The Power of Ownership

Tom Shrader explores the principle of ownership, teaching that all assets - material, informational, functional, and relational - are temporarily controlled rather than truly owned. Using Mark 13:32-37, He explains that God is the real owner of everything and intends for these assets to be distributed according to His agenda, not accumulated or hoarded. Shrader identifies ignorance, envy, and greed as the primary barriers preventing people from properly stewarding God's assets.

“Assets that are undistributed are irrelevant.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Power Broker

Recorded: April 20, 2006

Duration: 43 min

Themes: stewardship, ownership, power, authority, greed, envy, resources, service, business owner, struggling with materialism, new to wealth, manager, leader, parent, dealing with envy, young professional

Scripture: Mark 13:32-37, 1 Corinthians 4:2, Romans 14:12, 1 Corinthians

Theological Themes: stewardship, biblical ownership, divine sovereignty, spiritual authority, sanctification, worldliness, biblical worldview, kingdom principles

Full Transcript

Begin today, session three, in what's a ten-session series. That's a long series for us. Most of the series that we do are going to be six weeks, eight weeks. Periodically, I think we've done eight, twelve, but this is kind of up there in terms of time. It's pretty thorough in its discussion of this issue of power.

Now, when we talk about power, it's like the other things that we do, and you would assume this, that our view is maybe a little bit different than what you might get out there in the world. Let me remind you that God is the source of power, and His intention is to transfer power to us, to use it, but also to pass it on. So there, right there, just so we all know further, right there we have a difference. The worldview of power is get it, hold it, keep it, get people around you, suck them dry, get more power, and get all the power, and you get it, you keep it, you hoard it.

The Power Broker Concept

What we started with the first week, and the title of this series, Power Broker, is this: to take power, and here's how Webster defines power, the ability to do, act, or produce. Take that power, the ability to do, act, or produce, and then a broker is somebody who takes a need and a supply and matches them together. So what a power broker is, is a person who brings people who have this need to produce, or to act, or to do, and match them up with a source of power.

So we said God is the source of power for us, God transfers that possession of that power to us, so that we then can use it appropriately. And we said there's four institutions God's ordained that manifest that: the family, the government, the workplace, the church, and those are the last four lessons of the series. But we took a little more thorough approach as we began the series, and to say we want to really spend some time and lay these things out. We want to make sure that we go through this in a real strategic way.

The Parable of Stewardship

If you have Bibles with you, you can open them to Mark chapter 13. I know this, it's interesting for me, especially these first six lessons in this series are not really, in a sense, a Bible study. We'll pull some principles out of here, but I happen to be one, I like the chapter by chapter, verse by verse, or the topical that kind of flows from a passage. So the beginning of this series is a little bit different, so that might be a bit of an adjustment for you, but you are flexible people, so I have great confidence in you.

Mark chapter 13, verse 32: "But of this day and that hour no man knows, nor the angels, nor even the Son knows, but the Father. So take heed, watch, pray, for you know not when this time is. For the Son of Man is as a man taking a far journey." Now, what I want you to see, again, is He's building an allegory here. He's saying this is what it's like.

"The Son of Man is like a man who's taking a journey, left his house, gave authority to the servants, to every man his work, and they command a porter to watch. Watch therefore, for you don't know when the master of the house will come. It could be midnight, or the crowing of the cock, or in the morning, lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you, I say to all, watch."

The idea there is that there's this master, there's these stewards, the master has entrusted to these stewards or these servants a commodity. The master will come, and when he comes he will judge how we handle that commodity. In this case, what we're talking about is power. Now we'll come back to that passage as we close the session this morning.

The Power of Proficiency

Last week we talked about the power of proficiency. This is really important, and it was so cool. Again, for me personally, in my own life, I understand this. I kind of live in this place. I get this.

Here's what we said proficiency is. If you can imagine three circles: here's what I can do, here's what I want to do, and here's what I'm given the authority to do, or paid to do, or charged to do. So if I'm a person, let's say my expertise is management, people, that's what I love to do. I love to be around people, energize people, teach a little bit. That's what I can do, that's what I want to do, but I got a job that has me locked up in an office doing accounting. I'm not happy there. There's a disconnect there.

