What would stop the Father from entrusting our family with His resources?
April and I just returned from a three-day getaway where we discussed ways to tighten up our family’s financial plan.
It turns out there are a lot more people passionate about having money than stewarding money, and I’m no exception.
Imagine being a father who longs to bless his children but knowing he must hold back because they won’t prepare.
So we have been on a journey to become expert stewards and we still have a long way to go. April has always been great at financial stewardship, but I tend to be more of the slow learner.
A major milestone in this journey for me was when the first company we started began to encounter financial trouble. It seemed like every time we expected a big break it would fall through.
As I was processing this pattern with the Lord I got the picture of a leaky basin. It seemed the Father was saying that I was focused on the wrong thing. I wanted him to pour more resources into our basin but I wasn’t doing my job at fixing the leaks. There were a lot of inefficiencies I was allowing in the business and in our personal life. And the really troubling trend was the more resources we were blessed with, the more I allowed those money draining inefficiencies to grow and get bigger. Simple things like:
- Ignoring the prices of food or clothing items
- Not paying attention to those strange charges on my cell phone bill
- Being slow to cancel underused subscriptions
- Not looking for aggressive ways to lower interest rates on all debts
- Ignoring our budget
These are all defensive strategies. The least a steward must do is play good defense and not carelessly lose what has been entrusted.
But the point of having a good defense is to give your offense every chance to win the game. Good stewards must have a plan to multiply and deploy the resources under their care.
Family teams must learn how to do both.
And when our resource basin is ready, we’ll capture the blessings our Father longs to rain down on his kids.
Jeremy
This entry is a part of Jeremy’s Journal, a newsletter Jeremy sends out every Wednesday morning to encourage you on your parenting journey. You can sign up to get them every Wednesday here.
