Stewardship Christian Quotes

Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?

When a man becomes a Christian, he becomes industrious, trustworthy and prosperous. Now, if that man when he gets all he can and saves all he can, does not give all he can, I have more hope for Judas Iscariot than for that man!

Abundance isn't God's provision for me to live in luxury. It's his provision for me to help others live. God entrusts me with his money not to build my kingdom on earth, but to build his kingdom in heaven.

If you see your brother in need, it doesn't matter if you already gave somewhere else. You should be open to the idea of God using you to meet your brother's unexpected need.

It is possible, I think, to say that... a Christian agriculture [is] formed upon the understanding that it is sinful for people to misuse or destroy what they did not make. The Creation is a unique, irreplaceable gift, therefore to be used with humility, respect, and skill.

How different our standard is from Christ's. We ask how much a man gives. Christ asks how much he keeps.

Too often we assume that God has increased our income to increase our standard of living, when his stated purpose is to increase our standard of giving. (Look again at 2 Corinthians 8:14 and 9:11).

God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving.

Sixteen of the thirty-eight parables of Jesus deal with money. One out of ten verses in the New Testament deals with that subject. Scripture offers about five hundred verses on prayer, fewer than five hundred on faith, and over two thousand on money. The believer's attitude toward money and possessions is determinative.

God has made us to be conduits of his grace. The danger is in thinking the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn't. Copper will do.

Someday this upside-down world will be turned right side up. Nothing in all eternity will turn it back again. If we are wise, we will use our brief lives on earth positioning ourselves for the turn.

As believers, we all have the responsibility to leverage our wealth for kingdom purposes.

Productivity is Godly. Growth is Godly. And waste is Ungodly - both the waste of present resources and the waste of potential gains.

A disciple does not ask, "How much can I keep?" but, "How much more can I give?" Whenever we start to get comfortable with our level of giving, it's time to raise it again.

I love Jesus’ parable about the bags of Gold. I think it’s a lesson on responsible capital stewardship.

If we were to gain God's perspective, even for a moment, and were to look at the way we go through life accumulating and hoarding and displaying our things, we would have the same feelings of horror and pity that any sane person has when he views people in an asylum endlessly beating their heads against the wall.

God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man's business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world's population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.

Since my money is God's money, every spending decision I make is a spiritual decision.

Part of being a good steward of capital is paying to others what is due to them for services we received which added value to our lives.

Whatever good we have, whatever good has been entrusted to us - big or small - let’s work to use it in service to others and to increase it.

As we go about working in business, let’s always exercise caution and care.

Christians who live for self dishonor their Redeemer.

God can have our money and not have our hearts, but He cannot have our hearts without having our money.

Our existence and our environment enclose entities of divinity.

Compared to the rest of the world, it's like we're living in Disneyland.

The means to laying up treasure in heaven is by giving to the poor.

Christians are God's delivery people, through whom he does his giving to a needy world. We are conduits of God's grace to others. Our eternal investment portfolio should be full of the most strategic kingdom-building projects to which we can disburse God's funds.

To turn the tide of materialism in the Christian community, we desperately need bold models of kingdom-centered living. Despite our need to do it in a way that doesn't glorify people, we must hear each other's stories about giving or else our people will not learn to give.

If economic catastrophe does come, will it be a time that draws Christians together to share every resource we have, or will it drive us apart to hide in our own basements or mountain retreats, guarding at gunpoint our private stores from others? If we faithfully use our assets for his kingdom now, rather than hoarding them, can't we trust our faithful God to provide for us then?

Wealth is a relational barrier. It keeps us from having open relationships.

Darkness entered into, darkness realized, is the point of departure for all profound expressions of Christian hope. 'Meaningless darkness' becomes 'revelatory darkness' when it is confronted by the courage of a thoughtfulness and hope that is born of faith's quest for truth.

I feel like a child who has found a wonderful trail in the woods. Countless others have gone before and blazed the trail, but to the child it's as new and fresh as if it had never been walked before. The child is invariably anxious for others to join in the great adventure. It's something that can only be understood by actual experience. Those who've begun the journey, and certainly those who've gone further than I, will readily understand what I am saying.

To procrastinate obedience is to disobey God.

We should remember Christ's words, 'Let nothing be wasted,' when we look in our refrigerators and garbage cans and garages.

Satan watches eagerly to find Christians off their guard. O that the followers of Christ would remember that eternal vigilance is the price of eternal life. Many have a slumbering faith. Unless

Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be.

Spending is not the problem. It’s a heart issue. If we truly focus on accomplishing contentment, peace, and joy in our Savior’s plan for us, our spending habits will fall in line. The things we currently desire will change.

The instructive admonitions, “give an account of thy stewardship,“—“occupy till I come;” are forgotten. Thus the generous and wakeful spirit of Christian Benevolence, seeking and finding every where occasions for its exercise, is exploded, and a system of decent selfishness is avowedly established in its stead; a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness.

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.

