That Faithful and Wise Steward by Randy Collins
Everything you hold, you are holding for someone else. Randy Collins spent more than four decades in accounting and finance before he sat down to write thirteen lessons on what Scripture actually says about money, time, ability, and the ground under our feet — and about who all of it really belongs to.
That Faithful and Wise Steward is a thirteen-lesson study built on a claim the Psalmist makes without apology: the earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. Collins starts there and follows the thread straight into ordinary life — the paycheck, the calendar, the credit card statement, the abilities a person has never bothered to use.
Most of us have heard the occasional sermon on giving and filed that away as stewardship. This study reaches considerably further. Collins works through ownership and identity, the Old Testament tithe and what replaced it, the parables of the talents and the shrewd steward, the love of money, contentment, saving and debt, the use of time, hidden potential, our care of creation, and finally the reckoning where the master comes home and settles accounts. "There is no room in our Christian life for a live-as-you-please attitude," he writes in the introduction, and then spends thirteen lessons showing why.
What's Inside
Thirteen lessons moving from foundation to application:
- Lesson 1 — The Earth Is the Lord's
- Lesson 2 — I Am Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
- Lesson 3 — One Tenth Shall Be Holy to the Lord
- Lesson 4 — You Cannot Serve God and Mammon
- Lesson 5 — The Sons of This World Are More Shrewd
- Lesson 6 — Stewards of the Mysteries of God
- Lesson 7 — Love of Money Is a Root of All Kinds of Evil
- Lesson 8 — One's Life Does Not Consist of Things
- Lesson 9 — The Ants Prepare Their Food in Summer
- Lesson 10 — What Is Your Life? A Vapor for a Little Time
- Lesson 11 — Everyone Who Has Shall Be Given
- Lesson 12 — God Saw Everything He Made Was Good
- Lesson 13 — Enter the Joy of Your Lord
Lessons 1–3 lay the foundation. Lessons 4–5 open up our Lord's own attitude toward wealth. Lessons 6–12 take stewardship into the places it actually lands, and the final lesson turns toward the reward of the servant who was found faithful.
Format & Features
Every lesson closes with Thought Questions and ruled space to write, so the book carries a quarter-long adult class just as easily as it serves a person studying alone at the kitchen table. Scripture is quoted from the New King James Version and set apart in the text, and Greek terms such as oikonomos and oikonomia are explained where they carry weight.
Three reference schedules follow the lessons: a survey of the seven deadly sins and how Dante linked each one to misplaced love, a practical walkthrough of how to obtain your free annual credit report, and a table showing how long non-recycled items linger in a landfill. A twenty-eight topic compilation of stewardship scriptures — running from Affluence and Contentment through Debt, Giving, Ownership, Talents, Tithing, and Work — closes the volume, along with complete footnotes and a full reference list drawing on Rolston, Cunningham, Rusbuldt, Barclay, Lightfoot, Vine, and others.
The 6 x 9 spiral binding lays flat on a desk or a lap, which matters when a class is writing answers as it goes. 89 pages.
Who It's For
Adult Bible classes and the teachers who lead them, small groups working through money and contentment together, elders and preachers looking for material on a subject that rarely gets a full quarter, and any Christian who has felt the pressure that finances put on a household and wants to know what God expects of him in the middle of it.
About the Author
Randy Collins spent twenty-nine years with IBM in accounting and finance, then another fifteen in small business consulting. He became a Christian in 1958 and served thirteen years as an elder with the church in Greencastle, Indiana, later worshiping with congregations in Fishers, Indiana, and Aiken, South Carolina. He began writing adult Bible study guides in 2010 and has since authored several books, including Jewish Culture and Customs, Stop…and Smell the Mints, The Garden of the Shulamite, and Growing Old Gracefully in the Lord. A certified Purdue Master Gardener, he lives in Avon, Indiana.