Read: Luke 16:1-18

By: Pastor Brent Roll

“Know that true joy does not come from being self-centered, spouse-centered, work-centered or money centered, it only comes from being Christ-centered.”

– Unknown

What is your treasure? If I was to ask you: what is one thing you couldn’t live without, what would it be?

We all like stuff. Stuff is nice and it is nice to have lots of different things, right?

In Luke 16, we find a very interesting parable. The Parable of the Shrewd Manager is about a man who is told by his boss that he is being let go, fired, kicked to the curb. However, you want to put it.

This man is losing their job, but he is told by his boss that he can have some time to get things in order. So, the manager comes up with a plan to get in good favor with others so they might help him in the near future.

The manager goes to some of his boss’s clients and asks them how much they owe his boss and agrees to cut in half what they owe him. The manager does this a couple of times and all of the boss’s client that owed the debt were very thankful and said they would do anything for the manager.

But eventually, the boss finds out what this manager has done. But, instead of getting onto the manager, he commends him on doing a good job of making use of the time he had left.

That does not make much sense at all. What point was Jesus trying to make here?

Let me ask you another question, what has God give you? What abilities, talents, gifts, or skills has God given you?

You see, God has given us all different sets of skills and talents. We are all unique! But we do have one thing in common: we have time. Just like the manager had time to get things in order, we have time to use our gifts and talents for God.

Everything that we have in this life is already on loan from God. So we might as well use it while we have it to glorify Him.

We have a heart problem if we do not feel like using what God has given us to glorify Him. Everything we have should be His and we must surrender it all to Him.

Use the time that you have wisely.