Using Our God-Given Resources for Him

Yet if you are a Christian then your life and everything you have is not your own to decide what you want with. It is God’s:

Jesus Christ redeemed us with a price – His death on the cross. So we are His, set apart and consecrated to God, to be holy, to glorify Him with everything we are, have and do. As Clarke says in his commentary:

The parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 illustrates this clearly with a story of a master who has a servant and before going away entrusts them with varying amounts of his property in the form of ‘talents’ or large sums.

When he comes back he rewards those who invested it wisely and rebukes the one who did nothing with it. It is symbolic of us with Christ as our master, and everything we have as what He has entrusted to us.

What are we doing with it? Are we investing it wisely, or are we spending it in a way that He wouldn’t be pleased with?

Since our life is not our own, and everything that we have comes from God, we should view life differently.

We should be looking at what we have in terms of stewardship – we are stewards of our bodies, our gifts, our time, our money, our possessions, our children. We are looking after these things and should invest them wisely for our Master.

I remember reading once about a lady whose daughter died, and she viewed it like God had lent her the child for a time, and had now taken her back again. That has always been a challenge to me, and I try to think of my children this way when I am worried about them, as I know God gave them to me and will protect them or take them home as He wills.

Here are some things to think about with stewardship in mind:

• Time – on our days off, do we still think how can we use our time to glorify God?
• Money – do we consult God about what we spend our money on?
• Body –  do we look after it so we can serve God longer or just do what everyone around us does?
• Possessions – do we look at them as a gift from God, so they should honour Him in what we do with them, and share them with others in the same way?
• Gifts and talents – do we find ways to use them to glorify God?

When I became pregnant I suddenly changed the whole way I thought about myself. I was no longer just me, I was me and my baby. So I didn’t run across roads in between cars anymore and I was careful not to eat things that might give me food poisoning whereas before I would have taken the risk.

In the same way we should view our lives as not our own, but as God’s. And we should consult Him about what we do with it, and do all of it for Him.

And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Col 3:17

There is a great hymn which puts this into words, called ‘Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to Thee’ by Frances Ridley Havergal. 

There are a number of tunes to it so I have linked to them all at the bottom of this post and you can choose your favourite! I think my favourite is still the one I grew up singing – the last one.

There is also a very challenging and thought provoking book that she wrote based on this hymn, called Kept for the Master’s Use – one of my treasured books.

This is what she writes in there:

She later goes on to explain consecration: