Praying God's Wisdom: Growing What God Gave You

 

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.  1 Corinthians 4:2

 This last year, God has been putting on my heart that I need to make sure that what I have isn’t just sitting there, it is accomplishing some growth. The clearest way to see this is with our money. An interesting blessing that came through my husband’s layoff last year was that I became more involved in the finances, much more involved. One of the things that stood out to me initially was that we had a significant amount of money sitting in an account that didn’t really earn much interest. Much of our savings my husband had put into laddered CDs that were earning better, but this money, which we had intentionally kept liquid in case we needed it, was not pulling its weight. I learned about High-Yield Savings (HYS) accounts last summer and we moved the money there where it has been happily growing ever since. I even looked at what bills we paid just a few times a year, like real estate taxes, and started saving up for them monthly by transferring money into a HYS account where it, too, could earn money for us until we needed it, and avoid us scrambling to pay a big bill when it came due. This winter I’ve been learning about stock call options, which we just embarked on yesterday actually, and I’ll write a post about them soon.

 Today, though, I’m considering how else this plays out in life besides finances. What things, small or large, have I been entrusted with by my master (God) that He expects to see some growth in (Matthew 25:14-29)? I think this could play out in relationships, my spiritual life and church involvement.

 Since 2020, my relationships have been more concentrated. I have fewer, but they are deeper. So, am I stewarding them well? Have I seen growth? Starting with those closest to me, I would definitely say that my relationship with my husband has seen blessing and growth. We are closer and more connected today than ever and I am ever so grateful for this relationship! Over the last year or so, I’ve started trying to be intentional about engaging with my kids through Happy Monday texts where I touch bases with them and see if there’s anything going on in their lives that I can be praying for. This has been a good connection point for us and I think it has resulted in some growth in our relationships. I’ve definitely seen growth in my relationship with my Mom as well. We’ve gotten to spend quite a bit of fun time together both in traveling and in playing games in the last years. Outside of that I struggle. Maybe that’s the limit of my bandwidth? Maybe it’s an opportunity for improvement? How can I be a better friend? Grandaughter? Niece? What should I be doing differently to steward the other relationships in my life? It’s something to contemplate.

 I believe that I have seen growth in my spiritual life as well. In April of 2024 I started blogging my Bible study. I had hit a dry spell. For five years I’d been doing the Love God Greatly SOAP Bible studies, but I had come to a point where I just didn’t have anything to write. I would sit, staring at the wall for an hour and not come up with an Observation or Application for the verse that was suggested for the day. I prayed about it and God directed me to blog about my SOAPs. This didn’t seem like a good idea to me at all! Here I wasn’t even able to come up with a sentence and God wanted me to write a whole blog post?!?!? But, I said, “yes” to Him and He has faithfully shown up for me. For almost two years now I’ve been writing to you about my Bible studies and I have been blessed immensely by it. I get to learn new things every day, sometimes stuff that’s totally out of nowhere that I never anticipated, like about nuclear power plants! I’ve definitely felt my relationship with God grow deeper and closer and I am so grateful for it. That word doesn’t even sound right, grateful. What I feel is so much more, so much deeper, but words fail me.

 And then comes the area that is on my heart that I definitely don’t feel appropriate growth in – my church involvement. In my young adulthood, ironically when I had four young children at home that I was also homeschooling so I was juggling a lot, I was very involved at church. If the doors were open, we were there. I spent hours at church every week outside of Sundays. We participated in Bible studies, Wednesday night activities, church meetings, lots of stuff. For like a decade I even had my own keys to the church building and I showed up even when no one else was there! Then COVID. No, COVID didn’t directly end most of my church involvement, but it had some pretty major effects. For a season, church moved online. No one was at the church building, and that made a big difference in my life. Then, when things started back up, the social distancing requirements affected me deeply. That’s a story for another post that I’ll stick in my drafts right now so I (hopefully) remember to come back to it, but suffice it to say that it traumatized me in ways that still reverberate in my soul. Since COVID, church hasn’t been the same. We left the church we had been attending, but so did 50% of the people we were worshipping with at the time so it’s not the same church at all anymore. We spent a few years working with a church plant in our area and then we landed at Garden City. They were meeting at a school near us when we started, but two years ago they bought a building about half an hour away from us in another town. This had pros and cons. On the positive side, it was in a neighborhood that deeply mattered to my husband where he serves regularly in street ministry. Also, the idea of having our own building instead of operating out of a school on Sundays meant that weekday opportunities might be more available, but so far that hasn’t materialized. Even if it did, I can’t drive to the next town over with my vision disability and my husband works during the week so… I guess I’m not complaining about a lack of opportunity that I couldn’t take advantage of anyways. It does leave this hole in my life though. For two decades, my life revolved around a church building. I was there multiple times a week. I did Bible study, prayer groups, even yoga at church. Now, I go to church on Sundays. And I don’t even have an adult Bible study group or anything, I just go to service. I started serving on the greeting/hospitality team when we moved to the new building so I am making a few connections, but apart from Sunday mornings I have no involvement with my church and that makes me sad. Yes, we’ve been invited to join a home group that meets near us, but we haven’t taken advantage of it. That’s on us, not them. I just don’t feel like I have the bandwidth for it. Going to someone else’s home. Tons of people. Tons of kids. Navigating food with my sensitivities. It’s just a lot and I can’t say I’ve been motivated. So, no. I haven’t seen growth in my church involvement in recent years, quite the opposite. What does that mean? I’m not sure. My husband and I have been talking and praying about that a lot lately, but we don’t have any clear directions.

Here’s the Thing: Being a good steward of what God has entrusted to me doesn’t just involve money. Yes, that is important, and I am trying to continue to grow in that area, but there’s so much more. Relationships, spiritual growth, and church involvement are all areas that should see growth as well. Are there any others you can think of?