Three Keys to Developing a Stewardship Attitude
By Richard Eyre

Editor's note: Last Winter, during the "first half" of this column, Richard Eyre outlined and defined “The Three Deceivers” of Control, Ownership, and Independence, and detailed how our obsessions with them can ruin the quality of our lives. If you missed any of the earlier columns in this series, you can go to the Deceivers Archive (see right sidebar) to catch up. Then, in the second phase of the column, he replaced the deceivers with "The Three Alternatives" of SERENDIPITY, STEWARDSHIP, and "SYNERGICITY." (See the Alternatives Archive for these columns). Because of the unexpectedly high level of interest in the Alternatives, Richard was able to get a discounted quantity of his book Stewardship of the Heart (pictured in this column three weeks ago) for Meridian readers. The book begins with a short novel about a variety of people discovering the need to replace their Ownership Attitudes with Stewardship Attitudes. If you would be interested in receiving the book, write to Richard@meridianmagazine.com . You will receive a return e mail outlining how to order a half-price, signed and personalized copy.

As promised last week, this week's column is devoted to the some of the "keys" that can unlock and develop an attitude of Stewardship in our lives. And that attitude, that perception, that paradigm, can change our lives to their very core. There are six keys in all, and we will present three this week, and three next week. Then there will be a summarizing column on Stewardship two weeks from now, and then we will move forward to the third alternative.

Key #1: "Nothingness"

I had read this scripture many times. In fact, I had memorized much of it and used it in talks. King Benjamin, speaking from his tower, said in Mosiah 4:

Ye shall grow in the knowledge of him that created you … ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but live peaceably … ye shall not suffer your children to go hungry … or transgress the laws of God and fight and quarrel … ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth … to love one another and to serve one another … and ye yourselves will succor those who stand in need.

A wonderful, practical set of admonitions, I had thought. A list of suggestions, or even commandments for how we should think and live.

But at this moment, I was reading it carefully and in context, and realizing with some shock that this was not a list of admonitions, but a list of promises. Clearly it was so.

All of King Benjamin’s promises, from verse 12 through verse 16, are based on one set of admonitions in verse 11:

Remember, and always retain in your remembrance, the greatness of God and your own nothingness … humble yourselves … calling on the name of the Lord daily and standing steadfastly in the faith.

Verse 12 then begins:

And behold, I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God and retain a remission of your sins, and ye shall grow in knowledge…

Everything on the list that follows, the list I had thought was admonitions, is a promise, a promise of something that will be ours if we are humble and grateful, faithful, prayerful, and if we remember our own nothingness.

We know that we are God’s children and His heirs, but we must joyfully acknowledge the current reality of our dependence on Him. It is the stewardship attitude of “retaining in our remembrance the greatness of God and our own nothingness” that gives us the humble mind-set in which we have no inclination to injure others, in which we give service and succor, and in which we train children in gentleness, love, and service.

The crucial beginning point in our search for stewardship is the simple acceptance of God’s greatness and our relative nothingness. We are potentially everything through Him and through being His children, but of ourselves we are nothing. Such a realization develops attitudes of humility, of awe, and of worship.

C.S. Lewis said, “Beware of a professed Christian who possesses insufficient awe of Christ.”

Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “The more we ponder where we stand in relationship to Jesus Christ, the more we realize that we do not stand at all, we only kneel!”

Nephi, in 2 Nephi 31:19, indicates that we should “rely wholly upon the merits of Him who is mighty to save (Christ).”

And the Lord himself, in Doctrine and Covenants 59, tells us that we “offend God” when we fail to “acknowledge His hand in all things.”

The simple acknowledgement that we are nothing without the Lord and His spirit, and that we have nothing except what He has entrusted to us, is the beginning — the indispensable starting point in the search for the joyful and powerful attitude called stewardship of the heart!

Key #2: Consecration

Many in the Church have made the personal and spiritual commitment of consecration. We want to turn over all we have to the Lord.

