00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 692 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Ryan England with core matters and the blue collar culture podcast. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasure is to live out your calling, having the ability to grow yourself and your business is key.
00:00:24 And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, to spread the blessings of God, to others, for us to seek out opportunities, to recognize when we've been given a privilege or an opportunity, and to recognize when people have been put into a system that takes advantage of them and uses them and choose them up and spits them out the other side.
00:01:04 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 in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
00:01:34 And today's spiritual foundation episode about impacting the world. I talk with you about why the church is focused on stewardship, how this can often be misunderstood and misused within the church. And why I say it's about claiming and reclaiming the wider view of stewardship. When I'm talking about the church this week, I'm talking about not the little C church that maybe you go to down the street from your house or the church that you attend every once in a while on Sunday,
00:02:07 I'm talking about the big C church, the church as an organization, as a group of people that spans the world that takes on many different forms and many different shapes and many different denominations or belief systems, but overall, that larger idea of those who follow Christ to the best of their ability. When we talk about that church, one of the universal themes that stretches from Judaism to Christianity and in all different forms of,
00:02:43 of religion is often this idea of stewardship, this idea of how we are given resources by God that are not ours, but rather are ours to manage. When you look at the, the major of the world, this idea of stewardship props up time and time again. And one way to look at this is to kind of be cynical about it and say,
00:03:09 well, of course, the church talks about stewardship because they often run giving campaigns. They need to build a building. They need to pay the pastor, whether it's a evangelical Christian fundraising on the TV, or whether it's your local church who has a building campaign going on, we often hear that word stewardship and take it as code for grabbed your wallet,
00:03:31 because they're about to ask for donations. And yet the truth is that's a rather cynical view of why the church talks about stewardship and don't get me wrong. I'm not going to say that's never true. I'm not going to say that that's never something that has happened in the world. In fact, I think it happens way too often within the church. Instead,
00:03:54 I'm going to say that there's a wider view to that. There's a deeper meaning behind why I hope the church asked for us to be good stewards of the resources that God has given us. I think this view can be misunderstood and misused by the church. We use it as a way of raising money for those things that we think are important often, instead of using it as a way of encouraging people,
00:04:24 to change their heart, to change their mind, to change their view of what they see to, to seek out injustice and white, make it right to use the gifts that they're given to spread the kingdom of God here on earth. You know, the truth is that oftentimes what happens instead is we see the blessings that God has given us as ours.
00:04:49 We see them as the things that, of course I deserve this. I've, I've done things and I've gone out of my way and I've deserved the gifts that God has given me. Instead of recognizing that the truth is that we are lucky that there is grace because none of us deserve the blessings that God has given us. We've done nothing to earn them.
00:05:14 And instead we need to be thankful of those blessings and look for opportunities that we have to spread them to grow them, but also to use them in ways that bring about the justice of God here on earth, that bring about the blessings for other people around us, that lift people up and encourage them instead of tearing them down and all too often. What I see instead is when we have been given opportunities and privilege,
00:05:44 we see them as our just do, instead of seeing them as what they are an opportunity to do more and to be more, you know, I feel strongly that this word stewardship needs to be reclaimed the wider view of stewardship as a way of looking at everything we're given, whether it's our time, whether it's our talent, whether it's the very breath that we breathe,
00:06:13 but looking at all of those things as an opportunity for us to be able to spread the blessings of God, to others, for us to seek out opportunities, to recognize when we've been given a privilege or an opportunity, and to recognize when people have been put into a system that takes advantage of them and uses them and choose them up and spits them out the other side so that we have an opportunity to fight against that system instead of participating within it.
00:06:49 But all too often, I think instead we see the systems and we participate in them because they benefit us instead of recognizing the fact that they do it by harming others. And when we see those things, we are not only encouraged, but we should be compelled to speak out against them and to use the resources that God has given us to tear them down,
00:07:21 to tear down things that have oppressed others. And instead to build up systems that bless not just a few, but everyone. 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.
00:07:56 If you enjoyed 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, invest your time, your talent and your treasures,
00:08:28 develop your influence and impact the world.