Stewardship Best Quotes

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.

The first job of a leader—at work or at home—is to inspire trust. It’s to bring out the best in people by entrusting them with meaningful stewardships, and to create an environment in which high-trust interaction inspires creativity and possibility.

The best story stewardship in these moments is just to say, “I’m grateful that you’re sharing this with me. What does support look like? I can listen and be with you, I can help problem-solve, or whatever else you need. You tell me.

..the best strategy for giving is a two-fold approach: a basic plan combined with a willingness to consider spontaneous giving when unique opportunities arise.

Doing what you believe in is passion. Doing it the best you know how is contribution.

You need to get ahead of the curve and put forward the best version of you, otherwise others will write their version of you for you.

It’s time we relinquish the control we love so much. Talk to God. Listen to Him. It might not all make sense. Actually, a lot of it might not make sense, but that doesn’t matter. That’s living your faith. He knows best, and we should trust Him to guide us in the ways that He sees fit.

Personal happiness is an end game; it is not an immediate necessity. A person whom attains lasting happiness will necessarily endure many hardships. People earn happiness by courageously braving the storms of life, instead of merely existing. A person must steep oneself in the type of experiences that girds one when times on the streets are the meanest. I will garner a comforting sense of self-satisfaction from taking the longer and more difficult road to personal happiness. I can never again work exclusively for money. I shall seek truth wherever it exists, muster the courage to plunge along headfirst without fear, maintain personal dreams when all hope seems lost, and adamantly refuse to be mollified or satisfied with anything less than my very best work. I will dedicate personal efforts to mining my substratum while maintaining a diligent stewardship of a cherished central individuality.

Without imagination---without creativity---without courage---the best prairie restorations don't happen. The rewards don't always come in our lifetime... . We work, knowing we leave a legacy for those who will come after us. We think of them as we drip with sweat, freeze, or pull weeds...plant seeds.

Realise your Stewardship role as a parent – you raise children to offer a quality gift to society. Even your spouse should not be treated as an object or possession you own; support them to be the best of what they were created to be. Do your part and trust God for the rest. If you have empowered them, trust them to be responsible.

But if you choose the way of the warrior, living a life of service, it will demand of you the best you have. You may not need to be great, but the world needs your greatness. Whatever God has placed within you that could ever be described as great was never meant for you, anyway. It’s a stewardship that has been given to you. Greatness never belongs to the one who carries it; it belongs to the world that needs it.

...humans now occupy or have seriously altered nearly all of the spaces outside our parks and preserves. Each of us carries an inherent responsibility to preserve the quality of earth's ecosystems. When we leave the responsibility to a few experts (none of whom hold political office), the rest of us remain largely ignorant of earth stewardship and how to practice it. The conservation of Earth's resources, including its living biological systems, must become part of the everyday culture of us all, worldwide.

The best and most convincing disguise for fear is virtue itself, or godliness. Then it never looks like fear. For fear to survive, it must look like reason, prudence, common-sense, intelligence, the need for social order, morality, religion, obedience, justice or even spirituality. It always works. What better way to veil vengeance than to call it justice? What better way to cover greed than to call it responsible stewardship? Only people who have moved beyond ego and controlling of all outcomes, only those practiced at letting go, see fear for the impostor that it is. To be trapped inside of your small ego is always to be afraid.

If we look honestly at the way many people manage their dogs today, we are faced with a staggering reflection of irresponsibility and lack of compassion. It is difficult to refer to a dog as “man’s best friend” when more than six million unwanted adult dogs and puppies are euthanized every year. We are not speaking here of the humane killing of animals done out of a sense of responsible stewardship but of the massive human negligence that leads to euthanasia. For those who doubt the serious implications of this situation, a trip to the local animal shelter can be a real eye-opener. We recall one client who dismissed our advice about spaying her female shepherd, explaining she felt it was important for her children to have the experience of seeing puppies born. When we asked her how she intended to care for and give homes to the puppies, she responded that she really had not thought about it at all and that she would probably leave them at the local humane society when it was time for them to be weaned. We then asked her what value such an experience would have if the principal lesson her children would learn is that puppies are cute little playthings who, when sufficiently used, may then be conveniently disposed of. Fortunately, our questioning convinced her of her faulty thinking, and she left with a new respect for the implications of bringing puppies into the world.