I want to take what I can do, I want to take what I want to do, I want to take what I'm charged or paid to do, and I want those three circles to overlap as much as possible. And where all three of them are overlapping, I'm in the zone. I mean that's the equivalent of the three point shooter who's looking and saying the bucket, the basket that night looks as big as a bushel basket. That's standing over the putt and saying the hole looks like it's a foot wide. That's where I want to be. I want to operate right there.

When I'm there, I'm energized. Even at the end of the day, if I'm tired, it's a good I'm tired. Several of you ask, how was Easter? How was Easter this week? How did it go?

Well, at the end of that, I mean it's really kind of a grueling day. I mean we just go from deal to deal to deal to deal to deal and do six or seven of them and they're happening two or three of them simultaneously and you're going from room to room and literally don't know what time it is. It's funny, there'll be in the back of the church, back behind the platform, there'll be a little handwritten sign with the times on it. You'll see little ones X'd off just to kind of help you remember what time it is because you're just going.

At the end of the day, you're pooped. It just so happened that our family and the in-laws and everyone landed at our house. So when I came home, which would traditionally be put on my fat pants and watch TV and sleep, I now have to be bright and cheery and nice. And that was difficult. So I didn't get to bed till like seven that night and I was whipped. But it was a good poop because I think what I can do and what I want to do is what I was charged to do.

That power proficiency is a huge thing. There is no point in being

Now I'm realistic. I know that any job has some stuff that you don't want to do and maybe even can't do. But if I'm operating out in those areas all the time, I don't want to live there.

I'll give you another little secret. I think as you get older, that even gets more true. I find myself, I was sitting in a meeting the other day and part of what I'm charged to do is there and I was proposing somebody else do this. And so they had a discussion and finally they said, well, why? And I said, I'll tell you why. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do that. So I think you need to find somebody else to do it or just accept that I don't want to do it and it won't get done very well, which doesn't seem to me to be an acceptable alternative.

I think as you get older, you get a little more freed up to do that. But that's always been my thing. God's been really good to me and my life has always been that way. If I don't like it and it goes on, I'm done. Boom, I'm on to the next deal. That's just my thing.

The True Definition of Ownership

Today, we look at this idea of ownership. Look at Webster's definition of ownership. Let me read you this definition: The temporary control of an asset, tangible or intangible, marked by the balancing features of responsibility and accountability.

Now, I just told you, and obviously we would make no distinction, but for sake of argument here, we will, I just told you a little white lie in that this is not Webster's actual definition. I've added one word to that definition and I'll bet you're pretty smart. I'll bet you know what it is. What is it? Temporary. Ownership is the temporary control of an asset, tangible or intangible, marked by the balancing features of responsibility and accountability. Temporary.

We say that all the time. I used to own that house. I used to own that car. That used to be my spouse. I used to be there. It's the old idea of a hearse and you'll never see a U-Haul following a hearse and all that kind of stuff. It's temporary.

How Understanding Temporary Control Changes Everything

This should ring really and sound very familiar to you because this was the basic premise of the financial foundation series. When you get control of this, I have two huge points today that you have to star, mark, and go through. This is one of them. When you get control of this, the idea that your possession of this asset, tangible or intangible, is temporary, it radically changes the way you live. It changes the way you see life.

Haley has just become an incredible mother. It's been really interesting for me to watch this. She's been a mother now for almost five months. I've watched this transformation in her. She is unbelievable with this little kid. She's just like Susan was, which is what I expected would happen.

I'm with her the other day and I said, boy, he's getting big. She said, you know what? He's five months, almost six months, which is half a year, almost a year. He'll be in school before you know it. I said, well, he's not quite on his way to college. I said, hey, you got to be careful here because he's a good kid and you're a good mom and you love him a lot, but he ain't yours. He's God's that's been entrusted to you. If you're raising him to be your little boy, to do your little thing, you're going to overprotect him.

