This therefore is the thing that I would persuade you to: take yourself for God’s steward.

Remember the time when it will be said to you, “Give account of thy stewardship; thou shalt be no longer steward.” Let it be your every day’s contrivance, how to lay out your gifts, time, strength, riches or interest, to your Master’s use. Think which way you may do most, first to promote the Gospel and the public good of the church; and then, which way you may help towards the saving of particular men’s souls; and then, which way you may better the commonwealth, and how you may do good to men’s bodies, beginning with your own and those of your family, but extending your help as much further as you are able. Ask yourself every morning, ‘Which way may I this day most further my Master’s business, and the good of men?’ Ask yourself every night, ‘What good have I done to-day?’ And labour as much as may be, to be instruments of some great and standing good, and of some public and universal good, that you may look behind you at the year’s end, and at your lives’ end, and see the good that you have done.

—Richard Baxter
The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, 9:184.

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