| Stewardship is
the grateful response to God's grace and goodness. It requires a
consideration of how our choices affect us and others, of how we can be
good caretakers of the created world, and of how we can best serve God
as disciples of Christ.
Giving has always been a mark of Christian commitment
and discipleship. The ways in which a believer uses God's gifts of
material goods, personal abilities, and time should reflect a faithful
response to God's self-giving in Jesus Christ and Christ's call to
minister to and share with others in the world. Tithing is a primary
expression of the Christian discipline of stewardship.
Those who follow the discipline of Christian
stewardship will find themselves called to lives of simplicity,
generosity, honesty, hospitality, compassion, receptivity, and concern
for the earth and God's creatures.
The Christian life is an offering of one's self to
God. In worship the people are presented with the costly self-offering
of Jesus Christ, are claimed and set free by him, and are led to respond
by offering to him their lives, their particular gifts and abilities,
and their material goods.
"See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down,
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all."
Money and the church - Things to think about.
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