What we are faced with in our culture is the post-Christian version of the doctrine of original sin: all human endeavor is radically flawed, and the journalists who take delight in pointing this out are simply telling over and over again the story of Genesis 3 as applied to today’s leaders, politicians, royalty and rock stars. And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christshaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. So the key I propose for translating Jesus’ unique message to the Israel of his day into our message to our contemporaries is to grasp the parallel, which is woven deeply into both Testaments, between the human call to bear God’s image and Israel’s call to be the light of the world. Humans were made to reflect God’s creative stewardship into the world. Israel was made to bring God’s rescuing love to bear upon the world. Jesus came as the true Israel, the world’s true light, and as the true image of the invisible God. He was the true Jew, the true human. He has laid the foundation, and we must build upon it. We are to be the bearers both of his redeeming love and of his creative stewardship: to celebrate it, to model it, to proclaim it, to dance to it. “As the Father sent me, so I send you; receive the Holy Spirit; forgive sins and they are forgiven, retain them and they are retained.” That last double command belongs exactly at this point. We are to go out into the world with the divine authority to forgive and retain sins. When Jesus forgave sins, they said he was blaspheming; how then can we imagine such a thing for ourselves? Answer: because of the gift of the Holy Spirit. God intends to do through us for the wider world that for which the foundation was laid in Jesus. We are to live and tell the story of the prodigal and the older brother; to announce God’s glad, exuberant, richly healing welcome for sinners, and at the same time God’s sorrowful but implacable opposition to those who persist in arrogance, oppression and greed. Following Christ in the power of the Spirit means bringing to our world the shape of the gospel: forgiveness, the best news that anyone can ever hear, for all who yearn for it, and judgment for all who insist on dehumanizing themselves and others by their continuing pride, injustice and greed.

Within this narrative, creation itself is understood as a kind of Temple, a heaven-and-earth duality, where humans function as the “image-bearers” in the cosmic Temple, part of earth yet reflecting the life and love of heaven. This is how creation was designed to function and flourish: under the stewardship of the image-bearers. Humans are called not just to keep certain moral standards in the present and to enjoy God’s presence here and hereafter, but to celebrate, worship, procreate, and take responsibility within the rich, vivid developing life of creation. According to Genesis, that is what humans were made for. The diagnosis of the human plight is then not simply that humans have broken God’s moral law, offending and insulting the Creator, whose image they bear—though that is true as well. This lawbreaking is a symptom of a much more serious disease. Morality is important, but it isn’t the whole story. Called to responsibility and authority within and over the creation, humans have turned their vocation upside down, giving worship and allegiance to forces and powers within creation itself. The name for this is idolatry. The result is slavery and finally death. It isn’t just that humans do wrong things and so incur punishment. This is one element of the larger problem, which isn’t so much about a punishment that might seem almost arbitrary, perhaps even draconian; it is, rather, about direct consequences. When we worship and serve forces within the creation (the creation for which we were supposed to be responsible!), we hand over our power to other forces only too happy to usurp our position. We humans have thus, by abrogating our own vocation, handed our power and authority to nondivine and nonhuman forces, which have then run rampant, spoiling human lives, ravaging the beautiful creation, and doing their best to turn God’s world into a hell (and hence into a place from which people might want to escape). As I indicated earlier, some of these “forces” are familiar (money, sex, power). Some are less familiar in the popular mind, not least the sense of a dark, accusing “power” standing behind all the rest. Called