Let a living faith run like threads of gold through the performance of even the smallest duties. Then all the daily work will promote Christian growth. There will be a continual looking unto Jesus. Love for Him will give vital force to everything that is undertaken.—My Life Today, p. 250.

Stewardship is like that. I won’t answer for the way another Christian mismanaged money. I won’t be charged with another person’s irresponsible consumption. Nor will I get credit for how another faith community shared or sacrificed luxuries for the marginalized. I’ll answer for my choices.

Everything that comes from God must go back to God. They become dysfunctional when they remain with man. Blessings must turn to praise and praise is not just giving thanks for what God gave, it is giving back to Him what He gave. Don't give thanks to God for things that He gave and deny Him access to them for His use. Whatever blessing you don't return back to God in praise turns to pride.

A secularized capitalism devoid of Christian virtue and objective morality is rapacious, greed-centered, and an engine for the spread of all kinds of evil, including pornography, abortion, and prostitution. But the capitalism that continues to be influenced by the Reformation—and the authority of God, objective morality, and virtue—is an engine of godly stewardship, generosity, prosperity, and blessing. Both forms of capitalism are with us today. The same can be said about “freedom,” “law,” or “the American dream.” The West is now, essentially, two separate cultures at war with one another.

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.

Evangelicals in America have a choice, and it’s a big one. Are we going to continue to pursue the growth of the church above all else, or are we going to pursue the holistic stewardship of life, the land, the people, the animals, the environment, and the world in which we are situated? Our culture is changing rapidly, and we are not going to survive if we do not live for the life of the world, because the culture will reject us and our message out of hand. Are we going to continue to pursue and perpetuate church models, church growth, conversions, and the survival of Christian culture no matter what? Or are we going to live like Jesus lived? Are we going to embrace the cruciform life of discipleship? Are we going to continue to preach a soterian gospel meant to provide us with more “conversions”? Or are we going to lay down our lives for the sake of the world? If we do, we might find the courage and strength to begin to dive headlong into a better understanding of what the church is and what it is for.

All over the world, people wrestle with their spiritual thirst. Some take it to the local pub. Some take it to hedonism and thrill-seeking, while others take it to an endless string of dead-end relationships. I took mine to church—and it worked for a while. A great feeling of personal satisfaction ensues when we are fulfilling the commands of God, and when we practice the principles of Christianity, we will experience positive results. Our relationships will improve if we implement what Jesus said about serving our fellow man. Our businesses will flourish if we practice what the Bible teaches about excellence and stewardship. Our families will be healthier if we follow the biblical principles that govern family dynamics. The principles really do work. The problem with principles, though, is that they are only rules that help us navigate our lives—they aren’t life itself. I love the principles of honor and love and communication that help to keep my marriage to Jessica strong and secure, but I can’t curl up in bed at night with a principle—I need a passionate relationship with a living and breathing person.

the reason that anything belongs to anyone is because it comes from God, and we do not have the right to take for ourselves what God has given to others.

The man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself with secondary ways of escape so he will have a way out if the roof caves in. What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day. A. W. TOZER

The basic theme of stewardship is that we are responsible before God for how we use the goods, services, and resources that are at our disposal. That means that a Christian steward is to be careful not to be wasteful with them. We need to measure the value of things we buy.

Christians often look to man for help and counsel, and mar the noble simplicity of their reliance upon their God. . . . If you cannot trust God for temporals, how dare you trust Him for spirituals? Can you trust Him for your soul’s redemption, and not rely upon Him for a few lesser mercies? Is not God enough for thy need, or is His all-sufficiency too narrow for thy wants? . . . Is His heart faint? Is His arm weary? If so, seek another God; but if He be infinite, omnipotent, faithful, true, and all-wise, why gaddest thou abroad so much to seek another confidence? Why dost thou rake the earth to find another foundation, when this is strong enough to bear all the weight which thou canst ever build thereon? . . . Let the sandy foundations of terrestrial trust be the choice of fools, but do thou, like one who foresees the storm, build for thyself an abiding place upon the Rock of Ages.160

God has entrusted the stewardship of our children’s faith to us, and we are to do all within our power to train them. Yes, what our children decide to do (especially as they get older) is ultimately their choice. But we need to strive for a clear conscience in our spiritual guidance of them, knowing that we did all we could to clearly communicate the truthfulness and validity of the Christian faith.

Christians have not always been good stewards of the message of salvation in Christ. Religious persecution, injustice, and wars have all been committed in His name. We should not partake in that spirit. When our responsibility is rightly understood, we will practice it now, and we will spend eternity studying this mystery of love.

Our vocation is a call to serve God and our fellow humans in the distinctive way that fits the shape of our being. In one way or another, Christian calling will always involve the care of God’s creation and people. This realigns us to the created world and to our neighbor, moving us from self-centered exploitation to self-sacrificing service and stewardship.

