Discipleship is personal, but it is not personalistic. It always involves our relationships to others who also profess to be disciples. But are they disciples? As I ask that question I am not referring to those many people in the church who are essentially like us—ethnically, denominationally, or in terms of our particular religious experience. We do not have trouble with these people, because affirming them is really just affirming ourselves.
I close with an important thought. Wealth is a blessing when properly received and used, but there is something more important than wealth or even the proper use of it. It is being free, as God intends us to be free. Possessions tie us down. Therefore, although most of us must have at least some possessions (and many of us will have a great deal), the only way to be free is to hold those possessions as if we did not hold them and thus be ready always to give them away at a moment’s notice.
3. Stewardship. Central to any biblical understanding of possessions is the concept of stewardship, the principle that possessions are not ours to do with as we want but rather are that which has been entrusted to us by God to do with as He wants, to be used in His service. It is the principle behind Christ’s story of the landlord who went off on a trip and left his vineyard in the care of tenant farmers, or the story of the master who entrusted certain talents to his servants.
