Your Business Is Not Yours: The Stewardship Mindset - Episode 14

Ownership and stewardship produce different decisions — not just different attitudes. The question “what do I want?” and the question “what does faithful management require?” take you to different places. Every time. 

Episode Summary 

This episode opens the Stewardship and Finances section of Profit and Principle with the idea that reframes everything that follows: your business is not yours. You are a steward of resources that belong to God, which means every decision — who you hire, where you invest capital, what risks you take, how you respond under pressure — carries a question underneath it that most business leaders never ask: what would faithful management of this resource require? 

Three passages build the case: Psalm 24:1 establishes God’s ownership of everything, including your balance sheet. 1 Corinthians 4:2 defines the single requirement of stewardship — not success, faithfulness. And Matthew 25 delivers one of the most counterintuitive teachings in the New Testament: the servant who is condemned is not the one who lost the master’s money, but the one who buried it. Faithful stewardship is not passive, and fear disguised as caution is still just fear. 

What You’ll Learn 

• How the owner mindset and the stewardship mindset produce different outcomes in hiring, capital allocation, risk tolerance, and decisions under pressure 
• What the Hebrew phrase l’Adonai ha’aretz um’lo’ah establishes — and why it allows no exception for your business assets 
• Why the Greek word pistos (faithful) in 1 Corinthians 4:2 is simultaneously more relieving and more demanding than being required to succeed 
• The counterintuitive reading of the Parable of the Talents — and what the Greek word argós (slothful) reveals about why the buried talent is a failure of fear, not caution 
• One question to ask before every major decision this week, and one specific area to audit for where you may be burying a talent 

Scripture References 

Psalm 24:1 — The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it 

1 Corinthians 4:2 — It is required of stewards that they be found faithful 

Matthew 25:14–30 — The Parable of the Talents — well done, good and faithful servant 

Key Quote 

“He didn’t entrust it to you because he needed you to protect it. He entrusted it to you because he believed you could do something with it. That’s an act of extraordinary trust. Receive it as the calling it is.” 

Timestamps 

0:00  —  Hook and Introduction 

2:00  —  Why This Matters in Business 

4:48  —  What Scripture Says 

11:11  —  Illustration 

13:10  —  Application 

15:54  —  Encouragement and Prayer 

Call to Action 

If you’ve ever made a business decision out of fear and called it wisdom, this episode is for you. Listen before your next major decision — and share it with any business owner you know who is working hard but carrying the whole thing alone. 

