A Year of Stewardship – Introduction
What the Lord is putting on my heart for this year
Sometime during the end of last year, God gave me my word for 2026. I was reading a post on doing creative work slowly and in step with the Spirit and she mentioned stewardship a couple times in that article. It was like the word stood up off the screen and smacked me in the face. I felt in my heart pretty much instantly that this needed to be my focus this year. Based on a couple other things I’ve seen online, I’m not the only one.
So let’s dig into what stewardship is, by definition and also what it means to me personally.
stew·ard·ship /ˈsto͞oərdˌSHip/
the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care
As a Christian, I recognize that God owns everything. Everything that I have, that I can call my own, is a blessing from Him that I am trusted to care for. I have seen a few examples in the last month or so using the Parable of the Talents. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, here is the first part of it:
14 “For it will be like a man about to leave home for awhile, who entrusted his possessions to his servants. 15 To one he gave five talents [equivalent to a hundred years’ wages]; to another, two talents; and to another, one talent — to each according to his ability. Then he left. 16 The one who had received five talents immediately went out, invested it and earned another five. 17 Similarly, the one given two earned another two. 18 But the one given one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19 “After a long time, the master of those servants returned to settle accounts with them. 20 The one who had received five talents came forward bringing the other five and said, ‘Sir, you gave me five talents; here, I have made five more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Excellent! You are a good and trustworthy servant. You have been faithful with a small amount, so I will put you in charge of a large amount. Come and join in your master’s happiness!
Matthew 25: 14-21 Complete Jewish Bible
In the examples that I read, the author was calling for good stewardship in order to receive greater blessing from God. While that is a worthwhile goal, that is not my goal this year. If He blesses me more, I will be grateful. However, my chief end in this Year of Stewardship is not to pursue greater blessings, but to attentively care for the blessings I have already been given.
With that in mind, what I will be sharing is specific to me and my situation. Your view of what stewardship is or how it should be handled may be different, and that is okay. I would be thrilled if you shared in the comments how you practice stewardship and what categories of life you focus on.
This topic has many facets and I feel that to try and cover all of them in one post would be a disservice (and very long), so this will be my first multi-part series on a particular topic. After this introduction, you can expect essays on:
- Time
- Health
- Relationships
- Finances
- Home
- Work/Ministry
Before I move on to these topics, I feel that before I attempt to address any of these categories in my life I need to address this first: stewarding myself. You could also call it self-control. If I don’t have self-control then even if I make the best plans to steward these other things, they will fail. I have to steward myself first- that is; control my impulses, not always let myself take the easy path, make myself get up and take care of that thing and not just leave it. On the flip side, it can also look like making myself take a break even though my mind is brimming with all the things I need to do. I have written more about managing yourself here.
I also feel that these categories flow into each other and intertwine together deeply. If I don’t steward my time well, I won’t have time to focus on my health or my home. If my health is suffering, I won’t be able to steward my relationships or my home the way I want. Strain from not stewarding financials well will impact relationships and health. I could go on and on.
But rather than do that, I will sign off here for now. Next I will be sharing about stewarding my time.
