As a purchaser of religious books, this writer is not especially fond of book publishers referring to me as a “consumer” because the word consume can mean “to destroy, by decomposition or burning” or “to spend wastefully.” The term brings to my mind a picture of forest fires devouring acre after acre of vegetation, leaving behind only scorched remnants of trees.<\/p>\n
When we read books, we don’t “consume” them like the fire does the trees in the forest, for they don’t cease to exist after we’ve used them. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite is true books become a part of us, because they can change our way of thinking.<\/p>\n
This is especially true of the Bible. When the words of Scripture remain in us<\/strong>, they change our mindset, teaching us not to take the destructive pathway of sin (Psalm 119:11; cf. Proverbs 12:28). Jesus also said that when His words truly abide in us, we will bear “much fruit” (John 15:5-8). In other words, we will be fruit producers<\/strong> not consumers.<\/p>\n The apostle Paul refers to Christians as “God’s fellow workers” (1 Corinthians 3:9), who are to build things that cannot be consumed in the fire of God’s judgment regarding our works (1 Corinthians 3:13-15). Later in the book, he urges readers to excel in gifts that build up the church (1 Corinthians 14:12).<\/p>\n As Christians, let’s not be known for the goods we “consume,” but for the “good fruit” we produce (Matthew 7:17 – NKJV; cf. Gal. 5:22-23; Ephesians 5:9; Philippians 1:11; Colossians 1:10; James 3:17-18).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a purchaser of religious books, this writer is not especially fond of book publishers referring to me as a “consumer” because the word consume can mean “to destroy, by decomposition or burning” or “to spend wastefully.” The term brings to my mind a picture of forest fires devouring acre after acre of vegetation, leaving … Continue reading “Are Christians Consumers Or Fruit Producers? – Bible study”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}