Saturday, July 19, 2008

Matthew 5:13 "Salt"

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” NIV

I love to eat fresh, deep red, sweet, sliced tomatoes on top of a mound of cottage cheese. It’s refreshing, nourishing, sweet, and just tastes delicious. I’ve had many meals with just tomatoes and cottage cheese. But, if I don’t have salt to put on top of it, forget it. The flavor is just not the same. I douse the whole thing in salt and pepper because I want the flavor to be rich and explode in my mouth.

Salt not only flavors, but preserves. It keeps the perishable from rotting. Jesus desires that we, as the children of God, are the salt that flavors and preserves a dying, rotten world. We must be sprinkling His love on everyone we are in contact with – people at work, at school, our neighbors, our friends, the grocery store checkout man/woman, the ticket taker at the movie theater…. and most importantly, our family.

But to do so, we must remain fresh in our walk with the Lord. We need to be spending time with the Father, in His Word, communicating with Him, privately and corporately worshiping Him, actively serving our Master. If not, we not only have dead salt to sprinkle, we don’t have anything to give. Our lives become stagnant, or worse, begin to turn away from the Lord and inward to ourselves. As His disciple, I must be making a difference, or I am a Christian in name only.

Further thoughts:

  1. Are there people in your life that you need to be more on alert with living this way – maybe where it is harder to be salt? Read Paul’s instructions on saltiness in Colossians 4:5-6.
  2. Think back through your day or through yesterday. Where could you have done a better job of sprinkling salt? Ask the Lord to forgive you for not representing Him well and to help you do better the next time.

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