Stewarding Skills Wisely
In this series of teaching on stewardship, John Cole revised and taught from a published course made available without copyright by local church pastors shared for churches like ours. Read the handout notes here...
---- HANDOUT ----
10 As every man hath received the [a/each] gift, even so minister [serve] the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold [varied] grace of God. 11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles [very sayings] of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability [strength] which God giveth [supplies]: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise [the glory] and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
SKILLS COME FROM GOD.
YOUR SKILLS EXIST TO GLORIFY GOD.
YOUR SKILLS ARE A STEWARDSHIP .
Ecclesiastes 10:10
If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct.
1. Pursue excellence .
Colossians 3:23–24
23 And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; 24 Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.
2. Invest in your skills.
A. Will this education improve your skill set across a broad set of responsibilities ?
B. How easy is it to get paid for the credential you will get?
Providence>Purpose> Proficiencies >Profit>Passion.
C. For how long will the education constrain your choices?
Note: If debt leverages your time long-term, then it is more likely to be good debt.
D. Prioritize getting paid to learn over paying to learn when you can.
3. Just because you can do something well doesn’t mean you ought to do it well.
Note: Same is true with enjoyments.
It’s good to ask first whether the responsibility in question is optional.
Then, it’s good to ask if there are idolatrous reasons that you’re clinging onto your desire to do something. But absent those, you’re probably looking at an area of freedom.
YOUR SKILLS ARE FOR SERVICE.
True happiness lies not in building ourselves but in spending ourselves to build others.
So then…who owns your skills?
Why did He give them to you?
What is your role in regard to those skills?
How do you do that?
CONCLUSION
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour [for special use], and some to dishonour [for common use]. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified [set apart], and meet [useful] for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.
--- MANUSCRIPT ----
INTRODUCTION
Last week, we began by framing this topic of skills with 1 Peter 4:10-11. We also read the verses leading up to it for context. Today, we will jump immediately back into the two verses.
10 As every man hath received the [a/each] gift, even so minister [serve] the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold [varied] grace of God. 11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles [very sayings] of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability [strength] which God giveth [supplies]: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise [the glory] and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Notice:
•the source of skills: God
•the point of skills: glorify God (creations that share and make God known)
•the type of skills: speaking and serving (this can be very clarifying)
•the responsibility of skills: vs 5 “who shall give account”
Four observations from that passage that have formed the outline for last week and today.
•First, your skills come from God.
•Second, he gave you those skills to show off his glory—verse 11.
•Third, your skills are a stewardship—given by God for God.
•And fourth, skills are for service to others.
SKILLS COME FROM GOD.
YOUR SKILLS EXIST TO GLORIFY GOD.
YOUR SKILLS ARE A STEWARDSHIP .
So if skill is from God and for God, what role do you play?
1 Peter 4:10 “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
Ecclesiastes 10:10
If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct.
Think about that. What’s it mean to be a good steward of the grace God’s given you in the skills he’s entrusted to you? ›[Let’s take 2-3 thoughts]
Let’s consider three basic categories for what it looks like to steward our skills well.
1. Pursue excellence .
Listen to Paul in Colossians 3:23, speaking to bond-servants: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men…you are serving the Lord Christ.”
Colossians 3:23–24
23 And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; 24 Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.
Whatever you do, pursue it with excellence because ultimately you’re working for King Jesus!
Pursue excellence as you cut the grass, as you prepare dinner for your family or guests or for people at a homeless shelter, as you change a diaper, as you argue that case, as you teach that Growth Group class, as you mix the sound.
Sometimes it’s good to relax, to go slow. But there’s no room for us Christians to be slovenly, half-hearted, in how we use our skills. Stewardship is worship.
2. Invest in your skills.
Like Paul learning to be a tentmaker so he could more effectively plant churches. Like so many other stewardships God’s given us, we can grow our skills.
There seems to be two primary ways that people get paid in their jobs, businesses, or investments. Some of us get paid for our time; others get paid for our skill.
And there are many, many jobs in our area where your only asset is your willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done. That’s no recipe for a balanced life. As one of the pastors who wrote this original teaching has shared, “You can either sell your skill or you can sell your soul.”
When you’re young, in your early twenties, most of us don’t have strong marketable skills. So go ahead and sell your time. But as the years pass, wisdom would dictate that we develop a skill that others will pay for or that will pay for itself through a business or investments. That’s a ticket to affording this area without killing yourself in your job.
Nothing about this advice that’s specific to any one strata of society. And don’t assume that education and skill are necessarily the same thing. Education can help build a skill set—but there are plenty of schools out there hawking degrees that don’t actually put you any closer to having a marketable skill set.
