If you’ve followed me for very long, you may have noticed that I use the word stewardship a lot.
I talk about stewarding our health, time, relationships, resources, work, gifts, influence—and really, our whole lives.
When I use that word, I mean something bigger than simply managing money or taking good care of things.
At the center of it, I believe, is this:
✝️ Jesus is the center.
🙏 God is the Source.
✨ Our lives are His—created to bring Him glory.
Stewardship is using what God has entrusted to us in a way that honors Him. And sometimes, stewardship itself is the assignment.
Stewarding:
➡️ Our bodies.
➡️ Our relationships.
➡️ Our time, attention, and focus.
➡️ Our resources.
➡️ Our gifts and opportunities.
➡️ The particular assignments God gives us in each season.
It is one of the ways we love God—with our whole lives.
For me, stewardship has increasingly become a way of asking:
❓What has God entrusted to me—and what would faithfulness look like here?
Not comparison.
Not looking at someone else’s life to decide what mine should look like.
Not assuming that bigger always means better.
Just faithfully tending what God has placed in front of me.
One of the most freeing truths I’ve been learning is this:
✨ Faithfulness is my responsibility. The outcome belongs to God.
But trusting God with the outcome does not mean becoming passive about the assignment. Biblical stewardship is wholehearted. We pursue what God places before us with the wisdom, strength, skill, resources, ingenuity, and tenacity He supplies. We prepare, practice, persevere, measure fruit, learn, and continually adjust when necessary.
Wisdom gives us influence over outcomes; it does not give us sovereignty over them.
Paul depended completely upon the grace of God, yet he also labored, struggled, planned, taught, traveled, endured, and poured himself into the work God had given him.
Grace did not replace exertion. Grace fueled it.
(1 Corinthians 15:10; Colossians 1:29)
So we can build faithfully, work diligently, love people well, pursue excellence, and make wise use of every resource—while remaining open-handed about what God ultimately chooses to produce.
That changes the question from:
❓ “Why hasn’t more happened yet?”
to:
🙏 “Lord, am I wholeheartedly stewarding what You’ve already placed in my hands?”
And this is also why you’ll probably see me talk more about some areas than others.
There are areas where I have spent years walking, wrestling, practicing, and being formed. There are other places where I’m still growing—and some where I’m only beginning to understand what faithful stewardship looks like.
I’m not equally far along in every area, and I certainly don’t have a perfectly stewarded life to present.
What I do hope is that much of what I share comes from real life behind the words—from what I have lived through, learned, practiced, or am honestly working through.
Faith is one of those places. I have been walking with Christ and pursuing Him for more than five decades—and I am still learning to trust, surrender, and follow Him.
Peace with Food is another. I spent more than four decades searching for freedom—learning, failing, growing, and practicing along the way—before eventually experiencing a kind of peace I once wasn’t sure was possible.
That is why these are two of the areas you will hear me talk about most. They are places where I can share from years of lived experience.
That doesn’t mean we can only speak about things we’ve mastered. None of us would have much to say if that were the standard.
But I do want to be honest about the difference between sharing from tested depth, sharing from active practice, and sharing from a place where I am still near the beginning.
So sometimes I’ll talk about Scripture and discipleship.
Sometimes I’ll talk about food and our bodies.
And sometimes I’ll share what I’m learning as I practice stewardship in other domains of life.
These are not all areas in which I claim equal experience or expertise. They are simply different places where the larger framework of stewardship touches real life.
Because beneath all of them is the same question:
How do I faithfully steward the life God has entrusted to me?
I don’t live this perfectly. I’m learning right alongside you.
But increasingly, I believe stewardship is part of how we love God, love people, remain faithful for the long haul—and ultimately…
f i n i s h w e l l.
📌 Because these ideas belong together, I’m doing something a little different this week: sharing four connected posts over four days. This is the first—and I’m grateful to have you here for the journey. 🌿
The Suede Sofa Blog 