October 26, 2025
• Rev. Dr. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
October 26, 202
Stewardship Series
MINE!
My Gift
Exodus 4:1-5; 1 Corinthians 13:11
As you can tell by that little video, that our stewardship series this year takes its title from that stage in young children when they learn to say, “Mine!” Now, we are going to put a spin on it each week and think about the more appealing ways we can and should say, “Mine!” But its worth pointing out here at the beginning that saying “MINE!” is how we all start out in life.
Our grandson Geronimo, or Geo as we call him, has hit that stage. It really started showing up when a sister came onto the scene this year. Now that she can crawl around and get into his stuff, our daughter said she frequently hears screams of, “No, baby Evie, that’s mine!” Stretching out mine into about 5 syllables. She caught one of these moments on her phone not long ago. Take a look…
All I can say is that he takes after his mother.
Kylee Larson on our church staff majored in Early Childhood Development. She points out that while hearing a young child shout “mine,” isn’t all that appealing, this is a very natural and healthy stage of development. At about 18 months old a lot of things start coming together for a child. They develop what is called object permanence, the understanding that things don’t stop existing just because you can’t see them. Even though you aren’t playing with the toys in the other room, you know they are there. They develop the motor skills to hold things. They are begin to self-differentiate and understand “me.” So saying “Mine!” means a child is discovering a boundary of self.
Now they haven’t discovered yet what it means to take on another person’s perspective. That comes around age 3-4 when a child begins to understand “our.” But first things first. They have to understand “me” in order to move to “we.”
Now, with this in mind, think about Paul’s famous words in Corinthians, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (1 Cor. 13:11) I’ve long struggled with this verse. It sounds like Paul is condemning children, and yet Jesus said, “Unless you become like a child you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
But what if we look at Paul’s words not as condemnation of children, but as an encouragement to keep growing, not to remain in a “mine” stage. Perhaps Paul isn’t harshly judging the behavior of little children, but reminding us that we are made to grow from me to we.
But are Paul’s words really necessary? I mean, grown adults would never act like little children who scream, “Mine!” Would they?
Take a look at this video recorded at a Costco…(play video). The people were fighting over a pack of Pokemon cards. That is not so funny or cute, is it? In fact, adults who persist in a “Mine” stage can become dangerous. Perhaps the development from “me to we” is more than just a psychological progression in childhood, but a spiritual one for every age of every person.
Our Lay Leader, Stephen Hoskins, led the devotion at a Governing Board meeting earlier this year. He talked about how the position of leadership in the church is an act of stewardship. As leaders they are called to steward the resources of the church well and be responsible in their work and decisions. Then he shared this story about his daughter Nikki. I want to read what he shared that night…
The movement from “Mine” to “Ours,” is not just a psychological development. It’s a spiritual development. It comes when we see that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that our family is not just a source of provision for our personal needs, but the people to whom we can be a provision of blessing and support. People to whom we have a commitment. And when we see our family as all of God’s children, everyone, and experience God calling us and saying, “I need your gift. Your family needs what you have,” that’s a big day, because that’s when we move from “MY gifts” become “my GIFTS,” from what I have to what I can give.
We see this spiritual progression in the life of Moses. It comes in the form of a simple question, “What’s in your hand?” Moses had been on quite a journey of growth. He had been the prince of Egypt. He lived a royal life. He was privileged and provided for. But as Moses became an adult something inside of him started to get unsettled. He began to recognize that all his privilege had come at the expense of other people, slaves upon whose backs the wealth of his empire had been built. Not only that, he had to deal with the fact that his identity was with those slave people, the Hebrews.
One day something snapped. He saw an Egyptian soldier beating a slave and Moses lashed out and kills the soldier. And all of a sudden, Moses was unsafe among his own people. He fled to the land of Midian where he married a woman and settled down. Moses obviously wasn’t selfish. He had given up a lot. But you get the sense that he would have been content to live out his days comfortable and untroubled in Midian.
Until God called.
Moses was tending sheep when he saw a burning bush and went to investigate. In so doing God called Moses to go back to Egypt and demand the freedom of God’s people, Moses’ family. God was saying to Moses, “Your family needs you.”