When we get down to potential versus reality in relationships, we often see disappointment, not successful achievement. In the Church, if someone creates nuclear fallout in a calling, they are often released or reassigned quickly. Unfortunately, we do not have that luxury when we marry. So many of us have experienced this sad realization in the first weeks of our marriages. For example, we realized that our partner was not going to live up to his/her potential and give generously to the partnership. While fighting the mounting feelings of betrayal, we watched our new spouses claim a right to behave any way they desired, often at our expense. Most of us made the "best" of a truly awful situation but felt like a rat trapped in maze. We raised a family, played our role, and hoped that someday things would change if we did our part. It didn't happen, but we were not allowed the luxury of reassigning or releasing our mates from poor stewardship as a spouse or parent. We were stuck until we lost all hope and reached for the unthinkable: divorce. Reality is simple for some. Those who stay happily married (the key word here is happily are the ones who grew and felt companionship from the first days of marriage. Both had the integrity and dedication to insure its success. For those of us who are divorced, tracing back to those same early days, potential disappeared and reality reared its ugly head. All we could feel, after a sealing for "time and all eternity," was bound in an unholy snare. Take the time to examine the reality of who your sweetheart really is. What do they accomplish by natural instinct and ability? What do you like/dislike about them? Can you live with all the collective weaknesses and create a happy, viable union? Are you both committed to making each other happy? Do you respect each other's agency, and are you both encouraging and eager to see the two of you grow as individuals and as a team? Do you both talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk? Or do you love them and hope they'll change once you're married to them? Chances are that if the answer to any of these questions are "sorta," you are embracing their potential and not their reality. You may also be embracing your own potential to endure issues that may not be appropriate sacrifices at this stage in your life. No one changes without the internal impetus and drive to do so. Not for love or money. . . . We are complex creatures, and although we are trained to see the "good" in everyone, it is to our benefit to embrace realism when it comes to finding our "soul mate." It won't get much better than what you have in your relationship right now.

The ideas that move industries forward are not the result of tremendous creative insight but rather of masterful stewardship.

The Generous Family “The generous will prosper; those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed.” -Proverbs 11:25 One of the greatest and most consistent fruits of family-based stewardship of resources is the outpouring of abundant generosity. Living on a fixed income determined by someone else on a fixed work schedule dictated by someone else who works to direct your best energy toward their ends can leave us with a sense of powerlessness with little left over to give to others. Faced with the frustration this can often create, it becomes easier just to give ourselves over to our work identity. When we do, we tend to live a disintegrated life, always needing to guard against additional commitments since we often have to fight to give our family enough of what they need from whatever is left over, which can put a damper on a spirit of abundant generosity. Contrast that with income streams that produce money in ways that aren’t directly connected to how many hours you worked this week. This begins to disentangle the connection between our time and energy and our money.

A London newspaper put the following question in the newspaper for a number of weeks: “What is the definition of money?” They offered a very handsome prize of money to the person who submitted the best definition of money. I was so taken by what I read that I wrote it down in the margin of my Bible. Here is the winning answer: “Money is an article which may be used as a universal passport everywhere except heaven and a universal provider for everything except happiness.” In other words, money can get you anywhere except heaven and buy you everything except happiness.

The idea of stewardship in business is not mine originally. Peter Block writes about it in his book Stewardship. In it he explains how irrelevant the management actions of controlling, goal setting with the assumption that people can’t set their own, and shifting accountability to the leader for results are outdated and a disservice to employees. Block writes, “People who leave their minds at home and bring their bodies to work will destroy us.”5 This is the epitome of management that no longer serves in the best interest of the organization and its people. More than that, however, is it’s an insult to employees’ intelligence.

Stewardship is making the most out of what you already have. Rather than hoping for more, stewardship is reflective of gratitude and ownership. The best stewards take what they have and make it better. These people are ready for more because they have fully embraced all they have been given. Far

Giving sacrificially also means giving the best. If we have two blankets and someone needs one of them, sacrificial giving hands over the better of the two. Sadly, much of our “giving” is merely discarding. Donating secondhand goods to church rummage sales

When we practice good delegation — stewardship delegation — we are not simply enabling ourselves to get more done. We are serving others and building them up according to God’s own purposes for his people.

Stewardship is making the most out of what you already have. Rather than hoping for more, stewardship is reflective of gratitude and ownership. The best stewards take what they have and make it better. These people are ready for more because they have fully embraced all they have been given.