I told her, I said, I'm afraid we're going to have to get a bunch of guys together for his first ballet recital here the way you're going with this thing. He's a boy. Let him be a boy already. We've got issues here. I don't want him going out to ride his bike looking like he's going into a gladiator with helmets and pads. I'm so sick of seeing that stuff. Ride the bike, fall down, break your arm like everybody should. Be a man. This is dumb. We're way out of control. That's a different issue.

I said, hey, you got to understand, man, he's not yours. He's God's. You want to really raise him to be God's kid because then you'll love him even more and he'll be even a better son to you, but you got to get that. That's the case. Ownership is temporary control of this asset.

Four Basic Principles of Ownership

Here's the second point. There are four basic principles here in this whole idea of ownership that we need to remember.

Number one, we just talked about it. God is the real owner of every asset. We said He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, all the silver, all the gold. He created it. He owns this land. He's transferred temporary control. In other words, don't confuse possession with ownership.

Number two, God intends for these assets to be distributed. He did not give you whatever the asset is for you to hoard. You're never going to have enough.

The Human Tendency to Accumulate

That's the third thing. Man intends assets to be accumulated. By and large, that's how we are. We want to get. We want to hoard. Again, I really observed this in the generation even above me, but kind of the generation that came through the Depression and all the other things.

A friend of mine, he happens to be from the same hometown that I am, and his mother had passed away and he's cleaning out the house. He's saying, you would not believe what she's kept. She has everything. There's nothing. We have cups and soups and bowls and spoons and calendars from 1937. We have all of this stuff. I said, it can't be that bad.

He said, I'm going to bring you a gift. He brought, in 19, I don't know what it would have been, 70, 71, I worked at a clothing store back in Davenport, Iowa called the Syndicate Hub. It would be similar to what John's is here or Mill's Touche, very upper end, suits, ties. I know, it didn't fit, but can do, want to do, needed a job. There you go. He came in the next day and he had a tie box from the Syndicate Hub. His mom had purchased this tie to give to somebody. Once they took the tie, she said, I'll take the box.

Now, that's how we are. We tend to hoard. I may need that again. God intends it to be distributed. Man hoards it.

Here you go. This is the second star. You've got to get this point. This is a gigantic point. Assets

that are undistributed are irrelevant. If you've got assets and they aren't distributed, you're just watching them—they're irrelevant.

I'll give you a couple of illustrations. You've got the ability or the gift to teach. If you've got the gift to teach, if that's your asset and it's not being distributed, it's irrelevant.

I had a guy the other day, and we'll get in there. They seem to come in waves. You'll have none for a while and then a whole bunch of discussions on money. But this guy came and he had a chunk of money. His question was, "What do I do with this money?" I said, "Hey, I'm not a financial planner. I don't know any of that stuff. I'll give you a principle though: Assets that aren't distributed are irrelevant."

He said, "I don't know what you mean." I said, "All right, let's say for sake of discussion that you sit down and you do prudent planning and you say, 'When I have'—and I don't want to put a number on it because some of you will check out at that point—'When I have X, whatever X is, when I have X, I'm set. I'm prepared for retirement. I'm prepared for the end of my life. I'm prepared for all the things.' When I have X, by definition, anything that you have over X at that point is an asset you don't need to live on. It becomes irrelevant."

Here's what he said: "When I die, all this money..." I said, "Who cares when you die? What about that money? We can talk about this money you need to live on later, but this other money—why are you waiting to distribute it when you die? That doesn't make any sense to me. What's the plan? Why are you waiting?"

The Problem with Waiting

I'll tell you why: because you're not really sure about the other number and what if something goes wrong? What if an asteroid hits the planet and we're destroyed? It's not going to matter. You've said X, fund X, and the rest of it, prudently get rid of, because as long as it's sitting in your little pocket, accumulating your little interest, it isn't doing God any good.

It's the same thing I said when we started our building plan at church. Good news, bad news. Good news is we got all the money we need. Bad news, it's still in your pocket—but we got the money, okay?

So if that asset's sitting there—do you see that? That's a big star principle. Right now, don't even try to—you don't even have to agree with it. Just do you get it? Do you understand what I'm saying there? That's a really strange way of thinking. "When I die, I'll give it to them." Why are you waiting to die? Why do you want all of us to cheer your death? We got to get you to die before we move on? That doesn't make sense. That's a really important principle that we grasp.

