STEWARDSHIP

STEWARDSHIP

... I see that it is not my place to inquire what I can afford, but what I can dispense with; and I find the study of this and the practice of it, in any little way, preserves me from care as to temporal things. As to stewardship, as to fact, your property is the Lord’s, as you see in Luke 16. The Jew was the steward, and he proved unfaithful. The Gentile, in that sense, was never a steward, and as to title to property, he has none. No one could set up a divine title to property. The Jew had title, but through unfaithfulness he is reduced to the level of a Gentile. As to the legal fact, the property is the Lord’s, and hence to the converted one it becomes a gift to him: Peter says, “As every man has received the gift....” It is given to him, and faithfulness in the use of it, as with any other gift, is required. The grace of the Lord is especially connected with this gift, for, though the property be the Lord’s, as you see in Luke 16, yet if you so spend it as to make friends by it (cheering and succouring others through the means of it), you gain through means of a property which is not really yours, but the Lord’s. All the gain is yours, though the property, as to title, belongs to the Lord; and hence it is added, “If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?” The spiritual gift is that which is our own. The temporal gift is given in ^[p. 88] the providence of God, and the proper exercise of it determines whether the one who receives it would be faithful in the greater gifts; I believe in one sense there is no gift more difficult to use rightly than money. To be a donor requires close and careful acquaintance with the person and ways of the one to whom I give. If I promote worldliness, or afford him ability to have things which he could do without, by my gift I injure him. I feel it necessary and good discipline, to be just as restricted when I have much as when I have little, and though I am not given to be a donor, yet unknown, the Lord allows me to help if a case of pressure comes before me.

But I think it is a great thing for a donor not to give to another in a measure and way that would take him out of faith and dependence.

God sends rain and fruitful seasons, but, though they come, they never come in the same way in any one year; and I find that, as a rule, when I may need anything, that it comes from a quarter that I never expected; and that from the quarter where it had come from before, it does not now. Thus God keeps the eye on Himself, and not on the donor.