What if we don’t steward gifts well?

ByBridges Team

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week we concluded our series Use it well, Stewarding God’s Many Gifts. Over the course of the series, you may remember we talked about God’s good gifts of time, work, children, words, trials, and finally, finances. So the question comes in this week asking, what if we don’t steward these well, what if we don’t use God’s gifts for the purposes for which they were given?

What if we do squander them or waste them?

The answer is really, it leads to a diminished life, both for us and for others. God doesn’t give us these gifts for us to somehow then give something to Him. We are never the giver. To Him. He is always the giver.

We are always the receiver. It’s not as if God needs any of these. God doesn’t need us to use these gifts for the purposes for which he’s given them. The reason he has given them is for us, it is blessings to us. And so if we don’t interact with these gifts, steward these gifts, well, it’s not like God has lost out on anything.

He is totally sufficient in Himself. But we lose out on something. We lose out on the type of life we could have had. We damage ourselves, we damage others if we don’t use these gifts according to the purposes for which he has given them. As we think about all of these different gifts, of course there’s an aspect of faithfulness to God.

We want to listen and obey, of course, but our obedience to him doesn’t add to him, it adds to us. Even our obedience is a gift to us. And anytime that we don’t follow him, the one that we are hurting is not him, it’s us and it’s others. God always wants what is best for us and has laid out these gifts in a way, has given instructions for these gifts.

In a way, it’s all for our benefit.

And so we pray as you continue to reflect on God’s many gifts, that we will develop more faithfulness, that we will grow in our stewardship over them, both for our own flourishing and for those around us. So thanks for the question. We’ll see you next time.