There’s a story about a preacher and a farmer.
The preacher walks past a beautiful field, rows of healthy crops stretching out in every direction, and says to the farmer, “God gave you this. Give him the glory.”
The farmer looks back and says, “You should have seen this place when it only belonged to God.”
It’s funny. And honest. And if we’re real with ourselves, most entrepreneurs think exactly like that farmer.
You had the idea. You built the team. You raised the money. You showed up when it was hard and kept going when it made no sense. So when someone says, “Your business belongs to God,” something in you wants to push back. That’s a natural response. But it might also be the thing keeping you from building what you were actually made to build.
The difference between an owner and a steward
It comes down to one question: who does this belong to?
An owner says: I earned this. I built this. I can do what I want with it. A steward says: This was given to me. I get to work it, develop it, and enjoy some of the fruit. But ultimately it belongs to someone else, and I’m responsible to them for how I use it.
Adam in the Garden of Eden was a steward, not an owner. He didn’t create the garden. God did. Adam cultivated it. His job was to take what was already good and develop it further, faithfully, for purposes bigger than himself.
That’s what entrepreneurship looks like when it’s rooted in the right foundation.
And the shift from owner to steward is not a gradual one. It doesn’t happen slowly over years of spiritual maturity. It happens in a moment. One day, you’re holding your business in a closed fist. Next, you’re holding it with an open hand. And everything looks different from there.
What stewardship actually changes
When you see yourself as an owner, the primary question is: how much do I have to give to stay on God’s good side? You calculate a tithe. You show up at church. You tick the boxes. It feels like paying a tax on your life.
But when you see yourself as a steward, the question changes entirely. It becomes: why did God give me this idea? Why did He give me these skills? Why did He open this door and not that one? What does He want to do with what He’s placed in my hands?
Those are different questions. And they lead to a completely different way of running a business.
Bertie Lorenz, CEO of Wasteplan in South Africa, learned this the hard way. He built his waste management company with a genuine desire to honour God. But around 2011, he started making bad decisions. The company began losing money. Badly. And in that low point, he came before God and admitted something most entrepreneurs never say out loud: I was not as great as I thought I was.
He surrendered. Not just personally but practically. He created a legal entity called Niko, meaning “gift” in Zulu, and transferred the majority shareholding of his company into it. Niko Capital became a non-profit structure designed to represent God as a literal shareholder, directing dividends toward alleviating poverty through education in South Africa. Children of his own staff members. Communities affected by generations of inequality.
He didn’t do it as a PR move. He did it as an act of obedience. Because God had asked for shares in his business, and Bertie gave them.
That’s what stewarding looks like in practice.
The abundance shift
Here’s something most people miss in this conversation. Stewardship is not about scarcity. It’s not about shrinking your ambitions or giving so much away that you can’t grow.
God did not create a world of limited resources. He created a world of potential abundance. The Garden of Eden, if you trace its dimensions through Genesis, was more like a national park built for two people. When Israel wandered in the wilderness, God covered the ground with so much manna every morning that He literally told them to eat as much as they wanted and not worry about tomorrow. He’d do it again the next day.
That’s not a scarcity mindset. That’s a God who creates more than enough.
Economists will tell you that the scarcity mentality leads to poverty. When individuals, companies, and countries hoard, the whole system suffers. But when people operate from a posture of abundance, believing there is enough and that God can multiply, economies flourish and communities grow.
This is a bedrock principle of Kingdom entrepreneurship. There is always more to create. There are always new ideas, new markets, and new solutions. You don’t need to hoard what you have because your God is not running short.
The problem is fear. Fear makes us clutch. It makes us stockpile. And just like the manna Israel tried to keep overnight, hoarded resources have a way of going bad.
What God does with a faithful steward
Paul wrote to the Corinthian church that God enriches people in every way in order to increase their capacity to give. He wasn’t talking about giving as a burden. He was talking about it as an outcome of faithful stewardship. God multiplies resources to increase your standard of giving, not just your standard of living.
That reframes everything.
The profit in your business is not just yours to spend. It is seed. And God is looking for people who will sow it back into His kingdom, people He can trust to invest widely, give generously, and take strategic risks for purposes that outlast their own name on the door.
Jesus consistently praised the stewards who invested and multiplied. Not the ones who buried what they’d been given to keep it safe.
The honest question
So here’s what’s worth sitting with today. Do you see your business as something you own? Or something you steward?
Because if God really is who He says He is, then the skills, the health, the opportunity, the timing, all of it already belongs to Him. Not in some abstract theological sense. Practically. Literally.
And that changes the question from “how much of this is mine?” to “what does He want done with it?”
At FLOW, we exist to help Kingdom entrepreneurs wrestle honestly with that question. Not with guilt. Not with pressure. But with the genuine conviction that your business is one of the most powerful tools for Kingdom impact in your hands, if you’re willing to hold it the right way.
You are not just a business owner. You are a steward of something God built through you, and He has more in mind for it than you’ve imagined yet.
Join the movement: https://faithdrivenentrepreneur.org/
Watch the full video here: Session 2: God Owns My Business
Credit: Faith Driven Entrepreneur