One of these days I am going to meet the Lord, and I am going to face the question, “Did I do the best with what God gave me?” What will the answer be? I do not think any man or woman who is honest can say, “We always did the best we could do.” Before we so readily condemn the unjust steward, we need to point our fingers at ourselves and say, “We have not done as we could have and should have done.

Without stewardship of the land, there is no food, and without the stewardship of the community, there is no need to grow.

Few men I know of have had the opportunity I have had and have been influenced by the people who have influenced me—to know personally men like John R. Rice; to have called my best friend for more than fifteen years men like Curtis Hutson; to be called the spiritual son of Dr. Lee Roberson; to have been the closest of friends with some of the great missionary leaders of our day like Dr. Don Sisk and Dr. James Ray; to have sat in meetings and been given the opportunity to speak in those meetings. Few men have been given the opportunity I have been given.

God entrusted our children into our hands as one of the best works for which we answer to Him. He gave us the stewardship of shaping, investing in, and inspiring for His glory these little human beings entrusted into our hands by His love and design. Because I had committed my whole life to Christ, one way for me to worship God was to serve these precious human beings He entrusted into my hands. God ordained family and home to have eternal value as the place our children are shaped in the transcendent image of God, through our homes. This is our most lasting legacy. Even as Jesus served us through His sacrificial life, so we model his love through our sacrificial life.

The twenty-first-century task is clear: to create economies that promote human prosperity in a flourishing web of life so that we can thrive in balance within the Doughnut’s safe and just space. It starts with recognising that every economy—local to global—is embedded within society and within the living world. It also means recognising that the household, the commons, the market and the state can all be effective means of provisioning for our many needs and wants, and they tend to work best when they work together. By deepening our understanding of human nature we can create institutions and incentives that reinforce our social reciprocity and other-regarding values, rather than undermine them. Once we accept the economy’s inherent complexity, we can shape its ever-evolving dynamics through smart stewardship. That opens up the possibility of turning today’s divisive and degenerative economies into ones that are distributive and regenerative by design. And it invites us to become agnostic about growth, creating economies that enable us to thrive, whether or not they are growing.

When YOU LEAD, you’ll find the best way to be yourself, get results and the genuine reputation to which you aspire.

most respected broad certifications are those from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC; the logo is a blue fish in the shape of a checkmark) for wild-caught fish, and Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) for farmed fish.

Erik is the director of the Permaculture Skills Center, a vocational training school that offers advanced education in ecological design, landscaping, farming, and land stewardship. He is also the founder and principal at Permaculture Artisans, a fully licensed contracting firm that specializes in the design and installation of ecological landscapes and farms throughout California.

He labored under a terrible strain that would have destroyed a lesser man. Ennobled by adversity and leading by example, he had been dismayed and depressed but never defeated. The cheerless atmosphere at Valley Forge was much more the rule than the exception during the war. Few people with any choice in the matter would have persisted in this impossible, self-sacrificing situation for so long. Washington’s job as commander in chief was as much a political as a military task, and he performed it brilliantly, functioning as de facto president of the country. His stewardship of the army had been a masterly exercise in nation building. In defining the culture of the Continental Army, he had helped to mold the very character of the country, preventing the Revolution from taking a bloodthirsty or despotic turn. In the end, he had managed to foil the best professional generals that a chastened Great Britain could throw at him. As Benjamin Franklin told an English friend after the war, “An American planter was chosen by us to command our troops and continued during the whole war. This man sent home to you, one after another, five of your best generals, baffled, their heads bare of laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their employers.

John’s journey with his Lord took a different turn from that of the others. He laid his head on the chest of the Creator of the universe. He saw the excruciating ordeal of the criminal death of an innocent Man. He was also given an amazing stewardship—the ongoing care of Jesus’ mother, Mary (see John 19:27). I would give over the care of my mother only into the very best hands. I wonder what Jesus saw in John. What was different in him? Did he have an uncommon love for his Master?