Now, speaking of education, let me take a detour and give some advice about the decision to pursue further education. We have a growing high school population in our church, and some here might consider more education on their minds at some point. If you’re in that situation, let me give you three questions to ask:
A. Will this education improve your skill set across a broad set of responsibilities?
Keep in mind that God has placed multiple responsibilities in your life: at work, in church, in your family, in your neighborhood. Education can help in all those areas.
ILL
- Teaching can be used in home schooling, in church classes, to organize a home school co-op, to put on a seminar in the community.
- Accounting or Financial Planning can improve your ability to manage your own finances, disciples others in the area of money, oversee the finances of a home business, or do bookkeeping for your church. Sit on a board in your community or for a school.
- Business Management can help you operate your home well, acquire and own a business, or help with operational processes of your church. Consult small business owners you want to see excel.
- Trades like carpentry, electrical, or mechanics can be great skills around the house, to pass down to your children with them alongside you, to impliment or oversea property projects for your church, or to flip houses on the side.
- Music can bless your own home and the church. You could teach students on the side in the community. You could simply use music for your own devotional times.
- Project management can equip you to get all sorts of things done and build teams. Plan a trip for the family. - Flip a house on the side. Organize an event for the church or for a political campaign.
- Media skills can be used for family photos, church events and communication, teaching or sharing the gospel online or in print, operating all sorts of media businesses on the side or full-time, speaking up about important matters within society, managing a database or technical processes for your church or a company—non-profit or for-profit.
- Culinary Arts can be a wonderful way to bless your family, put on church meals, have a baking business on the side.
- Bible Counseling could be used very well in the home, discipling relationships, within a church ministry, writing a book, or in a part-time job.
- Medical can prove vital in the home or to organize a medical team for your church or to write a blog.
Any time education can help improve your faithfulness in multiple areas of responsibility, it has special value for the Christian.
The second question about education might seem somewhat at odds with the first. And that is,
B. How easy is it to get paid for the credential you will get?
Some degrees (say, as a nurse or a CPA) are easy to value monetarily. Because simply having the credential has a measurable impact on your earning power. Others—like a degree in creative writing—may well improve the value of your mind (question #1) yet not easily translate into earning potential. Probably, the most practical relevance of this distinction is that we should be very reluctant to go into financial debt for a degree that doesn’t have clear financial value.
Providence >Purpose> Proficiencies >Profit>Passion.
I think this is wisdom here, but it is my position that you can sustain passion as Christian for things that line up the way I have given here. Notice the priorities in linear order.
Which leads to a third question:
C. For how long will the education constrain your choices?
It can be wise to think of debt in terms of time and not just money because of the nature of debt as a form of servitude (Proverbs 22:7) that we talked about a few weeks back.
Note: If debt leverages your time long-term, then it is more likely to be good debt.
How long will it take to pay that back—or how long is your commitment to the military or your employer in place of debt?
What’s the likelihood that God will change your circumstances during that time? (Like going overseas as a missionary or getting married.)
Such that you might wish you hadn’t taken on that obligation?
Obviously, the longer you’re constrained the more likely that your circumstances will change in that timeframe.
And keep in mind that some opportunities for education carry implied time constraints beyond the time of the degree and the debt. Some require actual experience afterwards or time in serve to pay it back.
Very often, it’s education plus some quantity of experience that gives you the base-level skill set that you’re looking for.
D. Prioritize getting paid to learn over paying to learn when you can.
While we cannot always practice that fully, we can always practice the first half of the sentence.
If you work a job, get more than a paycheck—grow and grow others! Sometimes, you might work a job for a short time mostly for the purpose of the skills you acquire that then be invested in another job, your family, the church, the community, politically, etc.
When viewed this way, I believe jobs become much more enjoyable and productive. Of course, with that enjoyment comes the need to balance your job with the other responsibilities God has given you.
But, when prioritized correctly, working with stewardship of your skills in mind adds so much more value to your daily work. When viewed this way, it can rival the “fun” of hobbies or sports—not that fun should be a priority factor. But, it can help the work be more like in the Garden of Eden.
›Maybe some here can share some insights in this area of investing in skills for those evaluating this sort of decision. [take 2-3 at most]
OK – that was all in my second point within Roman numeral III, invest in your skills. But let me finish this section with one last implication of our skills being a stewardship.
3. Just because you can do something well doesn’t mean you ought to do it well.
Sometimes you’ll need to decide when to lay aside some skills. A good steward says yes to some options and no to others. Think of Peter laying aside his skills as a fisherman to preach the gospel.
