Throughout our spiritual journey on earth in the Lord Jesus Christ, we learn many useful lessons in our places of worship and fellowship. However, one of the most primary lessons of faith and believing is sometimes overlooked, and it is learning to handle the blessings we seek. Some call it stewardship, others call it administration, and many refer to it as just plain ol’ discipleship. Whatever the label, we must know that becoming spiritually strong enough to manage the blessings we seek is the greatest path to receive them. For many of us, learning to receive, appropriate, and administrate God’s abundance is what’s needed to set our minds free so we operate from a place of authority. Then we can take possession of what’s rightfully ours instead of waiting year after year for something that could have been ours long ago.
We do not own anything in the earth. Psalm 24:1 tells us that the earth belongs to God and everything in it is His. The whole world belongs to Him, including everyone who lives in it. God owns the earth, but He has given it to human beings to manage. This becomes a more vivid reality for us when we consider who God is. 1John 4:8 tells us that God is love. Not only is love what He does, love is who He is. Well, what does love do? Love loves. Quite naturally this means that love must have a target. It must have something of which to love. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Godhead bodily, needed nothing from anyone or anything to be all-powerful, all-knowing, sovereign, magnificent, and holy in every way. He’s God all by Himself. He’s both the beginning and the end, and He could have chosen to never create a thing, but that is not the nature of love. Love must have something to love, and He chose to make us, you and I, the target of His affection.
Through His Word, and through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, God has allowed us access to the knowledge of what love does and how love behaves. From the very beginning, in the Book of Genesis, God demonstrates that one of the greatest aspects of His love and power is creating. Love creates! Love motivates and changes things for the better. This is what love does. God, our omniscient, omnipotent and Holy Father, in all His majesty, wanted a family, and He created children from His own essence. He took from Himself, and He made us in His own image.
This is almost too incredible to fathom, but it is as true as truth can be. We are God’s spiritual children, and it is the highest, noblest, grandest, and holiest existence that any of His creations could ever hope to be. We are His sons and daughters, and siblings of His only begotten Son! Romans 8:17(NKJV) tells us “and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…” We are joint-heirs with Christ, which means we have the same inheritance, and we also have responsibilities that come with being a joint-heir. We are expected to do what heirs of any kingdom do, represent the kingdom. We are to introduce and expand God’s Kingdom in the earth. If we miss this one, we miss the whole ball of wax.
Very, very few of us see ourselves as managers and administrators of God’s enormous resources, but that is exactly what we are. We beg and beg for Him to make us what He has already created and destined us to be through His Son, Jesus Christ. In Matthew 25:14(NLT), Jesus Christ said, “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. He called together his servants and entrusted his money to them while he was gone.” In this parable of the man who went on a long trip, the man is a representation of God, and the servants are a representation of us. The man entrusted his resources to his servants, and God has entrusted His resources to us. On judgment day, you and I must give an accounting of how we managed the gifts of God’s assets.
When the man returned from his trip, two servants invested his money wisely, but the third servant didn’t do a thing except hide the allotment he had received. Upon the man’s return, he rewarded the two for their wise management and gave them increased privilege and responsibility. The third servant was cast out because he neglected to value that he had been entrusted to provide stewardship; he refused to take his responsibility seriously.
Heavenly Father doesn’t punish us when we don’t do what we’re supposed to. He will help us to become better if we allow Him. He is looking for us to come into the fullness of the authority and dominion we’ve been given. When we rise to the level of accountability and responsibility to which we are able, all kinds of blessings chase us down. Jesus Christ tells us in Matthew 6:33 that when we seek the Kingdom of God above all else, blessings will be added to us.
Jesus Christ said in Matthew 16:19(NLT), “And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.” It is only when we change our mindset from bound to loosed that we position ourselves under the overflow of God’s bounty. We cannot act and behave like the lazy servant in the parable Jesus shared in Matthew 25 and expect to summon authority. That won’t work. We must renew our minds to the reality that we are sons and daughters of the Most High King! We must learn to think, live, and act as God’s children so that we handle everything in our care with the same attentiveness and duty as Christ. When we do this, we will demonstrate our commitment to God’s Kingdom, and God will reward us with the blessings we have proven our ability to manage.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“From Bound to Loosed”, written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.