{{first_name|Friend}},
There's a servant in one of Jesus' parables who did everything most Christians would praise.
He was given money that wasn't his. He didn't gamble it. He didn't waste it. He didn't lose a cent. He carefully protected it and returned every bit of it, exactly as he'd received it.
In most churches, we'd call that man a good steward. Responsible. Wise. Faithful with what wasn't his.
His master called him something else: wicked and slothful.
That one word should stop every Christian entrepreneur in their tracks. Because most of us have quietly built our whole approach to business around being that servant.
Here's the story (Matthew 25:14–30). A master gives three servants different amounts, "talents," before a journey. Two of them put the money to work and double it. The third digs a hole and buries his, keeping it perfectly safe.
When the master returns, the two who took the risk hear the words we all long to hear: "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your lord."
But the one who played it safe? He's stripped of what he had and cast out.
Notice what got him condemned. It wasn't dishonesty, he was painfully honest. It wasn't theft, he returned everything. It wasn't recklessness, he took no risk at all.
He was condemned for burying what he was given instead of putting it to work.
For Christian business owners, this cuts against something we rarely question.
We tend to treat caution as the godly option. We assume playing it safe, keeping our heads down, not risking the resources God gave us, is the humble, responsible, faithful thing to do. We even wear it as a badge: "I'm just being a good steward."
But this parable flips that completely. Safekeeping, done out of fear, is not faithfulness. It's the very thing the master hates.
And look at why the servant buried it. He said, "I knew you were a hard man… so I was afraid." He used his view of the master as his excuse to do nothing. He let fear, dressed up as caution, talk him out of action.
We do the same. We look at the market, at the risk, at the money, and we let fear disguise itself as wisdom. We tell ourselves we're being prudent when we're really just being paralyzed.
But here's what the fearful servant completely missed.
The master didn't hand out the talents at random. Scripture says he gave "to each according to his ability" (Matthew 25:15). He knew his servants. He weighed what each one could carry, and he gave accordingly. Entrusting that money wasn't a trap set to catch a failure. It was a vote of confidence.
And this was no small sum. A single talent was roughly twenty years of a laborer's wages, somewhere between six figures and over a million dollars in today's money. The master looked at that servant, decided he could be trusted with a fortune, and placed it in his hands.
That changes everything about how you read the story. God entrusting you with a gift, an opportunity, a business, is not Him waiting to see if you'll slip up. It's Him saying, "I know you. I know what you can carry. I trust you with this."
The right response to that kind of trust is not fear. It's faith and gratitude. The fearful servant treated his master's confidence as a threat to his own safety, something to protect himself from. He should have received it as an honor worth rising to, a reason to act boldly and do even more for the One who believed in him.
When you truly grasp that God's entrustment is His trust in you, fear loses its grip. You stop guarding the gift and start using it, not out of pressure, but out of gratitude.
So what does faithful stewardship actually require of you? A few things worth sitting with:
Your gifts were given to be multiplied, not protected. Whatever God placed in your hands, skill, capital, time, a message, was never meant to be buried for safekeeping. It was meant to be put to work and increased for His kingdom. Ask yourself honestly: what have I been sitting on out of fear? What talent am I "keeping safe" that I'm actually supposed to be risking for His kingdom?
"I only have a little" is not an excuse. The condemned servant had just one talent. The lesson is pointed: no one gets a pass for having less. The two who were rewarded had different amounts, five and two, and received the same praise, because the master wasn't measuring the size of the return. He was measuring whether they used what they had. You don't need more before you begin. You need to faithfully employ what's already in your hand.
Honesty and caution are not enough. This is the hard one. Most Christian entrepreneurs make integrity the ceiling of a godly business: be honest, be fair, don't cheat. And you should. But this servant was honest and fair, and still condemned. God asks for more than a clean record. He asks for fruitful action. Not just "did I avoid doing wrong?" but "did I do something good with what I was given?"
When you build this way, fear stops running your decisions. You start taking the faithful risks you've been avoiding, and you step into the kind of stewardship the master actually rewards.
Wherever you are in your business, this is for you:
If you are just getting started:
Don't wait until you feel ready or well-resourced to begin. You have one talent, maybe two. Use it. The fear that says "keep it safe until you know more" is the exact fear that got the third servant condemned. Take the faithful step now.
If you have been building for a while but growth feels stuck:
Ask whether you've quietly slipped into safekeeping mode, protecting what little you have instead of putting it to work. Sometimes the breakthrough is on the other side of a risk you've been calling "prudence." Bring the decision to God and act.
If you have found some success and are ready to scale:
The temptation now isn't inaction, it's hoarding. Bigger barns, safer accounts, keeping the harvest instead of deploying it. Remember that if it's wrong to bury one talent, it's far worse to bury five or ten. Keep your resources in motion for the kingdom, not locked away for comfort.
The goal was never to hand God back exactly what He gave you, untouched and unrisked. It was to hear, "Well done. Enter into the joy of your lord."
That joy is reserved for the ones who were willing to dig up what they'd been tempted to bury.
In Him,
Stephen