Profit and Principle  •  Where Sunday’s truth meets Monday’s bottom line. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Let me ask you something that sounds simple, but isn't. Who owns your business? If you built it, if your name is on the LLC, if you signed the lease and took out the loan and worked the weekends, nobody else wanted to work, your instinct is to say that you do. And legally, functionally, you're right. It is yours. But here's the question underneath that question. Is that actually how you think about it? When you make a hiring decision, a spending decision, a strategy decision, are you asking what's best for your business? Or are you asking what you would want done with a business that ultimately belongs to someone else and that you're responsible to manage well on their behalf? Because those are not the same questions, and the difference between them, owner versus steward, is one of the most practically consequential distinctions in Scripture for the business leader. It's not just a shift in perspective, it's a shift in the questions you ask, the risks you're willing to take, the decisions you make when you're tired, or maybe scared, or tempted to protect yourself at the expense of what's right. Welcome to the Stewardship and Finances section of Profit and Principle. I'm Daryl. Over the next several episodes, we're going to work through what Scripture says about money, resources, and the responsibility that comes with running a business. And we're starting here with the foundational idea that reframes everything else. Your business is not yours. You are a steward of something that belongs to God. And that changes everything about how you run it. Here's what you'll walk away with: a clear picture of what the stewardship mindset actually looks like in daily business decisions, and two practices to start applying it this week. So why does this matter in business? Let me show you concretely what the ownership mindset and the stewardship mindset look like in practice. Because the difference is more specific than most people realize. The owner mindset asks, what do I want? The stewardship mindset asks, what does faithful management of this resource require? Now watch how that plays out across a few common business scenarios. Let's look at hiring. The owner hires the person they like, the person who makes the team comfortable, the person who fits the culture as it already exists. The steward hires the person who is best for the work, even if that person is harder to manage. That person challenges the existing assumptions or costs more than the owner would prefer to spend. The steward is asking, what does this organization need to do what it's been entrusted to do? Now what about capital allocation? The owner keeps the profits because they earn them. The steward asks where the resources can be deployed to produce the most value, whether that's reinvestment, employee compensation, giving, or reserves. The owner and the steward may reach the same decision, but they ask different questions to get there. What about risk? The owner protects what they built because they built it. The steward is willing to take risks that serve the purpose of the work, even when those risks feel personally costly. The owner of the parable of the talents, and we'll get to that passage in a moment, he doesn't praise a servant who protected his investment by burying it. He condemns him. Faithful stewardship sometimes requires boldness that personal ownership resists. And here's the one that cuts the deepest. Decisions under pressure. When things get hard, the owner defaults to self-protection, cut the staff, protect the margins, do whatever preserves the asset. The steward asks a different question. What would the one who entrusted me with this want me to do right now? What does faithfulness look like in this moment? Not just what's safest for me. The stewardship mindset doesn't make business decisions easier. In some ways, it makes them even harder, because you can't just ask what you want, but it makes them clearer. You have a reference point outside yourself, and that reference point produces decisions that are more consistently right, more consistently courageous, and more consistently trustworthy. Let's take a look at what scripture says. This is the foundation. David opens Psalm 24 with a statement of heavenly ownership. Everything belongs to God, not just spiritual things, not just the church and its activities, the earth, the physical world, its resources, its systems, its commerce, all of it. Everything belongs to the Lord. Now, the Hebrew phrase to the Lord and its fullness, it's a sweeping declaration that allows for no exceptions. There is no category of material resource that falls outside of God's ownership, which means there is no category of business resource, whether it be your capital, your clients, your team, your IP, your market position. None of that, right, can you describe accurately as simply yours? This is not an abstract theological point. It's the ground on which the entire stewardship mindset rests. If the earth and everything in it belongs to God, then what you have been given in your business is not possession. Rather, it's assignment. The question is not what you're going to do with your business. The question is what you're going to do with the portion of God's resources that you've been entrusted to your management. Now that refrain from possession to assignment, it changes the posture of every decision that follows. Now let's take a look at 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 2. And Paul writes this moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. Paul is writing to the Corinthian church about its own role as a servant of Christ and steward of the mysteries of God. But the principle he articulates is universal. The requirement of stewardship is not brilliance, it's not growth, it's not maximizing returns on every asset. The requirement is faithfulness. The Greek word that Paul uses for faithful can also mean trustworthy. It describes a person who can be relied on to do what was entrusted to them in the way it was meant to be done consistently. What's striking is what Paul doesn't say. He doesn't say stewards are required to be successful by external measures. He doesn't say they're required to produce the best possible outcome. He says they're required to be faithful, to be doing the right thing with what they've been given in accordance with the one who gave it. For the business leader, this is both relieving and demanding. Relieving because you're not ultimately responsible for the outcomes outside of your control. Things like markets, recessions, your competitors, or catastrophic events. It's demanding because you are absolutely responsible for faithfulness, how you manage, how you treat people, how you make decisions, and how you handle the resources entrusted to you. The steward who can look at what they've been given and say, I have managed this faithfully, has met the requirement regardless of what the outcome looks like. That's not a lower bar, that's actually a harder bar in some ways, because faithfulness is constant, not occasional. Now, the next passage is Matthew chapter 25, verses 14 through 30, but we're not going to read the whole thing, but I want to draw your attention to one particular verse. It says this, for it will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. The parable of the talents is one of the most well-known passages in the New Testament, and one of the most misread by people who think they understand it. So let me give you the actual shape of it. A master entrusts his servants with significant resources before leaving on a journey. One receives five talents, one receives two, and one receives one, each according to his ability. He returns and settles accounts. The servants who received five and two talents each, they doubled what they were given. The master's response to both is identical. Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Then the servant who received one talent reports. He was afraid, he says, so he buried it. He kept it safe, he protected it. And he returns to his master exactly what he was given. Not less, not more, it was preserved. And the master's response is devastating, you wicked and slothful servant. Now, this is not your typical Sunday school ending. Here's what most readers miss. The master doesn't commend safety, he commends deployment. The servants who are praised are not praised for being careful with the resources, they're praised for putting them to work. And the servant who is condemned is not condemned for losing the master's investment. He's condemned for not using it. The implication for business leaders is significant. Faithful stewardship is not passive. It does not bury the resource to protect it. It does not settle for preservation when growth was possible. The steward who is commended is the one who took what was entrusted to them and put it to work, who took appropriate risks in service of the owner's purposes. The Greek word used to condemn the servant means slothful or idle. It comes from the word for no work. The failure was not loss, the failure was inaction. It was fear disguised as caution. Now stay with me on that because it has real implications for how you lead. I want to give you a contrast that shows what this looks like in practice. There are two business owners, let's call them Marcus and Elena. They both had profitable years and found themselves with a substantial cash reserve. More than either one needed for operations. And in fact, it was more than they planned for. Marcus's instinct was to protect it. He had built the business over fifteen years. He had been through a lien season that he never wanted to repeat. And this extra cash, it felt like security. He held it in reserve, distributed some personally, and made no significant moves. He told himself he was being wise. What he was actually doing was exactly what the third servant did. He took what he had been given and buried it because he was afraid. Now Elena, she asked a different question. She didn't ask what I what do I want to do with this, but what would be the faithful stewardship of this resource? She looked at her team, the three people she'd been underpaying because margins had been thin, and she gave them meaningful raises. She invested in a new service line she'd been delaying. She committed a percentage to a cause she believed her business existed to support. She made decisions she could explain to someone else because she genuinely thought of herself as managing resources that weren't ultimately hers. Three years later, Marcus still had most of his reserve. His team is the same size. His revenue is flat. Elena's business is significantly larger. Her team is deeply loyal, and she traces almost all of it back to the year she stopped asking what she wanted and started asking what faithfulness required. That's the parable of the talents in a balance sheet. The buried talent doesn't grow. So how do we apply this in business? I want to give you two different practices. One for your own thinking and one for your decisions. So step one, change the question you ask before major decisions. This week, before your next significant business decision, whether it's a hire, maybe a capital allocation, or a strategic resource, add one step. Before you ask, what do I want here? Ask, what would faithful stewardship of this resource require? I know it sounds small, but it isn't. That question imports a reference point outside yourself. It's outside of your preferences, your fears, your risk tolerance, and your personal financial interests. It asks you to make the decision that the owner of this resource would commend, not just the one that protects you. You may reach the same conclusion you would have reached anyway, but sometimes you won't. Sometimes that question will surface a decision that costs you something personally, but it's clearly right for the people and resources in your care. Those are the decisions the stewardship mindset was made for. Write it down if that helps. What does faithful stewardship of this resource require? Now here's the second thing you can do. Audit one area where you may be burying the talent. The third servant's failure was not malice, it was fear. He saw the risk of deploying the resource and chose preservation over purpose. This week, identify one area in your business where you may be doing the same thing. It might be a person on your team you've been underpaying because you're holding reserves. It might be a strategic move you've been delaying because the outcome isn't guaranteed. Or could be that it's a given commitment you've been deferring until things seem more stable. And then finally, it might be an investment in your own development or your teams that keeps getting pushed to the next quarter. I want you to name it specifically and then ask this question. Is this genuine wisdom? Am I preserving resources for a clear purpose? Or is this fear disguised as caution? The servant who buried his talent thought he was being responsible, but he wasn't. He was protecting himself. The master saw the difference immediately. The steward's job isn't to preserve, it's to be faithful. And faithful stewardship of a resource usually looks like putting it to work. I want to close with something that I think reframes this whole episode. The stewardship mindset is not a burden on the business leader. It's actually a relief. And here's why. When you're the owner, you carry everything alone. Every loss is your loss. Every failure is your failure. Every decision lands entirely on you. The weight of that is enormous, and it produces the fear that buried the talent, the desperate self-protection that masquerades as wisdom. But when you're a steward, when you genuinely understand that the resource was entrusted to you by someone else who is more capable of absorbing the loss than you are, the one who sees further than you see, the one who is actively interested in what you do with what you've been given, well, the weight distributes differently. You're still responsible, faithfulness is still required, but you're not carrying it alone. And the outcome isn't solely dependent on your ability to protect it. That's the God who says the earth is his and everything in it, including your business, including this season, the decisions you're facing right now, all of it. He didn't entrust it to you because he needed you to protect it. That is an act of extraordinary trust. I want you to receive it as a calling that it is. Let me pray for you. Father, I pray for every business leader listening right now who is carrying the weight of what they built as though it were entirely theirs to protect. Help them to see it differently. Help them to receive what they've been given as an assignment, not just a possession, as an act of trust from you, not just an achievement on their own. Give them the courage to ask the steward's question before every major decision. What does faithful management of this resource require? Protect them from the fear that buries the talent, and remind them that the words they most want to hear, well done, good and faithful servant, are available to them, not because the outcome was perfect, but because the faithfulness was real. We ask this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I thank you for listening. I hope you are finding value in the Prophet and Principle podcast. And if so, I would love it if you would do two things. Number one, if you would go to wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a rating and review. And then also if you would share it with another business leader you know who needs this content. Also, if you'll go to our website, profitandprinciple.com, there you're gonna find some great resources. Number one, you're gonna find a recording of this podcast. Number two, you'll also be able to sign up for our weekly newsletter that's gonna hit your inbox every Monday morning. Also, you can read the latest blog that unpacks this podcast in greater detail. And then finally, you can download for absolutely free a one-page PDF that discusses this podcast a little more, and it is great to use in a small group setting. So you can go along and work through this with some of your peers or other business leaders. So I hope you'll take advantage of all these free resources available to you. Thank you. I know that your time is limited and your time is a gift. And so I thank you for your attention here. I hope you're getting good value, good value out of it, and I hope you'll join us next week for our next episode of Profit and Principle.