Military success has a lot to do with creating the conditions for success. Conditions like larger force, better weapons, better trained people, terrain advantages. Jesus talks about setting conditions for success in discipleship. Jesus talks about setting the conditions of the heart that will result in success in discipleship. He compares it to a king who is analyzing the conditions for success in battle.
“Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand?” Luke 14:31
He then states the discipleship condition that must be set in the heart of a person if he or she is to be a disciple of Jesus.
“So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” Luke 14:33
How someone views their possessions is critical to setting the conditions for success in discipleship. If you think that your possessions belong to you and you live to accumulate and protect those possessions for your own interests, then you cannot be a disciple of Jesus. A military person knows what this looks like. Everyday they have resources at their fingertips that do not belong to them. Their weapons, equipment, people under them, and even their own lives belong to the military. They are stewards of it all. So to, we are all stewards of what rightly belongs to God. We are to give up ownership of our stuff and realize that God is the true owner of all our possessions. When this condition is set, then God can use our stuff for His glory, our benefit, and in service to others.
Would you limit the impact of your possessions to what you can do with them, or would you give them to Christ and allow Him to use them for His impact? Will you use your stuff for your own temporal glory, or His eternal glory?
Father in heaven, I recognize that you own everything that I have and all that I am.