But what does our commitment mean? Does it mean we’ll give up everything when the Church asks us for it? Does it mean we’ll pay tithing and fast offering now as a sort of token of our willingness to give up everything later? Or does it mean we have given up everything now — no longer valuing what is not ours, and thinking of our selves only as stewards?

There is nothing “future tense” in the commitment and covenant we make. We do it now, and we do it always. And in the context of stewardship, this should not be difficult. Consecrating everything to God is simply acknowledging that it is all His anyway, acknowledging as Alma did that “whatsoever is good cometh from God.” (Alma 5:40)

But to get on our way in the search for stewardship of the heart, this covenant must be deep and real within us.

The Lord does not want us to give up the use and management of what we have. He just wants us to give up the notion of owning things. The scriptures do not warn against appreciating or using what we have, just against valuing them, against setting our hearts on them, against thinking they belong to us.

Our challenge is not to take monklike vows of poverty and get rid of everything we have. Rather, our challenge is to care for and magnify everything the Lord has given us and to use it for His purposes according to His will. Often this will mean the sharing and giving of portions to others.

When the Lord asks us to consecrate all we have to Him, His statement is, like all of His commandments, for our good, our growth, our happiness. God’s commandments are not mandates from a dictator, but loving counsel from a wise father. He knows that stewardship is the happiest as well as the most accurate and appropriate way to live. The commitment He asks is an investment in our own joy!

Key #3: Knowing the Owner

As we come to understand that we own nothing, and that we are mere stewards over all that God entrusts us with, we come gradually to know not only that we own nothing, but also that God owns all. To be good stewards over the many stewardships He gives us we must come to know Him and to know His will. Thus, the ultimate performance and implementation of stewardship (as well as the great reward of it) is to come to know the Owner.

The scripture tells us that man’s eternal goal is to know God.

In knowing Him, we will do His will. In doing His will we will know Him. In knowing and doing, we will love Him, and love as He loves.

How do we know Him? The question of the ages.

We know whom we love.

We know whom we serve.

In life we always love those we serve — especially as we serve them diligently, over time. Parents love their children, bishops love their flocks, because they serve them. In lie we do not always love those who serve us. Sometimes we resent or resist the service. Other times we take it for granted.

To know God we must love Him, to love Him we must serve Him.

In life we come to know and love those we work under.

By becoming God’s stewards, by embracing and internalizing and “eternalizing” the attitude of Stewardship of the Heart we come under His power, under His wing, under His employ, under His mastership, and thus begin to know Him.

Next Week

There are three additional keys, and I like to call them the three G's of Stewardship. They are Gratitude, Generosity, and Guidance. I will try to present each of them in next week's column, and to explain how each can be developed. I will even give you some exercises that can draw each of them more plentifully into your life.

Have a good week between now and then!

Let me end today's column with a little poem that I hope will make you even more determined to develop a Stewardship attitude and to achieve some of the amazing blessings and benefits of viewing yourself as a Steward whose goal it is to serve the Master.

The Oxymorons of Stewardship

Oxymorons!
Word pairs or phrases that work even though
(literally) one word
Contradicts the other:
“pretty ugly”
“freezer burn”
“jumbo shrimp”
Sometimes they creep into our sports terminology:
“back-up forward”
“two-center offense.”
Sometimes they poke fun:
“airline food”
“postal service”
“Military intelligence.”
The interesting thing about real oxymorons
Is that while the individual words conflict,
The two-word phrase is useful and workable.
Stewardship of the Heart – as an attitude,
Creates three workable, useful oxymorons:

1. “confident humility”
(we are humble because of the greatness of God,
Confident because we are His children)
2. “frugal generosity”
(stewardship means caring for what we have, and growing it, but it also means giving it and not valuing it into ourselves)
3. “independent reliance”
(we learn to think and to self-determine,
Even as we depend and rely on His guidance).

Again, if you would like a signed copy of Richard's book Stewardship of the Heart, write to Richard@meridianmagazine.com. If you are interested in the stewardship approach to parenting, visit www.valuesparenting.com.

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