Four Categories of Assets

Here you go. What kind of assets do you have? Four categories.

Number one, you got this figured out. Material—the things you have. Stocks, bonds, land, money, all that stuff. Things you want more of probably. And again, it's the real simple principle that we talked about. At what point does planning—good, solid, prudent planning, we're all for planning—at what point does planning become hoarding? So I got assets. Again, naturally, I just want more of them.

I don't know, a few years ago, I was actually coming up to this study. And it was 5:20 in the morning, and I stopped at the casino. Now that may sound like an odd thing to you. You may say, "That's not a good thing to do on the way to teach a Bible study." Let me explain what I was doing. They had those temporary buildings. Remember when they had the temporary buildings out there? And we were talking about using one at the church. So I wanted to see how could we use this?

It blew me away. It's 5:20 on a Thursday morning, and I pull in, interestingly enough, right next to a guy with a fish and a Jesus sticker. I don't know what that means—making no comment on it. I walk in the casino, and every slot machine was filled. Every table except two were filled up and running with guys saying, "I just need more. I just need more. Let me get more. Give you a little bit of this, get that."

So here you go. You got material assets, the things you have.

Informational Assets

Here's the second thing. Informational assets. They're the facts you know. That's what a consultant is, isn't it? You know this stuff. So you come in. You're the expert. You're the pro from Dover. You tell us the things you know. Your facts. Take our watch and tell us what time it is. That kind of a deal. You're a consultant. So you're going to help us through this process.

There was a guy, by the way—this is probably one of the first infomercials I remember. And I'm an infomercial freak. I love infomercials. I'll tell you who hasn't been on in a long time. My little friend has not been out now for almost two years, I think. My little buddy Richard Simmons. So there has to be something coming. I love infomercials.

This is the first infomercial I remember. It was conceived by a guy who was a professor at ASU who was teaching students and realizing they didn't take tests very well. So he came up with this thing called—do you remember it?—"Where There's a Will, There's an A." And he made millions of dollars off that. There was the math guy at the same time. "$445 million divided by $750 million is..." and he'd tell you the answer. And you'd go, "Wow." And these guys just turn. So you're just paying them. Here's what I know. I know how to take a test. Let me show you how to take a test.

So there's that information, those informational assets, the facts you know.

Functional Assets

Here's the third thing. Functional assets. The skills you have. If you can throw a baseball in the upper 80s, lower 90s, and move it around a little bit and have some control and win 10, 12 games, that's 3, 4 million bucks right now. I watched a thing last night with Denny McClain. One guy won 30 games right now. I can't even fathom what that's worth.

So you have a skill. You can juggle bowling balls. I saw the guy at Christmas. There was a real cool—and you might have seen them—

These are the guys that have the piano on the ground and they bounce balls on it to play music. I'm thinking, this would be a cool thing for me to bring to town to use in one of my Christmas events. The guy wanted like 15 grand. I'm thinking, wow. If I can bounce balls on a piano, that's 15 grand a shot. So if you can build a wall, consider the skills you have.

Here's the last category: relational assets. You might overlook that. That's the people you know. People you know are a valuable commodity. Now, let's add a caution there. We don't mean to use them and abuse them. The secret here is not to get the best tickets, but to have somebody you can genuinely connect with.

I'll give you a great example from my life. For me to be able to get on the phone and call Larry Wright and have Larry take the call and spend as much time with me as I wanted was really an asset. Now, you obviously can't do that with everyone, but I could call Larry at any time, day, night, any time, even if we hadn't spoken for two or three weeks. He'd say, hello. I'd say, Doc. He'd say, Tommy. I'd go right into what I need. We'd pick right up like we just were talking 30 seconds ago.

Periodically, and I don't bother Barry much, but probably four times a year, I'll try to sit down with Barry Asmus and go through and say, Barry, help me. I want to think this through. I want to understand this. If I have a question, I don't really understand something or I see something on the news, I can call him. I'll call him and say, I don't need much time. Here's what I saw. Tell me what it means. Thanks. Those are great assets to have.

