A friend once loaned his light-duty pickup truck to a fellow church member who was moving. When the truck was returned, something was not quite right. It seemed that the light-duty truck had been put to heavy-duty use. It was never the same after that weekend. Was the man angry and upset? Sure, for a time, he was. After all, the borrower didn’t own the truck, and yet he wore it out. Looking back, though, the incident now serves this friend as a reminder that we really do not own all that we use in this life.
The Bible makes it clear that ownership of all things belongs only to God.
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1 KJV).
“The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:8 ESV).
“Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine” (Job 41:11 ESV).
So, everything we call our own—trucks, houses, tools, etc.—are entrusted to us by God. We do not own any of it. Author Randy Alcorn says it this way: “God owns everything, I’m his money manager.”¹
Like the two sides of a coin, God’s ownership and our management are inseparable. Taking good care of His assets is certainly part of our management responsibility. But the real challenge is to remember who the owner truly is and to make wise management decisions to honor His investment. Or as Jesus put it,
“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16 ESV).
What does it mean to be a good manager of God’s assets? First, God expects us to care for those who are dependent upon us. In 1 Timothy 5, we see Paul’s explanation that when it comes to caring for widows—and by extension, all dependent family members—we are to do it without exception. In fact, if we do not care for their needs, according to Paul, we have “denied the faith and [are] worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8 NIV).
Second, God calls us to be generous in the same way He has been generous to us. In the Lord’s Prayer, we are reminded that the Lord shows us forgiveness, and we have the responsibility to share that forgiveness with those around us (Matthew 6:12). God’s generous spirit is also demonstrated in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave” (NIV). It may be that we are most like our Heavenly Father when we give.
When we live with generous hearts, we demonstrate that we understand a critical truth: God is the owner of everything, and we are the temporary managers.
¹Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle (Multnomah 2017).
