Production over Consumption

I was listening to a sermon on 106.9FM The Light, a local Christian radio station out of Charlotte NC, recently and the pastor (I cannot recall who it was) was preaching about fruit bearing Christianity. It was very illuminating to me. I am not going to repeat the sermon, but the lesson in it along with my wife’s activities recently motivated this writing. My wife is constantly thinking of basic household items that she can make from laundry detergent to my own deodorant (The jury is still out on the deodorant, but I will try it and see!) Today my mind made the connection between my wife’s actions and this particular sermon and the Holy Spirit moved in me to think about what He is accomplishing in my family. So I want to begin with a passage of scripture in John 15: 5 (New Living Translation).
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”
I am going to steal the theme from the aforementioned sermon, (whoever he is I hope he won’t mind). His premise, as will be mine, was the difference between fruit bearing Christianity and those that are fruit eaters. I had never thought about that distinction and the sermon did not grab my attention in a real meaningful way until today. I can now see what the Lord is doing in my family. He is trying to teach myself and my family an attitude of production over consumption. Briefly, I would like to detour off topic a little bit and touch on the subject of economics (Trust me this will be a very short sidebar; I am by no means an economist.). I think it is no revelation to most that the United States is a consumer driven economy. We consume far more then we produce and probably have since about the 1940’s. Look, I am not going to dive into the differences between supply side economics and Keynesian economics, because frankly I am not qualified to do so. Besides, by miniscule knowledge of these terms is about as deep as my economic knowledge goes! I will just make the point that it seems that true Christianity would probably fall under supply side economics. See I told you that would not take long, but there is a point to all of this. Christianity is a production over consumption lifestyle. This scripture clearly illustrates that when we allow the Lord to be our source of all spiritual nutrients, so to speak, we will produce fruit. It is a fact and a promise from God. That being said, I think that the spiritual and economic conditions of the United States of America and the whole world for that matter are tied to consumption over production attitude. This leads me back to my wife who is the real source of the inspiration for this. The Lord is using her to teach me to be a producer and not a consumer, because that is what she has become. We are surprised how much resistance we get for choosing to change our lifestyle in that manner. Rather than encourage us or even ask questions about how they can do these things as well, criticism ensues instead. Not all the time, but enough to convince me that these decisions we are making are flying in the face of the culture that we live in. If my not so scientific analysis is accurate, then why have we become this way? Well I have two observations. One is that we do not desire to consume the Word of God. That consumption produces a spirit of humility which from my experience leads to a desire to work and produce fruit for the Lord. Number two is, we are self-reliant and over time that attitude will cause people to seek self gratification and therefore consume more and produce less. That doesn’t mean everyone will become lazy, but it does mean that any real production will be for immediate gratification towards self and not for the Lord or the greater good of your legacy as a family.
The third point I would like to make is based upon my failed attempt at a garden in my backyard last spring. It seems that last spring my gardening knowledge was not much more then my economic knowledge and my garden did not yield any fruit. The truth is that I did not put enough work into it so that good fruit could flourish. It was really an experimental effort, because I had not tried this before. I tilled the soil properly at least according to my limited expertise, but I guess I counted on rain and sunlight doing the rest. I did not weed or make sure insects did not destroy what was growing. Long story short, I was not as prepared as I thought for the amount of work that I needed to undertake to make this a fruitful experiment. Then something else that I did not expect happened. A few months later a couple of long vines with very large green leaves, larger then my hand, sprang up to the left of my porch, and I didn’t know what they were. Upon closer inspection I saw cucumbers growing on them. The strange thing is that I chose at the last minute to not plant cucumbers although I did buy the seeds. I realized at that point that I had opened the seed package for the cucumbers and some had accidentally fallen on the ground. The actual fruit was useless but the leaves were quite large and green and with a casual glance you would think that plant was fruit bearing, because it was so much greener than the other plants that were planted in good soil. The point is that none of my garden had produced any good fruit. That little experiment was quite educational in a variety of ways, but I would like to focus on one of the spiritual lessons that is pertinent to our discussion. My desire was to grow food for my family to consume, but clearly I had not allowed myself to be under adequate teaching to be able to produce what was necessary. I think we suffer from this problem in our spiritual lives. We seek the results of the Lord or to say it another way we want to consume the fruit that others have labored to produce. Unfortunately, we do not put in the work necessary (sanctification) to produce that work. I am not talking about work based salvation! What I am saying is that an attitude of gratitude towards the Lord will cause us to consume the Word of God and therefore be producers of good fruit. Obviously I was too engrossed in an attitude of consumption to do the work necessary to produce a good crop in my garden. Sadly that has been my attitude spiritually more times then I would like to admit. I would like to end this with a scripture from the Old Testament. All of Exodus 35-36, obviously I am not going to put all of this in my text, because it is quite long. I would encourage you to read it for yourself. There is far more wisdom to be gleamed from this passage than what I am going to briefly allude to. The background here is the Lord’s people are taking all of their abilities and building the tabernacle for the Lord. Two things jumped out at me that I would like to share with you. Number one, on several occasions this passage talks about a “spirit of wisdom” in regards to those doing the work on the tabernacle. Meaning that their work ethic and knowledge in their field was supernaturally given. To say it a little more acutely the eternal wisdom of our sovereign God guided there hands to build unto Him what was honoring to Him. How many times have you equated wisdom and a work ethic? I must admit I have not done so very often. The second reason is that you cannot help but notice how economically it must have been a good situation for the people of Israel. Due to everyone producing things necessary for the glorification of our Lord everyone had something to do. To put it in modern economic terms there was full employment in the Nation of Israel at the time. Guess what? There was so much production the priests had to tell the people to stop producing what was necessary for the building of the temple.
This is not some health and wealth, name it and claim it theology. Actually, it is just the opposite it shows us the attitude of service for the kingdom that the Lord desires. It also shows the results it will yield for the Lord’s kingdom. Not for ours! Are you a producer or a consumer?
How about a little extra reading? I decided not to discuss the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:3-9. The main reason is that I don’t think I could do it any better then Jesus did it so I will ask you to just read it. However, I will offer a little advice. Take some time to research how farming was done in the New Testament. This will allow you to see the depth of this parable in ways that all who heard it back then would have clearly understood. That parable really helped to teach me a great deal in regards to my ordinary garden experience. God bless!