The Perspective for Ownership Transfer

So these are assets you have: material, informational, relational, functional assets. For this ownership transfer to take place, two things are important for you to remember. Number one, you need the perspective to understand what God has in mind in placing these assets in your temporary control. In other words, why did God give you this stuff? Why did God give you that talent?

I have had people say, God gave me the gift of making money. Well, there is no gift to make money. You have a talent to make money. The gift that we'd love to see go with that would be the gift of what? Giving. It doesn't do much good if you're making 12 grand a year—the gift of giving is nice and it's important. But if you're making a whole bunch of money, boom.

If God's given you a skill, whatever it is, maybe it's the talent to sing—it's not a gift, it's a talent. I can use that to further my own kingdom or I can use that for His purposes. You see that? So you've got to ask, why did God give you this?

The second thing you have to have for this whole transfer to make sense is you've got to be willing to relinquish control of this, to use it for the purposes that God had in mind.

God's Agenda for His Assets

Here's the next point. I do love this series. It's very different than the stuff we've done, but it just progresses. I like the logic of it. So the question becomes, what does God want you to do with His assets? Well, here's what He wants you to do. He wants you to distribute them in keeping with His agenda. Again, sounds very familiar to when we talked about the financial part of this. God has an agenda.

First Corinthians chapter 4 verse 2: "Now it's required that those who've been given a trust must prove faithful." You're a steward. God has entrusted something to you. Freely it's been given to you, freely you give.

There is a day of judgment. Now, when a non-believer, when a non-Christian dies, they are not judged, they are condemned. When a non-believer dies, they're condemned. They go to hell. The person who's judged is you and me. There's a judgment for us. We as Christians will be judged.

The judgment, I think, goes like this: God will evaluate everything we've done since conversion to see if it has eternal value or not. He doesn't punish me for my sin, right? I mean, I thought that's why Jesus died. I think that punishment's gone. That judgment's done. But God's going to evaluate you for how you've lived this life. What have you done with what He's entrusted to you?

The Hard Questions

Now, if you are a thoughtful person, and you are, or you wouldn't be up here at this ridiculous hour of the morning, if you're a thoughtful person, then you have to start to say, well, what has He given me? What's His agenda? What would He have me do?

We had a couple of years ago, really hot, "What would Jesus do?" I always found that to be, and maybe it's because I didn't think of it, but I always found that to be kind of cumbersome. So what would Jesus do when He meets a blind man? Well, He takes dirt, spits in it, puts it on their eyes, and they're healed. Not an option for me. I frustrated three guys by spitting in their eyes when they're blind. I haven't gotten—nobody's gotten healed yet. It ain't working. Doesn't work. I have a different responsibility there.

I'm saying take that concept and just take it a little bit further. It gets ugly now. This is going to get ugly. We're only going to go there, you say ouch, and then we'll move on. But what would Jesus drive? Where would Jesus live? What would Jesus wear? And even then we have to say, what would Jesus have me drive? What would Jesus have me wear? Where would Jesus have me live?

Here's what makes this so frustrating: I know how sick you are because I'm that sick too. What you want to do when we start to get close like that is you want to look around and say, well what about them? And what about them? And what about him? And look at her and look at them. It doesn't matter. I hope you understand God is not going to judge you by how they live their life. He's going to judge you by how you handled your life. All that is is a diversion. You're bait and switching us.

God wants you to distribute these assets that He's given you—informational, functional, relational, material—in coordination with His agenda. Why wouldn't you do that?

What are the barriers to that? There's three. Number one, ignorance. You don't know. By the way, if you're ignorant, that's good. Because if we're ignorant, we can fix it. If you're stupid, you're stuck there.

We can't handle stupid. If you're stupid, you're just stupid. But if you're ignorant, you're going, oh, I just didn't know. I hadn't been a Christian very long. And I made two, three, four kind of investment decisions. Take some money, had a couple of years, put some stuff here and there. I didn't know. And no one told me. And once I saw in the scripture and said, you know, I don't think that's the right thing, I thought, oh, I better not be doing that.

