When Carol and I were married, we each brought some material possessions into our new life together. I brought a savings account into our new life together; Carol brought her furniture, stereo system, dinner ware and other home furnishings.

(I should let you know I brought furniture in too –comfortable furniture. I hadn’t considered whether the colors went with anything and I hadn’t noticed that the style of furniture could no longer be bought in stores. For a little while we stored mine in the garage. Finally, when no charitable organization would take it, we threw it out.)

At first, I had trouble letting go of the idea that the savings account, was “my” money. Carol thought of it as “our” money. I had no trouble thinking of the furniture as “our” furniture; I didn’t ask permission to sit on the couch. When Carol instructed me that putting my feet up on the couch was not acceptable, I reminded her – it was our furniture – and I pulled my feet off the couch.

For our marriage to work, we had to come to the place where we saw everything as “ours.” It was our furniture. The savings account, which we used for a down payment on our house, was “our” money. Carol’s paycheck was ours and my paycheck was “ours.”

That’s how marriage is.

1. Stewardship is…managing God’s assets – as if they are God’s.

There’s a correlation to our relationship with God. We want to think of our paycheck as “my money,” but God keeps reminding us that it is “our money.” God can provide us with an income and God can just as easily take it away.

We say, “It’s mine, Lord, but I’ll give you some of it.”

God says, “No, it’s mine, but I’ll give it to you for a little while to invest and manage on my behalf.”

We say we’re owners; God says we’re “managers.” We manage assets on behalf of the owner, God. That means we do with our money – what God wants us to do with the money.

So, we have to come to the place of surrender in our journey with Christ.

That’s stewardship. It’s recognizing that we’re not owners of our time, our talents and our treasure. We are managers; we are stewards.