1st chpt of God own$

1 The Master and the Steward
Money is a tool that can be used for great good or great ill. So preached John Wesley in a sermon went on to give us three simple rules concerning money: Gain all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can. This is good counsel coming from a man skilled in the discipline of stewardship.
Having money can be intoxicating. It is almost addictive. The more you have, the more you desire. Money has the ability to hold us in its grip. And when it does, it can make us do things we do not want to do. It can cause irrationality. No wonder Jesus said in Matthew 6:24
- “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

Notice closely to the above quote, our Lord did not say, “You should not…” He was also not giving friendly advice like, “You must not…” but He was, in fact, stating an impossibility- “You cannot…” It is simply impossible for us to serve both God and Money. In the end, we either serve God or end up serving money.
Theology of stewardship provides a pivot to hold the two extreme views, poverty theology and prosperity theology. What we possess as Christian is a privilege rather than a right. We have a stewardship responsibility to mange all the above faithfully and wisely, according to the will of the Master.

In the end, the true measure of godly success is how faithful we have been in administering with wisdom what God has entrusted to us; be it little or much. Our goal is to be able to hear the Father say to us, as the master said to the servant in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:21), “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

*Wesley’s sermon on Luke 16:9 can be accessed at
http://gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/serm-050.stm