Now here's the deal. If what's stopping you from transferring these assets and this power is ignorance, we just took away a number one barrier. Because you can't be ignorant anymore. You just heard it. If you didn't get it now, now you are stupid. That's not good. You want to be ignorant, not stupid.

The Second and Third Barriers: Envy and Greed

Here's the second barrier. Actually, the second and the third are kind of two sides of the same coin. Envy and greed. Here's what's going to stop me from passing on assets. Remember, we're talking about power. I don't want to pass on power. Because I want it.

Now here's envy. Here's what envy is. Envy is, you got it, I want it. Greed is, I've got it, and I want to keep it. So envy is, you got it, I want it.

Great example. You're sitting around. You're in this house. You've got it all decorated. You're having a Diet Coke or a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or whatever it is you're drinking as you're sitting by the fire. And you say, you know what sweetie, this is a great house. We love this house. We've got two kids. We're only going to ever have two kids. It's a four bedroom house, a room for each kid. We've got an office in here. We've got our big master. Gosh, I'm happy. Are you happy? Yeah, let's drink to that. Let's celebrate. Okay, I'm happy.

You get a call the next day and it's your sister and she says, hey, we're going to have Christmas at our house this year. And you say, great. We'll be over. What time do you want us to go? I'll be there around two in the afternoon. Okay, great. Oh, by the way, we moved. Let me give you our new address. And you pull up and it's this new neighborhood and it's this big house. And all of a sudden you had this perfect little house. But now because they've got that, you feel like you need it. That's envy.

And that can be in any area. I hesitate to tell the story because you think I'll make it up. I didn't. We visited some people and they had this house. Now, I would have called it a large house, 18,000 square feet. That's a big house. No children. They moved into this house because when the kids had moved out and grown up, they felt like they were just rattling around in that other house. There are a lot of people who have envy when they see that.

Greed: The Desire to Keep What We Have

The other side of it, as I said, is greed. I got it. I want to keep it. I'm going to hoard it. I'm going to hang on to it.

I'll give you a silly illustration. I said to Susan, this is nuts. There's the two of us in this house and we're out of closet space. Some of this stuff has got to go. It is going. It is out. It is gone. It's history. She said, no problem, Slick. Let's start with your stuff. I said, okay. I said, no problem. I'm fine with that. I said, here's the rules. If we haven't worn it in two years, it's out. Two years, not wearing it out. Those are the ground rules, Tom. Let's start there.

I pulled out a shirt. She said, worn it in two years? I said, yep, wore it last week. She said, how about this? I said, that's my baseball uniform from the last game I ever pitched. Worn it in the last two years? I said, well, no, but it doesn't really, it's the exception to our rules. She said, oh, okay. How about these? I've kept this. During some of my rebellious years, they're a pair of black, gold, and red bell-bottom striped pants that I wore through the revolution and kept. She said, how about these? Wear them in two years? I said, well, no, but they're the exception. She said, you know what? We've had three items so far. Two of the three have been the exception to the rule. You want to keep going? I said, no, I'm okay. Let's just leave it like it is.

Well, that's what I'm saying. That's greed.

Evidence of Ownership

Here you go. Evidence of ownership. I'm going to go through this real quickly because I don't want to run out of time. Real simple. Number one is transmission. I transfer the asset. Number two is possession. So now if I'm buying a home, now I've moved in. Number three is discretion. I got control of the asset. I'm using it. Number four is direction. I'm exercising this thing.

The Greatest Mystery: God's Relinquishing of Control

Here's what I want to get at. We got about 10 minutes. Let me give you the greatest mystery. That God would relinquish temporary control to men. That's a great mystery. That God would relinquish temporary control to men.

Let's again think about the church. We talked about this last time. Let's say we're going to start a church. Here's what I would do. My natural instincts would be this way. I wouldn't do it now because I've learned, but my natural instincts would be, okay, we better get some guys with a bunch of money because somebody's got to pay for this. And we better get some really smart guys because somebody better know what they're doing. And it'd be really helpful if we're connected. We need some power guys.

