What The Bible Teaches About Stewardship - Part 1 | Faith

By ZigfredDiaz
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Word Count: 523

Parables are said to be earthly stories with heavenly meaning. Every time Jesus Christ speaks in parables he is trying to convey a lesson to all of us.

Christ teaches us about the principle of stewardship through His parable of the talents as written in Mathew 25:14-27. The importance of Stewardship is emphasized by the fact that except for the Kingdom of God, Christ talked more about stewardship than any other topic.

The dictionary defines a steward as a person who manages and administers what has been entrusted to him by another. Genesis 1:28 states that, when God first created man he told him to "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." The New Testament is filled with verses reminding us that we are stewards of God's resources. We can see from the Bible that as Christians and as human beings we are stewards of everything that has been entrusted to us by God.

So what are the things that we should be stewards of ? We are to be stewards of our time, money, our abilities and our life. In the parable of the talents, the principles of stewardship that we can learn from Christ is as follows:

1.) OWNERSHIP - Verse 14 tells us that the Master is the owner of the goods that was entrusted to the servant.

In the same way we should realize that all that we have is not ours it is the Lord's and that we are only entrusted with it. Having this mindset is one of the most important principles of stewardship because only then if we think this way that we will be more responsible as stewards.

2.) PRINCIPLE OF ABILITY & DISCRETION - The amount of goods entrusted to each servant was determined solely by his ability and the discretion of the master (verse 15)

We are blessed by God with different abilities, gifts, economic status in life and other blessings. This is given by God because He has a purpose for each and everyone of us. God gives us these things depending on His discretion and our ability. Even though we think we have more ability than others, we cannot question God if He gives others more abilities or more wealth than us. What we should do is to develop our abilities and to give our best for Him.

3.) THE PRINCIPLE OF FREEDOM - Verses 16 to 18 tells us that each individual servant was given full freedom to decide on what to do with the goods given to him.

God did not make us robots. We were given freedom of choice by Him. As human beings God gave us a certain level of freedom as to how we are to fulfill His purpose for us. So, in order to make the best out of our lives, our actions must governed by His instructions and that we must only act within the boundaries of his plan and instructions.

This is part 1 of a 2 part series. Should you wish to view the entire article please visit my blog.

About the Author

Do you desire to read more articles about practical christian living ? Visit the blog of Zigfred Diaz where he writes about several important topics including about law, leadership, entrepreneurship, management, financs, investments, technology, internet marketing, blogging and theology.

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