00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 682 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Joe salsi high from the stacking Benjamins podcast. I encourage you to find ways to be inspired, to find financial freedom. And one way I do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friends, because you see to him that touched him that was near and dear to his heart.
00:00:33 That was something he could understand. He could understand the concept of having your toys destroyed much easier than he could understand the concept of having your home destroyed. Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:01:05 Learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world in today's spiritual foundation episode about investing in others. I talk with you about viewing stewardship as a family, why this is important and how it can change us. And I give you some specific ways you can do this no matter where you are on your journey.
00:01:41 Last week, I talked a little bit about stewardship as a Christian when we were looking at it as an individual. And today, as we talk about investing in others, I wanted to talk about stewardship as a family, you know, weather, and again, family here, let me be clear. I can use that term somewhat loosely. Obviously it can apply to parent with children,
00:02:05 husband, and wife partner of some sort. It can also apply to parents and children going the other direction. Whenever, you know, adult children with their parents, it can talk about cousins, aunts, uncles, but basically just the connected unit. And it can even be talking about the family that we choose to allow into our life. The people that were closest to you that were nearest and dearest to.
00:02:31 And when you think about stewardship again, this idea that we should take care of things for the good of others, that, that we are blessed by God with certain resources. And because of that, we should pour out those blessings on others. You know, from Luke chapter 12, verse 48, from everyone who has been given much, much will be required.
00:02:53 And to whom they entrusted much of him, they will ask all the more this idea that when we are given blessings in part, we're called to do something with them, and we're called to do something that helps others that grows the kingdom. However you want to phrase that. And so if you think about that from a family perspective, and I'm just going to illustrate this with parents,
00:03:17 with children, but again, this can apply to any sort of family relationship. It's important to recognize that building a foundation of giving and serving others helps the family. And it helps change who we are and who our family is. It can become part of the family, DNI DNA. It becomes something where it's, who are we? We are givers.
00:03:42 We are generous people. We care for others. We take care of other people. We take the benefits and the blessings that we are given, and we try to expand them, not for just ourselves, but so that we can reach out and help and pull up other people. It also allows us to, to recognize how fortunate and blessed we often are.
00:04:03 We can become blind to our own blessings. We can pretend blind to our own privilege, but when we engage and recognize other folks and help serve them, it can help pull us out of that recognize too, that this is about helping and serving others, not in a, I've got all the answers, I've got the money, I've got the solution.
00:04:25 Let me come in and tell you what you need kind of way. I think oftentimes that's the mistake we make. When we think about stewardship, we think about it as you know, I've got something and I'm giving it to you. I actually think about it as more of a partnership where you're, you're finding what expertise and what knowledge does the person have.
00:04:46 How can we cocreate and live together and work together to create something that is even better, that is more able to serve you and to help you and to help others? How do we bring this together for all of us to benefit? Because the truth is that the giver often receives every bit, as much as the receiver, if it's done, right?
00:05:13 Because it doesn't become a one-way journey. It becomes about the relationships that we build. It, it changes who we are and it changes others. And it does it in a positive and uplifting way when it's done. Right. And when you think about that, recognize here, there are a lot of specific ways you can begin to teach stewardship to your children.
00:05:36 One thing is from a very early age, as they began to, to whether it's getting an allowance or earn money for doing chores, to encourage them, to set aside some of that money for saving some of that money for spending, and then some of that money for giving. And I don't care if you're religious and give a tie, or if this is just about giving some money to other people,
00:05:58 but you can also find ways to give back time. You and your children go volunteer for an organization that is near and dear to your heart, whether it's the local food bank or food pantry, whether it's a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen, whether it's a shelter that takes care of battered women, identify things, work with your children. As they get older,
00:06:20 to find things that are near and dear to their heart, the things that they want to focus on, groups that they see as in need, and then work with them to find opportunities to not just give money, but to give time and energy to these organizations, you'd be amazed at how much and how often kids will want to give. I can remember with my son,
00:06:47 we had a, a major hurricane that had blown through and we found out that a lot of children had been left. You know, their homes were devastated and they were left without toys. My son was very young at the time and we told him about this and he went into his room and he came back a few minutes later with a big bag that was bigger than him and dragging it behind him.
00:07:09 And he said, here's all the toys I don't need anymore. And I don't want any more. And it was basically almost every toy in his room. We actually had to sit down and go with him and go through all of them and really identify what were the things that, that were things ready for him to give. And what were things that perhaps he wanted to keep.
00:07:26 And, and then what were the things that in other ways, how could we give to these children that were in need? What else could we do as a family to help take care of these kids that were hurting, that were needing because you see to him that touched him, that was near and dear to his heart. That was something he could understand.
00:07:44 He could understand the concept of having your toys destroyed much easier than he could understand the concept of having your home destroyed. And it was something that he felt like he could do something about here. He had blessings, he had gifts. He had toys that he had, and he could turn and give them to these other children. That's what stewardship is.
00:08:06 And oftentimes I think children come to this more naturally than we do as adults. And it's out of that, that we need to learn from children as well, and learned to give, without expectation, learned, to give, without wanting to get a benefit or award or be called out and seen as better than anyone else. We need to do it in a selfless and selfless way.
00:08:33 Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively, listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor, go over to facebook.com/inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there until next time,
00:09:24 invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.