The Best of the Portals of Prayer

Read: Genesis 2:4-9 // Psalm 63

“The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell threin.”
Psalm 24:1

Stewardship and the Father

Christian Stewardship is built on a Father-child relationship, because what God gives us to care for as stewards comes to us from His fatherly goodness. God the Father created all things and placed us over His creation. That signifies this relationship: the Creator-Father places us, His children, over our Father’s house on earth. All of us stand in a direct relation to God by virtue of our existence, for we were created to be stewards, or managers, for God. Therefore, all we possess is ours as a gift from the hands of our Creator. And whatever we do in life is our response to God’s dealings with us.
After explaining what we received from God the Father, Luther, in the Small Catechism states: “for all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him.” That’s stewardship. It’s responding to the goodness and mercy of the Father in creation. And it’s more. The Stewardship life also has to do with responding to the goodness and mercy of God in Jesus. He shed His blood for us, and so, we are children of God. Once again, we are in a Father-child relationship – children serving our heavenly Father.

September 16, 1986