Stewardship: Money is a Tool

Hello, my name is Ron Blue, and we’re talking about stewardship over a series of weeks. Today, we want to talk about one aspect of stewardship – the money aspect of stewardship. I believe that God uses money in my life (in) three ways. One is as a tool, one is a test, and one is a testimony. We’ll talk about the other two later. But, when we talk about money being used as a tool, we can think of it in two ways: one way is that I use money. (Money) has no value in and of itself. Money is something that I exchange for something of value. But, the money itself has no value, except for what I exchange it for.

So, let’s say that my goal, my objective is to build a relationship with one of my children. So I take the child to Disneyland as someone in our office just did recently – he took his boys to Disneyland. Did it cost him something? You bet it cost him something. But, there in that particular case, money was used as a tool to build relationship and to build memories. The real objective there was relationship and memories, money was just the tool that was used.

I think also God uses money in my life to chisel me into His image. Maybe He gives me too much, to realize that that’s not the source of contentment and happiness. Maybe He gives me too little, teaching me that I need to trust Him for the resources that I have or that I’m going to need. So think of money as nothing more than a tool that you use as a steward to accomplish bigger goals, bigger priorities, and bigger values. Or, it’s a tool that God is using in my life to get my attention, which He does many, many times. Money is a tool.

Click here for the November 20, 2009 Blog Entry