Mike Smith:
An understanding of stewardship is crucial for parents who are teaching their children financial responsibility. Terry, could you talk about the definition and the importance of stewardship?

Terry Stokka:
To us, God has really given us all that we have, and we need to manage it, we need to use it wisely—and that includes our time and our talents and our abilities as well as our money. And I think we have a responsibility to give a portion of it back to God. We believe that things like living unnecessarily on credit (and I think that credit is sometimes necessary for a house and maybe for a car) is saying to God that we don’t like the job and the place He’s put us and so we’re going to have to take matters into our own hands. And to us, stewardship was trying to teach our children that we need to manage what God has given us and to be appreciative and willing to learn to give back to God and to live within our means. There’s so much pressure that that would relieve. By them being in control of the finances, and not the other way around, they learned that. We know that money is the leading cause of problems in marriage and we wanted them to not have to face that when they got married themselves.

Mike:
Very good, Terry! Listeners, next time we’ll talk more about teaching our children to be good stewards. And until then, I’m Mike Smith.