Stewardship: Meeting Your Family's Material Needs

For example, I remember a little church my father served for eighteen years in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the 1940s, he sold his car to pay the church fuel bill. For the better part of a year, he rode his bike or took the bus to work. Did that permanently mar my life? Absolutely not? Our family had bad times and good times financially. Frankly, I probably learned more about money and sincerity of purpose in the bad times than in the good. I had my paper routes. I did my caddying. I was encouraged to be an entrepreneur as I worked my way through high school, college, and seminary. The tough times were the best in the world.

My sister went through a few years of comparative ease during her last couple of years of high school and her first year in college. Then Mom and Dad had some reversals. My sister went through the humbling experience of renting out her services to do housework in homes, and for the mothers of some of her closest friends. That was the making of my sister. In a spiritual, personal way, hardship builds character.

And tough times pull a family together. In one family I know, the father has been laid off from his local employment. Each day he drives sixty miles one way just to have work. You can see the family pulling together during this time of difficulty.

If you are diligent in your work, God's blessing is with you. He rewards your faithfulness, even if you never make a lot of money or if you go through times of deep financial discouragement.

Question Five: What is your attitude toward your partner's work?

Is it one of appreciation? Do you stop to think what your partner is doing for you? It's so important to express appreciation. You can destroy by your complaints and comparisons. I know a woman who has tunnel vision when it comes to her husband. They strained themselves to buy a home a bit beyond their means. It's a beautiful home in a lovely suburb. Her husband makes pretty good money. But by buying the home she wanted, the monthly payments and taxes have kept her from being able to match the economic lifestyle of her neighbors. They can't afford to join the proper clubs or take the "in" vacations. She constantly nags her husband about his failure to provide. He has provided! She lacks appreciation. Her ideals are too high. She doesn't realize that she's the envy of some whose husbands don't do quite as well. In the process, she is missing the enormous blessing of God upon her life. She is like a kid in a candy store. Her eyes are too big. Her nickel doesn't go as far as she wants it to go.

You can get so caught up in your own work that you forget the importance of what your partner does. Some of us men are guilty. Your wife works hard. Just imagine if you had to prepare three meals a day for your family, wash the dishes, clean the house, do the laundry, iron your own shirts, take care of the kids. These jobs take seven days a week. And it's all the more complicated if your wife also has a job outside the home. She needs all the more help and understanding. Do you ever express your appreciation? What is your attitude toward your partner's work?

Question Six: What are you doing for your parents?

Are you taking care of those who expended so much energy in taking care of you? Paul writes, "But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God" (1 Timothy 5:4).

Charity begins at home. E. K. Simpson has said, "A religious profession which falls below the standard of duty recognized by the world is a wretched fraud." Secular writers have emphasized our responsibilities toward our parents to make material provision for them. Philo wrote, "When old storks become unable to fly, they remain in their nests and are fed by their children, who go to endless exertions to provide their food because of their piety." He noted that even the animal creation acknowledged its obligation to aged parents. How much more should we, as Christian men and women?

How difficult it is to know what to do with aged parents. We were once their children. Now they've become ours. What we do for them becomes a model for what ours will do for us. In turn, the elderly parent has a responsibility to respect and adapt to his child's provision. Many a parent has caused himself to be pushed out of a loving home by forgetting that he no longer is responsible for the leadership role. He must take a back seat to the leadership of his children.

What higher symbol of Christian grace can be seen today than children who are making provision for their elder parents? What are you doing for yours?

Yes, you have the exciting responsibility of meeting your family's material needs. What are you doing about it?