The Stewardship Series: Part 1
You cannot unsee what you’ve seen.
In 2019, before the world was interrupted by what we would later know as COVID-19, I found myself longing for something I couldn’t quite explain. It wasn’t another job, another accomplishment, or another destination. I wanted to plant something.
So I did.
On a twenty-foot patio, I began growing herbs, root vegetables, fruit, and table flowers. I imagined walking outside each morning, gathering what was ready, bringing it into my kitchen, washing it by hand, cooking meals from it, and placing fresh flowers on the table before the day began. It wasn’t just about gardening. It was about learning how to cultivate life.
Over the months and through the change in seasons, I watched those plants respond to everything around them. Some flourished in the same full sunlight that beamed through the kitchen floor-to-ceiling windows that housed the inside plants that had names. Others preferred the shade. Some needed to be pruned before they could grow stronger, and others withered because I had given them too much water instead of too little. I learned that growth isn’t simply about planting a seed. It is about stewardship. Paying attention. Showing up consistently. Understanding that every living thing requires something different to thrive.
Between the basil and the tomatoes, the rosemary and the lavender, I realized I wasn’t just tending a garden. The garden was tending me. It was teaching me how to care for the one thing I had neglected for far too long—my own life.
The first land we ever inherit is ourselves.
Our body.
Our mind.
Our spirit.
Our time.
Our gifts.
Our joy.
Our peace.
Yet so many of us never truly own those things. We lease them out—to employers who determine our schedules and salary; to relationships that drain our energy; to trauma that stirs the pot of our survival; to fear, expectations, scarcity, and the relentless belief that our worth must always be earned.
Perhaps sovereignty doesn’t begin with acquiring more.
Perhaps it begins the moment we become faithful stewards of what has always belonged to us. We spend so much of our lives believing sovereignty is something we’ll acquire someday. A better salary. A larger home. More vacation time. Less debt. The freedom to finally do what we love the way we want to do it. But sovereignty has very little to do with what sits in your bank account and everything to do with what occupies your spirit.
Before we are ever entrusted with more land, we are asked to become faithful stewards of the ground already beneath our feet. The question isn’t whether you own a business, a home, or acres of property. The question is: Who has ownership of your life? Who determines your peace? Who dictates your time? Who profits most from your gifts? Who benefits from your exhaustion? And perhaps the most difficult question of all: Have you become a faithful steward of your own soul, or have you spent years cultivating someone else’s harvest?
I feel we know the truth.
When we were children, many of us learned to play Monopoly. We all loved counting those bills and sitting across the board, full of the possibility of owning everything! At first, everyone begins with the same stack of money, the goal to collect all the railroads, and convinced they’re going to win. Then the game quietly changes. The cash starts disappearing. Properties become mortgaged. Rent becomes harder to pay. One by one, you begin selling pieces of what you own just to survive another trip around the board to collect $200, hoping you don’t land in jail. Long before the game officially ends, you already know you’re losing.
Life has a way of doing the same thing. Except the currency isn’t always money.
Sometimes it’s your time. Your creativity. Your health. Your relationships. Your peace. And often, your dreams. Little by little, if we’re not paying attention, we mortgage pieces of ourselves just to keep playing someone else’s game.
What game has God actually called you to play?
That’s the question we’ve avoided asking ourselves. We’ve become so consumed with surviving someone else’s expectations that we’ve forgotten to ask whether we were ever meant to be playing by their rules in the first place. For much of our lives, we’re taught that success is measured by status, promotions, salaries, titles, retirement accounts, and how many hours we can give away before exhaustion finally catches up with us. Employers determine when we arrive, when we leave, when we eat, when we rest, when we’re permitted to take a vacation, even when we can take restroom breaks. When I had time to sit with this notion on the job, I made a concrete decision that it wasn’t meant for me.
Society applauds productivity, but rarely asks whether the work is nourishing your spirit. From paying bills to meeting daily expectations, many of us quietly lose ownership of the very life we were given. I don’t believe we were created to become slaves to our existence. I believe we were created to become faithful stewards of it. That doesn’t mean everyone is called to leave their profession tomorrow. It doesn’t mean entrepreneurship is the only path to freedom. It means asking a far more honest question:
Is the life I’m building aligned with the life I was created to live? Sit with this, because the Divine has never been interested in making copies.
Every one of us arrived carrying something unique. A gift, a calling, a voice or way of seeing the world that belongs to no one else. Those gifts were never given so they could remain hidden beneath fear, obligation, or survival. They were entrusted to us so we could cultivate them, just as a gardener faithfully tends the land season after season. Gifts that are cultivated become purpose. Gifts that are neglected slowly become regret.
Maybe that’s why your heart has been restless. Not because you are failing, but because your soul recognizes that it’s time to stop working only for a paycheck and start working toward a legacy.
The greatest act of sovereignty is not making more money. It’s waking up each morning knowing your life is no longer being spent—it is being invested.