Stewardship: Meeting Your Family's Material Needs

 1 Timothy 5:1-8

Not only are you responsible for providing for your family emotionally and spiritually, but you are also responsible for your loved ones' material needs.

Paul wrote to Timothy, "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Timothy 5:8).

This verse was printed on the stationery of the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund Life Insurance Company, the oldest life insurance company in America, which insures only ministers and their immediate families. What a devastating proof text this provides for buying life insurance!

Although your family has other needs, you are also responsible for meeting its material needs. Paul is writing in the context of providing for widows who have lost their means of support. Economic considerations are biblically significant. Careful perusal of the Scriptures alerts us not to be so heavenly-minded that we are of no earthly good.

Things are important. Christianity does not minimize material matters. Christ made constant reference to God's material provision. Both the Old and New Testament records give an historical account of how God has taken care of His own.

Unfortunately, extremists have led people in false directions. On the one hand, history portrays those who are hedonists, pampering every little sensual appetite, devoting their primary energies to material whims. On the other extreme, there are the ascetics who make a religious appeal to self-denial. There is a biblical call to discipline. This must not be confused with a depreciation of the God-given physical gifts. Hedonism on one extreme and asceticism on the other are perversions of how God created you to live.

The Bible outlines a theology of creation. God has created all that is in the world. Your physical presence is important. As you dedicate your energies to spiritual growth, you must realize that this is to be carried out in this physical world within your human body. As a believer in Christ you live in a constant tension between concern with material matters -- either no concern or over-concern. The Bible has a lot more to say about your physical and economic existence than you may realize. Within this context, I raise six significant questions relative to meeting your family's material needs.

Question One: Are you working hard?

There is no place for a lazy Christian. I am not talking about witnessing, I am talking about your daily, down-to-earth work routine.

Fulton Rindge was a sage, New England textile executive. He commented about a lazy associate, saying, "If Carl worked half as hard at doing something productive as he does at trying to avoid work, he would be a millionaire!" Some people are just plain lazy. Are you?

Living in Florida for six years gave me a chance to reverse the typical life pattern. Many a Northern businessman works hard forty years, with the dream of tropical retirement. With jealous eyes, he gazes at the ones fortunate enough to take early retirement. I watched these men move South. So many came in their mid-sixties, enthusiastic about their new-found opportunity to play golf seven days a week. A strange thing happened. Unless they had developed a productive avocation -- something which made a contribution beyond play -- many of these men shriveled up into retrospective living. They were addicted to the past. Many a conversation in a country club locker room was loaded with the reminiscences of past vocational experiences. Double martinis lubricated melancholy musings of better days.