{"id":1659,"date":"2020-01-11T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-11T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shop.honestreflections.net\/?p=1659"},"modified":"2019-12-18T07:47:14","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T12:47:14","slug":"how-to-break-the-hold-of-consumerism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/2020\/01\/11\/how-to-break-the-hold-of-consumerism\/","title":{"rendered":"HOW TO BREAK THE HOLD OF CONSUMERISM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cJesus replied, \u201cFoxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.\u201d  Matthew 8:20 NIV<\/em><\/strong>
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An article<\/a> from Relevant magazine says that the amount of money spent on Christmas presents the weekend after Thanksgiving is more than half what people donate to charities for the entire year.\u00a0 The article points out interesting facts, such as 40% of food in America is wasted. One stat instantly convicted me; American homes have more TV\u2019s in them than they do people. My husband and I have more than two TV\u2019s in our home of two.\u00a0
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Consumerism is the true religion of our day.  No one can ever get enough. We need a nicer car, bigger home, jewelry, more TV’s than people.  As Rick Warren says, we spend money we don\u2019t have to impress people we don\u2019t like. Not Jesus, He didn\u2019t do that.  <\/strong>Jesus didn\u2019t have a place to lay his head.  He didn\u2019t have a house, He never drove a car.  On occasion He rode a donkey, but not often. The boats he travelled in were not yachts.  And from all of the studying I\u2019ve done, I\u2019ve never known Jesus to wear jewelry. Jesus didn\u2019t come for things, He came for people.
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Jesus didn\u2019t come for things, He came for people.<\/strong>
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The only way to break the hold of consumerism on our lives is to keep our eyes focused on Jesus.  The first commandment God gave Moses was, \u201cYou shall have no other gods before me\u201d (Exodus 20:4 NIV<\/a>).  The first thing God tells us to do is not put anything before Him.  Anything includes the majority of the things we think we can\u2019t live without.  We think we can\u2019t live without cell phones or computers, yet Jesus did. We think we need so many of the things Jesus never had.  All of those things can represent gods in our lives. They can consume us and we can miss out on the things that truly matter. We can miss out on the people God has given us in our lives.
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I had lunch with a friend and her daughter.  Her daughter, only 20 years old at the time had spent 6 months in the hospital with a rare condition. To be having lunch with them was a true miracle.  There were times during her time in the hospital, we didn\u2019t think she was going to make it. They had been stripped of all of their \u201cstuff.\u201d Hospital rooms tend to be drab and clinical.  For months they persevered, clinging to Jesus. And that was all they needed. They didn\u2019t need stuff, they needed Jesus. By clinging to Him, He gave them joy in the midst of heartache. If we want to beat consumerism, we have to keep our eyes on Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Question of the Day:<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our you focused on stuff or Jesus?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further Reading:<\/strong> Genesis 24:52-26:16 NIV<\/a>, Matthew 8:18-34 NIV<\/a>, Psalm 10:1-15 NIV<\/a>, Proverbs 2:16-22 NIV<\/a>
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\u201cJesus replied, \u201cFoxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.\u201d  Matthew 8:20 NIV An article from Relevant magazine says that the amount of money spent on Christmas presents the weekend after Thanksgiving is more than half what people donate to charities for the entire… Continue reading HOW TO BREAK THE HOLD OF CONSUMERISM<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1661,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions\/1661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}