must have been some twenty-five or thirty retreatants in the monastery, men young and old, from all quarters of the country. Half a dozen students had hitch-hiked down from Notre Dame, with glasses and earnest talk about the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. There was a psychiatrist from Chicago who said he came down every Easter, and there were three or four pious men who turned out to be friends and benefactors of the monastery— quiet, rather women personages; they assumed a sort of command over the other guests. They had a right to. They practically lived here in this guest house. In fact, they had a kind of quasi-vocation all their own. They belonged to that special class of men raised up by God to support orphanages and convents and monasteries and build hospitals and feed the poor. On the whole it is a way to sanctity that is sometimes too much despised. It sometimes implies a more than ordinary humility in men who come to think that the monks and nuns they assist are creatures of another world. God will show us at the latter day that many of them were better men than the monks they supported!

Application Questions

1. What do you learn about your own heart from the parable of the Rich Fool?

2. Creating a cushion, ditching bad debt, and planning ahead are essential movements that enable generosity. What is God calling you to focus on in this season in order to become a cheerful giver?

3. Looking back at this series, what’s your biggest takeaway?

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Podcast Episode 10: Stewardship & Generosity with Ben Cox

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Podcast Episode 9: Trusting Faith & Generosity with Joel Paul