We're Called To Stewardship & Not Ownership.

The spirit of ownership is a very deceptive, reckless, ruthless & ruinous spirit in the world.

It's a spirit that puts a mere creature who created nothing, brought nothing into this world, in a false position of ownership of things; laying up treasures upon the earth & building a fortress around them as though in absolute control to preserve & sustain them.

The deceitful thing about this wrong spirit is that it actually enslaves men to material things while giving them the false impression that they own/control them. 
It enslaves the poor to the rich, while it enslaves the rich to riches/possessions.

Against this backdrop of deception which is prevalent in this dark world, it is very important for us to know that God is not only the creator of all things but also upholds all things by the word of his power. He's the only one in absolute control of all things as the only rightful owner, master & Lord of all things.

When we handle & hold all things in the light of God & in relation to God, we will walk in the right spirit, which is the spirit of stewardship and not ownership. We will know that we are not owners but stewards of whatever resources we are privileged to have. It is a spirit that rightly puts us in the mindset of responsibility & accountability to God, knowing within us that it is required of stewards to be faithful. 1st Corinthians 4:2; Luke 12:42-44.

King David in the old testament perfectly understood that we're stewards and not owners; in his prayer to God in 1st Chronicles 29:15-16 he said: "We are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding. Jehovah our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee a house to thy holy name, is of thy hand, and is all thine own."

Where the spirit of stewardship is lost in the church today, it's tragic as most ministers have become owners of churches/the people of God, calling the flock of God, their flock, and his heritage/assembly which he purchased with the blood of his own Son, their own; drawing away disciples to disciple them after themselves & not after the Lord -Acts 20:28-30.

The people of God themselves have become enslaved to men, and have become members of men as belonging to men and the church of men; they have also become enslaved to material things in the false mindset of ownership and not responsibility/accountability to God in managing resources -1st Corinthians 3:3-4 21-23.

What punctures the spirit of stewardship, begins in the heart of the servant that loses sight of his Lord; losing the consciousness and awareness of the master as the owner of all things.
 
According to scripture, the heart of the servant that defers his Lord's coming, resolving that the coming of the Lord is not imminent but afar off, most spontaneously embraces the spirit of ownership, which as earlier said, is a very reckless, ruthless and ruinous spirit in the world. Such begins to eat & drink as he pleases, and to lord it over his fellow servants, and the end of such is very tragic if they fail to repent 👇🏽

Luke 12:45-46
"But if that servant should say in his heart, My lord delays to come, and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, and to eat and to drink and to be drunken, the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he does not expect it, and in an hour he knows not of, and shall cut him in two and appoint his portion with the unbelievers."

It is the heart of the servant that says "my Lord delays to come" that spontaneously assumes ownership & lordship over his fellow servants; beating & bullying them, and recklessly eating/using resources at his disposal without any sense of accountability to God.

Lastly in Acts 4:32-33, we see that the secret of the great power the early church walked in, bearing the witness of the resurrected & glorified Lord, is that they were far from the spirit of ownership. They were a people who rather walked & related to everything on earth in the spirit of stewardship and accountability to God 👇🏽

"And the heart and soul of the multitude of those that had believed were one, and not one said that anything of what he possessed was his own, but all things were common to them; and with great power did the apostles give witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

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