It's Yours to Steward

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In 1982, a nightmare hit Johnson & Johnson when seven people died after taking Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. The contamination wasn’t their fault, someone had tampered with bottles on store shelves, but it was their product and their responsibility. The entire country was watching to see what they would do.

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Instead of hiding behind lawyers or minimizing the crisis, Johnson & Johnson made a bold move: they pulled 31 million bottles of Tylenol off shelves nationwide, at a loss of over $100 million. 

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They didn’t stop there.. they launched public warnings, cooperated fully with authorities, and pioneered tamper-proof packaging that would become the new standard. Their actions weren’t driven by fear of lawsuits or PR damage control....they were driven by stewardship: taking ownership of the trust their customers had placed in them.

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This is the essence of real stewardship, it’s not just about protecting what you have or blaming others when things go wrong. It’s about taking full responsibility for what’s under your care, even when the crisis isn’t your fault. 

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Johnson & Johnson saved their reputation and set the gold standard for corporate responsibility by acting with integrity, speed, and a willingness to put people first.

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What do you do with what you’ve been given?

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That’s the essential question at the heart of stewardship. Most people hear the word and think of money or physical assets. How we manage our bank accounts, houses, or possessions... but real stewardship runs much deeper.

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It’s the audit of your life. The willingness to take an honest look at everything you’re responsible for and ask: am I handling this with care and intentionality?

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At its core, stewardship is about ownership. You cannot be a steward over something you don’t feel you own, not in a possessive way, but in a responsibility sense. 

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You can’t properly steward your time if you think your schedule is dictated by everyone else. 

You can’t steward your emotions if you believe they’re controlled by the people around you.

You can’t steward your health if you act like it’s entirely determined by external circumstances.

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Stewardship demands ownership first.

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You have to see every area of your life: relationships, health, time, talents, opportunities, influence...as something entrusted to you. Only then can you show up and tend to them well.

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When you begin that audit, you’ll discover that stewardship isn’t just about being diligent or hardworking. It’s about intentionality. You can have a diligent hand and still fail at stewardship because diligence without direction is just busyness. It’s striving without meaning.

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What areas require your stewardship?

• Relationships: Are you showing up? Are you nurturing and investing where it matters most, or have you let certain relationships go stale while giving too much energy to shallow ones?

• Time: This might be the most precious resource you’re stewarding. How are you allocating it? Where are you wasting it? Are you managing your time intentionally, or simply reacting to whatever comes next?

• Health: Your body is a resource you’ve been entrusted with. Are you treating it like a tool that needs to stay sharp? Are you ignoring it while clinging to excuses? You only get one...

• Talents: Are you honing your gifts? Developing your abilities? Or are you only doing the job that pays the bills and stopping there.

• Opportunities: Are you walking through doors when they open? Do you recognize what’s in front of you? Or are you missing chances because they require discomfort or change?

• Influence: Whether your platform is large or small, your voice matters somewhere. Are you using your influence responsibly and helping to grow others?

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When you audit these areas honestly, without excuses or case-by-case justifications, it can sting. It forces you to confront what you’ve neglected, mismanaged, or ignored.... but that sting is good. It’s what invites growth.

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Stewardship isn’t always about holding on tightly. Sometimes it’s about letting go.

 

This is a critical but often overlooked part of stewardship. You’re not called to cling to everything you’ve ever held.

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In fact, some of the most responsible acts of stewardship require the courage to release something that no longer belongs in your care.

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• Letting go of a relationship that drains you.

• Letting go of an identity or story about yourself that no longer serves you.

• Letting go of a role, project, or pursuit that has reached its natural conclusion.

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This isn’t abandonment....this is wisdom. Stewardship requires you to prune so you can cultivate. It’s about managing well what should still be in your care and recognizing what has run its course.

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Now, letting go is never the main point. Stewardship is about doing the work with what is still in your stable. It’s about taking full responsibility for what remains under your care today.

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Stewardship is a privilege. 

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In front of you lies a wealth of blessings...all entrusted to your care. Your role is to manage them, look after them, guide them, keep them up, and shepherd them well. Gratitude isn’t just a feeling; it should bleed into your actions. How you steward what’s been entrusted to you is a calling card of who you are. Write your resume well.

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Today’s Forced Challenge: I want you to FORCE yourself to attack at least one of these challenges:

1. Self Audit: Literally. Write down the categories you’re responsible for, relationships, assets, positions, time, health, talents, opportunities, influence and give yourself an honest score. No excuses. No justifications.

2. The Relationship Scorecard: Write down every relationship you actively maintain and rate yourself 1–10 on how well you’re stewarding it. No explanations... just the raw truth.

3. The Money Plug: Audit your finances and pick one area where you’ve been careless. Take one action today to tighten it up,...budget adjustment, cancellation, or savings goal.

4. The Body Mirror: Write down how many hours you’ve exercised in the past 30 days. How many nights did you prioritize sleep? What would a good steward of their body do next?

5. The Hard Release: Find something in your life you know you need to let go of.....a habit, an obligation, a relationship... and commit today to taking action.

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Stewardship is the quiet audit of your life....a daily question of how well you care for what’s in your hands. Your time, your relationships, your health, your opportunities… they’re all entrusted to you. No one else can manage them. No one else can answer for them.

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In the end, your life is measured by how faithfully you showed up,how diligently you cultivated what mattered, and how fully you owned what was yours to own. That’s the work. That’s the call.

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"Stewardship begins and ends with the understanding that all we have is on loan." — Charles Bugg

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