"God is not going to do for you, what you can already do yourself."

These are some words that I've been thinking about a lot lately. I have been going back and forth, trying to decide if they were Biblically sound or not. But, after much thought and a little bit of research, I feel secure that, while not a direct Biblical quote, the idea is still Biblically sound.

This is NOT just another way of saying "God helps those who help themselves." That is actually a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin. There is no promise or guarantee that if we do things for ourselves that God will bless or multiply those efforts.

However, the fact remains that too many people expect God to do for them what they themselves already have the ability to do.

When God wanted an ark – He COULD have just spoken it into existence. But he didn't. He had Noah do it.

Don't get me wrong... there were some things that Noah couldn't do.

Noah couldn't coax two of every animal onto the ark without God's help.

Noah couldn't make it rain for 40 days.

But, Noah could build. Noah had hands, feet and a brain. God let Noah do what Noah could do on his own – and God did what Noah couldn't.

Perhaps an even greater example of this is Christ himself. God saw that we could not overcome sin on our own. So God himself stepped in on our behalf and did for us what we could not do.

Somehow though, in the midst of this, we have become entitled. We somehow think that God must now do everything for us.

We moan and complain when we're hungry, or when we feel that our house or car is below our standards. We actively and obsessively seek ways to earn rewards without having to work for them.

People squander away the vast majority of their lives looking for a shortcut, when if they would have just used what God already gave them, they would have gotten where they wanted to go a long time ago.

Instead of working out and eating better, people look for diet pills or cosmetic surgery. They spend year after year being unhappy with their health, where if they would just commit to the two things that they know they need to do, they'd get there inside of six months.

Instead of getting on a budget, spending wisely, investing, and working hard – people spend absurd amounts of money on lottery tickets and gambling, hoping for that big payout.

People will beg and plead for God to help them and get legitimately angry or downtrodden when He doesn't just give them what they want. They completely miss the fact that God already gave them all of the tools they need. And perhaps more importantly, they don't realize that the work required to achieve something is actually where the joy in having it comes from.

Part of the joy in having something like a sports car or a luxury purse is knowing the amount of work that it took to obtain it. If these things were just given to us, they wouldn't be special anymore.

If you could buy a Louis Vuitton purse at the Dollar General and everybody had one – nobody would notice or care about it.

Don't misread what I am saying here. I am not making an argument that is pro-vanity or pro-luxury, nor am I suggesting that it's appropriate to buy expensive things so that people envy you or think about you in a certain way. These are just convenient metaphors to help me make my point.

The reality is – people need to stop expecting God to do for them what he has already given them the tools to do for themselves.

Instead, people should be grateful for what God has already given them, and get busy being a good steward of those things.

What does good stewardship look like?

I've been spending a lot of time thinking of a good, biblical definition of "stewardship", and this is what I've come up with:

"To take care and make good use of a resource we've been given, with the intention of producing fruit."

I've looked at a number of different things in my life through the lens of that definition – and every single time, I come away feeling convicted.

The brutal reality is – there are very few things in my life that I am maximizing to its full potential.

I have been a poor steward of my body. My time. My finances. Even my business.

In every one of those areas (and many more that I haven't mentioned), I am guilty of poor stewardship.

I should eat better and exercise more.

I should say "no" to more things, so that I am not spread so thin, and can dedicate more time to my family and my church.

I should be a better steward of our finances, so that we can be more generous.

But you know what I don't do?

I don't pray, asking God to make me thinner. I don't pray, asking God to reduce responsibilities that I myself could have said no to. And I don't pray for God to bless us with more money... because in reality, I have already made a lot of money, and did not always spend it wisely.

I don't pray for God to do what I myself can do.

Instead... I pray that God gives me the strength to exercise discipline and willpower. I pray that God gives me the courage to say no when my plate is already full. I pray that God continues to remove the strongholds that attach me to this world so I don't feel the urge to spend money on needless things. And I continually pray that God changes the desires of my heart, so that I obsessively seek Him, instead of the things of this world.

These are things that I cannot do myself. These are things that only God can do in me. Only God can change hearts. And my hope and prayer is that He will continue to change mine, and that He will continue to change yours.