Why is Stewardship Important for Success?

Why is Stewardship Important for Success?

Have you ever wondered why people who are in poverty never seem to have nice stuff? 

Is it because they are in poverty and can’t afford nice stuff? Perhaps. Or is it because they don’t take care of the stuff they have already, and therefore are not given anything nicer to take care of?

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Children and Their Pants

Imagine your child loves to crawl around while playing. (mine does!) Now imagine your child crawls around so much that they are constantly wearing holes in the knees of their pants – no matter how new or how expensive the pants are.

Maybe you don’t have to imagine. Maybe your kid is actually this way. I know I have a daughter who has holes in her pants no matter what I do. And I don’t mind too much because it means she is having fun and using her imagination for some great creative play.

But do you think I’m going to buy this child a pair of really nice jeans? Or am I going to buy her the cheapest pants I can find? Remember – she wears holes in the knees no matter what kind of pants I buy her.

If your child constantly ripped holes in the knees of their pants because they crawled around, would you build a budget that allowed you to purchase cheap pants more often? Or would your budget include the ability to buy more expensive pants? Most likely, the cheaper pants.  Why?  Because if your child can’t handle taking care of cheap items then who is to say they can handle taking care of expensive items. 

Interestingly enough, our Heavenly Father who always knows what’s best for us does the same thing.  If we don’t take care of the things He has given us then how can we expect Him to give us more?

What is Stewardship?

Stewardship – The conducting, supervising, or managing of something; especially the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.

Merriam Webster

This is true for employment as well.  If you show your employer that you can take care of business then they will give you more business and if they are an honest employer, an increase in pay. A more valuable employee will be paid more than the employee who does not take care of things.

A business owner will do the same thing.  Employees can trust a business owner who takes care of them and business.  Interestingly, so do customers. 

Equipment runs longer when you keep up on the maintenance.  Your buildings don’t burn down when you properly expand them to keep the furnace to building ratio properly balanced.

Stewardship and Relationships

Not only is proper stewardship essential for stuff, but it is also essential for relationships.  Telling your spouse, “I told you I loved you when I married you and if that ever changes I’ll let you know” is a sure-fire way to lose them.

Never taking an interest in your child’s interests is a great way to lose your child. 

Always expecting your friends to be there for you, but never being there for, them is a good way to lose your friends.

For a relationship to blossom, it needs proper love and care. Neglecting a relationship is a great way to destroy it. 

His Lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

Matthew 25:21

I know learning to take care of their things is a hard lesson for a lot of kids to learn. As you know, I’ve got seven kids. They are fantastic kids! But some of them are not very nice to their toys.

In fact, some of them are not very nice to anybody’s toys.

This is a problem Ben and I have been working very diligently to solve. If they don’t learn while they’re young to take care of their (and other people’s) things, then they will have a very difficult time finding success when they get older.

How we teach our kids to take care of their things

I’ve got a real-life example for you. It may seem harsh to some of you, but this example really changed the way our daughter (8) treats other people’s things.

Nicole has a very active imagination. She has always been creative and impulsive and only interested in what fun she can have in the moment – never what the consequences to that fun would be.

We ALWAYS had broken toys lying around the house or the yard. It was a little bit ridiculous how many things this child would break.

We travel around a lot and are always moving from place to place. Just after one of these moves, the kids were all sleeping in sleeping bags in their new rooms. We hadn’t had time to unpack their bedding yet, so sleeping bags worked for the time being.

One day, Nicole decided to use her brother’s sleeping bag for one of her imaginative adventures. During her play, the sleeping bag got ripped. I mean totally and completely ripped. There was no more life in this sleeping bag.

To teach Nicole a lesson about treating other people’s things with respect, we gave her sleeping bag to her brother (it wasn’t his fault she’d ripped his bag!) and told her she would be sleeping without any sleeping bag or blanket until we could get the rest of our bedding from the storage unit. This would be about 3 nights.

Nicole whined and cried but honestly, there was not much we could do. All our stuff was in the storage unit and not scheduled to arrive until that weekend. We were not going to make this lesson easier on her by buying her another blanket/sleeping bag.

So she slept without a blanket for 3 nights. And she understood why.

And you know what? She has not been carelessly rough with the items in her care ever since.

So why spend the time teaching your kids and yourself to take care of what you have?

Because a Skyscraper is Bigger than a Shed. 

Let me explain. 

When building a structure, you first start with a foundation.

The foundation of a shed can be just a few rocks put on fairly solid ground. A house needs some digging and a slab of concrete or similar material to stay standing.  A skyscraper, on the other hand, has a foundation that is extremely deep into the ground. 

The amount of time and effort spent on a foundation is always in excess of the structural other parts. 

Taking care of things is your foundation for your life.  It is what everything else is set on and relies on to stay up.  If you don’t maintain your foundation, everything eventually crumbles into nothing.  If you constantly start over and never build on and take care of what little you start with, then the largest “life building” you can expect is a shed.

Here is the catch to it all. It takes time. 

When you invest your time into maintaining an old something (investment, relationship, etc) you no longer have that time to put into something new.

But it is a lot less work to build or buy once and then maintain than it is to start over with something new again and again and again.

Maintaining proper stewardship over what we have been given is a principle for success. This week we’re diving a little bit deeper into this success principle with our subscribers. Want to see what else we have to say about stewardship? We’ve got a pretty cool analogy on cars and getting free mileage out of your existing car. (something we’ve used with great success in our lives)

Sign up for the weekly success principles email list to read our cool analogy and learn more about proper stewardship is important for success in all aspects of our lives!