Moses is frightened by such a prospect. He tries to get out of the assignment. He doesn’t see himself as gifted enough for such a task. He says, “They may not believe me or listen to me…” (v.1) And that’s when the question comes from God, “What’s in your hand?” Moses says, “a staff.” It was his shepherd’s staff. God says, “lay it down.” When Moses does the staff becomes a serpent. Then God says, “Grab it by the tail,” and when he does it becomes a staff again.
Years ago I heard Rick Warren speak on the topic “Leadership is Stewardship.” He reflected on the question to Moses by God, “What’s in your hand?” He suggested that Moses’ staff represented three things:
· His identity. Moses was a shepherd.
· His income. Shepherding was how he earned resources.
· And His influence. The staff is how Moses directed the sheep.
What God was asking Moses to do was lay down his identity, his income, and his influence. All the things he had in possession to steward. When he did, God brought it to life. God did through Moses what Moses could never do on his own. But God did not force it. Moses had to choose to lay it down.
This is a pivotal moment in Moses’ life. This marks an important stage of spiritual development as Moses chose to lay down HIS gift and discover his GIFT. What we see in this story is what can keep a person in that stage where they don’t lay down what they have, what keeps them in a place of saying, “Mine.” Its not really selfishness, though it can be. But the deeper issue that can hold us back is fear. Fear of what will happen if I lay down my identity, my income, my influence. Will I have enough if I give generously? Will I be embarrassed or look silly if I offer my service? Will I just waste my time? Fear can keep us holding on like a little child. What Moses really had to lay down was his fear.
In a book called The War of Art, author Stephen Prestfield points out that Hitler was a painter who never painted. He was overcome by fear of the blank canvas and not being able to create something beautiful or being laughed at for his work. Prestfield says it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than to face a blank square of canvas. It can be scary to use our power to do good, to add beauty to the world.
And the warning of that illustration is what can happen when we hold on to what we have and say, “Mine!” Its not just that we are selfish. There’s no really great harm in that. It’s that we can become dangerous. It’s what we can do to other people. When our gifts are self-serving then other people become either obstacles or assets. They are objects that get in the way of us having what we want and therefore need to be removed. Just think of that Costco video! Or they are just assets to help us get what we want. Either way, we turn people into objects.
But people become gifts, they become community, they become sources of love and joy and support and fulfillment, like colors on a canvas when we release what we have and we grow from Mine to Ours.
In every life God comes to us, and God comes many times over the course of our lives, and asks us, “What’s in your hand? Will you lay it down? Because if you do, I will make it come alive. And that is when our gifts become even more valuable to us than if we’d held onto them for ourselves.
Stewardship begins with that question, “What’s in your hand?” What do you have? What do you possess? It can be so easy to judge what we have and say, “I don’t have anything special. What I have to offer can’t do much.” But we aren’t called to evaluate. We are simply asked to lay it down and see what God can do with it. God doesn’t force us to do anything. God simply invites.
Earlier this week I was in Birmingham meeting with my cohort of a dozen pastors of some of our largest United Methodist Churches in the country. One of my colleagues is Phil Schroeder, senior pastor of Dunwoody UMC, where Eric Burton-Krieger is on staff. I let Phil know about Eric when they moved to Atlanta. So when we are together Phil picks me up at the airport and brings me treats, because he says, “I owe you tons for helping me find Eric.” SO Eric continues to be a source of blessing for me.
So when Phil was driving me to the airport the other day, he told me about a baptism he did not long ago. An 8 year-old boy in his church named Garrett, wanted to be baptized. He was very moved by his understanding of God and what he came to understand about himself because of God’s love. So one Sunday Phil baptized him in worship, and Phil told me they always give to children, or their families, these little wooden palm crosses wit which to remember their baptism and who they are to God.
So Phil gave Garrett a cross, and it became very meaningful to Garrett. Not too long after that, Phil got an email from Garrett explaining that he’d lost his cross and how much that bothered him. He played football and was certain that was where he lost it, on the football field. One day he saw another player holding a cross that looked just like his. He asked the boy, “Hey, do you mind if I asked where you got that cross?” The boy smiled really big and said, “I found it on the field one day and have held onto it ever since. Isn’t it cool?”
So this boy sent this message to his pastor to ask if he might be able to get another cross for himself, because, he said, “I didn’t ask for it back because I could see in his eyes how special it was to him.”
That’s a boy who went from “MY gift” to “My GIFT.”
What’s in your hand?