Consumption

What brand are you? Companies who sell products want to know. They want you to be loyal consumers of their product. They will study you to find out, for instance, whether you are into sports, and what kind of sports, and what particular team you like. This will tell them how to target you so that you will buy their product. They want to know what your habits are. They are not interested in helping you to have good habits, they just you to continue in your habits so that they will sell more products to you. The more habits you have that fit into their product the more of their product you will consume. We are consumers. We are branded by what we consume. Consumption is what we do. There was a time that the word consumption was used to describe a wasting disease. We are either consuming or being consumed by something --or someone.

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world," Paul says, "but be transformed by the renewing of your mind..." (Rom. 12:2) My habits tell me and others what I am conformed to. The pattern of my life tells others what "brand" I am. The thing that consumes me is the thing that forms my mindset. I want to be consumed by something or rather some One that transforms my mind. That One is Christ, the living Word of God. As I develop the basic habit of reading and studying His Word, the Bible; as I spend time in prayer, listening to and talking to God I find that my mind is renewed. As I daily walk with God in obedience, I am transformed from merely a consumer of the world and its ways into one who is consumed in the fire of God.