That’s true of our money, our time—and it’s also true of our skills. Note: Same is true with enjoyments.
This is a constant struggle especially for the young.
When you were a teenager, many of you could afford to invest in pretty much every skill you had. So you were a musician, an athlete, a scholar, a McDonalds cook, a friend, and so forth. But your twenties can be a painful time of deciding to say goodbye to certain skills that you love. You’ve only got so much time. So you abandon your skills as an athlete, focusing in on music. Then you try to apply a few learned skills into each area of responsibility: Family, church, work, community
Just because you can do something well doesn’t mean you ought to do it well. Don’t let God’s gifts become shackles. Look across all of your life. Choose which skills you think will allow you to best glorify him across all the responsibilities God’s given you. Invest in them, let the others lay fallow, and trust if you’ve made a wrong choice that really matters, God will make that clear.
Your job as a Christian is that old U.S. Army slogan, “Be all you can be”—across all of your responsibilities.
Sometimes that means laying skills aside.
Now, sometimes you run to the edge of your capabilities or your capacity. Your job or your parenting, for example, require more of you than you honestly can give. What do you do then?
Well, you’ve got two choices.
1.On the one hand, you can take limit as God’s guiding hand directing you to something else.
2.On the other, you can fight your limits by improving your capability and your capacity.
How do you know which is right? So hard to say!
It’s good to ask first whether the responsibility in question is optional .
For example, are we talking about your role as a father or your role as a test pilot? Clearly, one’s optional; the other isn’t.
Then, it’s good to ask if there are idolatrous reasons that you’re clinging onto your desire to do something.
That would shift the calculus toward moving to something else where you’re already sufficiently skilled.
But absent those, you’re probably looking at an area of freedom .
Where, with the counsel of others, you stay and reskill if you want—or move to something else if that’s what you want.
›Any questions? Additional insights in this area?
YOUR SKILLS ARE FOR SERVICE .
OK. To round out this class, let’s look at that last piece of our passage in 1 Peter 4.
10 As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Who is the “one another” in this text?
So, the primary context of this instruction is to serve and build up Christ’s church and kingdom.
In a secondary way, we have applied it to all our other areas of life when stewarding the gifts and skills God has given us.
What sort of gifts are given as (non-exhaustive) examples in this text?
Speaking God’s Word and serving with God’s strength.
Notice how unselfishly we are taught to view the variety of gifts God gives us.
That’s not how our world views your skills. It says that your skills are about you.
They’re about building wealth, reputation, power, and happiness.
But the Bible says that the true path to happiness is to be a servant—of Jesus ultimately and then of each other.
Acts 20:35
I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.
True happiness lies not in building ourselves but in spending ourselves to build others.
I think this is an important overlay on everything else we’ve talked about today.
Remember how we even talked about growing ourselves and others with each job we work?
How do you decide which skills to invest in, which to lay aside?
I hope your primary lens is not one of personal fulfillment but one of service.
I hope it is not of fear of tomorrow but of faith in God.
I hope it is not of building a personal legacy or empire but of building the kingdom of God!
Which will equip you to best serve others—in your job, your family, your church, your neighborhood?
Now, as I alluded to before, in God’s kindness there is often convergence between what we enjoy and how we can serve.
I really enjoy understanding and passing on truth and application—and I hope I serve you better as a result.
Presumably, you can work as unto the Lord (Colossians 3) while doing anything. Yet it’s probably easiest to do that in an area you enjoy. All that taken into account, though, Scripture tells us that enjoyment isn’t the main point—the point is service.
So then…who owns your skills?
God does.
Why did He give them to you?
To show off his glory and goodness.
What is your role in regard to those skills?
To use them for God’s purposes, as his steward.
How do you do that?
By using your skills in service to others.
CONCLUSION
I mentioned the chart off to the right early in the class. Hopefully you’ve already started filling it out. Just in case you didn’t—or if multitasking isn’t one of your skills—I’ll give you a minute to finish up.
Can anyone share with us one of the rows in your chart?
In addition to sharing what you wrote down, I want you to tell us how you might be thinking differently about that skill now that you’ve considered its main purposes as glorifying God through service to others.
›[get 3-4 responses]
Let me close with a verse that can bring great comfort in this area.
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour [for special use], and some to dishonour [for common use]. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified [set apart], and meet [useful] for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.
Do you ever worry that you’re wasting your skills? That you’ll never hear those beautiful words, “well done, good and faithful servant?” Then listen carefully to Paul in 2 Timothy 2.
Cleanse yourself from what is dishonorable.
Pursue Jesus in faithfulness and holiness.
And consider this promise: “he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master.”
Praise the Lord for his faithfulness.