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What Diminishes God's Word in our Lives? Matt. 13: 22 "He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful." Understand that God's Word cannot be diminished but the effect of it can be if we let it. This is why Paul said in I Thess. 2:13b when they received the Word, "ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe." We might ask how much effect God's Word has in your life? It is almost like we build a house over a gold mine and don't even realize it. Ps. 14 ask and: 7 say it is "more desired than gold, more than much fine gold." So, if we don't understand the Bible and let it change our lives, it is not God's fault. What diminishes the effect of God's Word is spelled out by Jesus. The cares of the world: Work, raising a family, living in the rat race of life can smother God's Word from affecting us. Always chasing the almighty dollar and making it more important than our relationship with God is a hindrance. If that’s all we live for, we become obsessed with that which will be completely taken away someday. These not only hurt us; they take what we have stored in our lives and choke it, producing nothing. You become unfruitful, and a fruit tree not yielding fruit is useless. May we make God's Word a priority in reading and studying it daily. We need to have an insatiable hunger for it and keep it in our minds so the thoughts we think are God's, and we live by it instead of dying for a lack of it. --- Dan Nelson