God does exactly the opposite. Are there those components in the church? Yeah, but not many. That's Paul's whole point in 1 Corinthians, isn't it? God chooses the foolishness of this world. He chooses people like you and me.

I just was reading, and I used it for Easter as kind of this Christmas story. Here's the situation. Mary's pregnant. Joseph is engaged to her. Joseph discovers that she's pregnant. That's a problem. A guy's going to react to that. God is the one who impregnated her through the Holy Spirit. He needs to get this message to Joseph.

What does He do? He sends an angel. Now, I have the feeling that if the guy down the street came and said, "Hey, Joseph, don't worry about it. Everything's going to be all right. Going to have a son. Name will be Jesus," I don't know that Joseph would necessarily buy that. But it's an angel. Every time these angels appear, they have a pretty strong influence. And he says, "Oh, this is what angel said. Okay, babe, if that's the deal, that's the deal."

Why didn't God just keep using these angels all over? That seems to me to be really effective. Every time one of these angels pop in and say, "Hey, do this," they go, "Oh, wow, it's an angel. I better do it." But then when I say it, you go, "Hey, what does he know? We've never been to school." I mean, it's a real interesting way of communicating this stuff.

That God has this thing that's so important. It's His word. It's the preservation of His word, the declaration of His word, and He entrusts it to people. It is an incredible mystery that God would take temporary control of this asset and transfer it to you. And the greatest difficulty is, and you got that figured out, that men won't relinquish control to other men.

God's System of Stewardship

So there you are. There's kind of the story. Well thought through, I think. Let's go back to Mark chapter 13, verse 32 and following, and pull out a couple of points.

Verse 34, this whole idea of entrusting stewardship leaders, this is God's system, not yours. This is the key. "It's like a man who's going away. He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge." That's His system, stewardship. That's what God's chosen.

Number two, people are God's servants, not yours. We are to love people and use things, not love things and use people. God's left us in charge temporarily, and the people around us are to serve Him.

The Problem with Personal Pronouns

I'm talking to a guy the other day. This is just a pet peeve I have. And he started talking about my company, my department, my secretary, my staff, lots of singular personal pronouns. That's the problem, potentially.

I'll give you a little tip. Doesn't work 100% of the time, but it works a lot. When you're talking to a guy, and I would assume the same is true for women. I don't know that, but I'm telling you, for guys, when you're talking to a guy, and he begins to talk about his spouse, if he said, "my wife," versus saying Susan, there's almost always some issue there. Almost always.

So if you talk to me, I'm not going to, I mean, I'll say it, I guess, periodically. But in the course of a conversation, I'm going to talk about her as Susan. She's a person. She's an entity. She's not mine. These are God's people.

Individual Assignments and Differences

Here we go. Here's the third thing. People are responsible for their agenda, not yours. "It's like a man, he's going away," verse 34, "he leaves his house, puts the servants in charge, each with his assigned tasks." We're all different. We all have something different to do.

Here's what I've observed in this whole mentoring thing, is so often in mentoring, what the mentor is trying to do is make the protege just like them. We already got one of you. We don't need another one of you. One might already be too many. We don't need a bunch of you running around.

Mentoring is not me trying to make you like me. It's me helping to bring out in you, or entrust in you, or whatever it is that God's doing in you. So we see it with task and agenda. We're wired differently.

Different Ways of Handling Crisis

We were talking about this yesterday. And somebody said, "How's Susan?" And I explained, you know, we had surgery, and we've just been through a lot. I took her home, and we're doing fine. We'll wait to see how the tests are going. And the guy said, "You seem to be handling that really well."

And I said, "What do you want me to do? What would be useful at this point? To break down and cry? To stay home in a fetal position?" I mean, it's the way I am.

Yet at the same time, I'm walking out of the hospital the other night. And Susan, she's out of surgery. And so I got her set, and I got to get home and do some stuff. And so I'm saying goodnight to her. And I'm in the parking lot saying goodbye to Haley. And I hear this, "Tom." And I look around, and there's this guy. And he's just discovered that his wife has, you know, she's sick, and she may die. And he literally is doubled over. I mean, I really felt for his pain. I just don't react that way. I mean, I felt really badly for him.

