Joshua 6:24

Joshua was the leader of the Israelites after Moses died, and Jericho was the first heavily fortified city standing between them and the land God had promised. After God gave them a miraculous victory — the walls collapsed after a strange seven-day march — the people burned the city as an act of consecration to God. Rather than plundering the valuables for personal gain, the soldiers were instructed to place all precious metals into God's treasury. This practice was called "devoted" destruction, where the first and most valuable spoils of conquest belonged entirely to God. It was a tangible way of declaring that the victory had come from God, not from military strength.

Lord, it is far easier to claim victories than to surrender them. Teach me to hold my wins loosely — to recognize that the gold in my life came from You first. Let gratitude be my first response, not pride. Amen.

Most of us have been trained to measure a win by what we walk away with. The bigger the victory, the bigger the reward that's ours to keep. But when Jericho fell — when the walls that were supposed to be impenetrable crumbled into the dust — the soldiers handed over the most valuable things they found: not the rubble, not the ashes, but the silver and the gold. Straight to God's house. The victory was real. The plunder was real. But the point wasn't personal gain. There's something quietly radical in that. When something goes well — a promotion you worked hard for, a relationship healed after years of silence, a health scare that resolves — our instinct is to catalog it as our achievement. But what would it look like to bring the "gold" of your victories to God first? Not out of obligation, but as a genuine acknowledgment: this came from somewhere beyond me. The first and best of what we gain can become an act of worship — and that changes what winning even means.