The humanist concept of sustainable development and the Christian concept of stewardship are flawed by unconscious hubris. We have neither the knowledge nor the capacity to achieve them. We are no more qualified to the be stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners.

my faith has made it more and more evident that it is my responsibility as a Christian to take care of what God has blessed me with, including my place on this Earth. We’ve done a disservice to the environmental movement by couching Christianity as dominionism (the idea that God has given us dominion or rulership over the Earth) as opposed to creation care (the understanding that God has charged us with the care and stewardship of creation, and that its prosperity is tied to our own).

Experiencing true contentment has everything to do with what you truly desire. If you follow your heart, that’s a recipe for destruction. Your heart is deceitful and sick (Jeremiah 17:9).

When God takes control of your thoughts, you’re able to start devising a wise plan for moving yourself out of debt. Figure out what you’re actually trying to accomplish and then set a goal. The goal must be written down, measurable, attainable, and include an endpoint. All of these steps are crucial. Otherwise, it’s just a good idea and will never be implemented.

Christians might, and indeed have, attempt to rescue society through a social, political movement. While we must never demean the importance of elections nor diminish the responsible stewardship Christians have with their vote, we also dare not believe political victory will secure ultimate and lasting peace. Rescue will not come by mere politics. We do not need a political movement. We need a theological protest.

The idealization of poverty is one of the most dangerous illusions of Christians in the contemporary world. Stewardship—which requires possessions and includes giving—is the true spiritual discipline in relation to wealth.

If I said to you that I cannot live the Christian life because I have a wife and children, then if God gave me the wife and the children and God made me a man, then I am actually saying to you the Lord is to blame for all of this. However, God is not to blame for any wrong thing.We have God-given responsibilities. These God-assigned responsibilities never conflict.

No reserves. No retreats. No regrets.” He found the secret of I John 2:17: “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” It is just like our God, our all-wise God, to create the Christian life so that as we apply our hearts to wisdom on a daily basis and have the proper stewardship of our time, what we do in time with our days will abide forever.

One of the great things that must be disturbed in our lives and in our churches if we are ever going to know God’s full blessing, is that we must consider the failure of not doing what is right to be as harmful and sinful as going out and doing wrong. So much of our Christian neglect is excused, like a child saying, “What am I doing wrong?” The answer should be, “Nothing, unless you consider not doing right to be terribly wrong.

My mother-in-law taught me how to tithe and the responsibility I had to tithe. I was eighteen years old, and no one had ever said anything to me about it. My mother-in-law said to me when I was eighteen years old, “If you want God’s blessing on your life, if you want to be the right kind of husband to my daughter, then you ought to practice tithing as a conviction because you are a Christian and you want to have God’s blessing.” It was not the preacher; it was my mother-in-law. We all need someone to care enough about us to speak the truth in love.

The Christian life is not a life that is a little better; it is completely different.

As we speak of prayer, we are speaking about communication with God. In that sense, our prayer life is our Christian life. God created man not only so that we could communicate with Him, but also so that we could labor together with God.

The Christian life is not living a life that is a little better than people who are not Christians; it is living a life that is totally different.

Avoid participating in any religious community where the clear truth-claims of Scripture are ignored while contemplative and mystical practices are favored simply for their spiritual experience. Be careful of any church or ministry wherein acts of mercy and environmental stewardship are devoid of a theology of the cross and wind up being little more than the worship of created people and things. And be careful not to worship a good thing as a god thing for that is a bad thing.

The unholy alliance of science, technology, and industry has given birth to monstrous offspring that threaten the very future of the planet. From factory farming to the harvesting of human eggs, commodified science and technology comes with a utilitarian ethic. Life is cheap. Forests, animals, and people are raw materials. Everyone and everything is expendable.50 Whatever brings the greatest profit is worth the violence. God is calling the church in the night to retrieve the meaning of stewardship first and foremost as caring for the earth.51 Evangelism is not good news until it is good news for all of creation, for humanity, animals, plants, water, and soil, for the earth that God created and called good.

The motive for giving, whether in time, money, or objects, is one of the most frequent internal spiritual struggles that a Christian goes through. Actions will reveal the motives of our heart.

Our giving comes down to a heart matter. God is always interested in our heart. I refuse to reduce the Christian faith to manipulation. I refuse to reduce the Christian faith to gimmicks, trying to trick people into doing what they ought to do. It must always remain a matter of our heart given to God.

God says, “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (I Timothy 6:17). God wants us to enjoy this life between these two nothings—nothing in, nothing out. It is not just to enjoy in eternity. Why do we lead people to believe that the only time a Christian is going to have any joy is when he gets to heaven?

Every Christian is God’s steward. The English word “steward” we find in our Bible is derived from a root word having to do with the keeper of a pigsty, the ward of a sty, or a steward. This person had the responsibility to care for the pigs. We find that a steward manages someone else’s property.

The one who receives reciprocity does not operate as a sincere servant of Christ but as a free agent after his own reward. On the other hand, the one who receives colabor enjoys financial benefits within the auspices of stewardship, a greater reward than mere money.

As a servant of God, Paul has stewardship over his converts to receive money from them but would abuse that stewardship by receiving payment for a gospel that is not his to sell.