And I tried to work him through it and nurture him, and to try to say, "You know what? This is a bummer. But you know what? There's never really a good time to die. You know? If you're 21, you wish it was 31. If you're 31, you wish it was 41. And if you're 41, you wish it was 51. And if you're 51, 61. And 61, 71. And 71, 81. And then somewhere in there, you kind of wear out a little bit. But you'd keep going to all the ones if you could. There's just never really a good time."

This death thing always comes. It's kind of a bad time. I found that the other day. Somebody said, "Well, you know, the stuff with Susan." I said, "Yeah, you know, this isn't a good time for me. I'm really busy right now. I got a lot of stuff going on." But then there really isn't ever a good time for the cancer. There just isn't a good time for this stuff. And you're going to respond differently. Everybody's going to respond differently. But you have a task.

Organizational Agendas

It can happen organizationally. Give you an example. The very organization that sponsors this study, Priority Living. Priority Living, you know, I'm big on agendas. When somebody calls me and says, "I'd love to have breakfast, no agenda." Sure there's an agenda. There has to be an agenda. We're just going to sit there and look at each other. There has to be some agenda. You're calling for an agenda, even if it's just that breakfast is an agenda. Everybody's got an agenda.

Here's our agenda here. It's to try to provide for you an environment where we can come along and take God's principles, apply them to your life and see God change you. So if you're here

and you're not a follower of Christ, our hope is that God would use this time to move you down that continuum. What's amazing is many of you are Christians who are plugged into great churches. Why would you come to this thing? My thought is because it's like a really good utility club. You can use this in a variety of ways. It supplements some things. It's a dietary supplement that it just does. And that's part of what we're about.

We try to say to you, suck us dry. Use everything you can. We give everything away. God has blessed us in a thousand ways. Again, because of the generosity of people like you in the room to say, hey, grab the tape. I'm standing out there one day and this guy grabs and I'm looking and I'm saying, he's got to have 10 CDs. And I'm thinking, this is bugging me a little bit. This is bothering me.

The Ministry's Heart for Distribution

And he said, hey, I'm going to grab 10 of these. Is that all right? I said, oh, yeah, no problem. So I said, just out of curiosity, because on my CD player, they only play one at a time. I'm just curious, why would you need 10? And he said, well, I got these nine guys at work and we all listen to it and then we come together and that's our study. Well, that's exactly our point. That's exactly what we're about. And then to apply these principles.

Now, that's who priority living is. Over the years, I can't tell you how many of you have tried to say, why don't you organize small groups? Because we don't do that. I mean, that's why. It's not church. We don't do it. We're not singing songs. Nobody's singing. That's who we are.

Understanding Individual Calling

You have got to understand that the people around you have been wired differently than you. I'm going to go tomorrow night to the Crisis Pregnancy Center banquet. And there are going to be a lot of hardcore people there. I love it. Who God has just laid on their heart, abortion and all the issues that come around that. That's great. And I want to encourage those people all I can, but that may not be your deal.

Here's the point. You better have a deal. You need to have something. But these people around you are responsible for their agenda, not yours.

Position as Responsibility, Not Privilege

Two more quickly, you got to go. Power brokers have a position of responsibility, not a privilege. God entrusts these guys. The man of the house in this illustration entrusts these servants. Again, Larry used to say it this way. Are title impressive? Ambassador. Are job description not so impressive? Slave, bond servant.

And here's the last point. We talked about it earlier. God will evaluate everyone according to their assignments. Romans chapter 14, verse 12. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. That's really a huge moment. Each one of us at some point in time will stand before the Holy God and we'll give an accounting.

Amazing point. Next week, now we'll talk about, let's now take these things, the whole idea of proficiency and of ownership, and let's apply them now, and we'll get right in there next week.

Father, help us see this truth. Help us live life with a view toward eternity. Help us live not naturally, but supernaturally. God, I pray that you would save us and then you would open our eyes to see what this Bible says and we would do it. We would ask you to break through any barriers of either ignorance or envy or greed, so that we would take the assets that you've entrusted to us and use them as you intended to advance your agenda. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Have a great week. We'll see you next week.