A WORD WITH YOU
By Ron Hutchcraft
#5303 - "Out of the Salt Shaker"
Matthew 5:13
I heard mooing from our kitchen. No, there was not a cow in the kitchen.
It was my wife. Not mooing, but doing something that caused the mooing
sound. I bought my wife these charming salt and pepper shakers in honor of
her farm upbringing. The pepper shaker is a pig and the salt shaker is a
cow. Whenever you turn over the pepper shaker, you cause it to start this
pig-snorting sound. The salt shaker cow works in the same way. So when I
hear that mooing from the kitchen, I know it's announcing that the salt is
doing what salt is supposed to do - getting out of the salt shaker!
I'm sure God would love to hear the sounds of His salt getting out of
the shaker more often. After all, the work salt is supposed to do is not
inside the salt shaker, all clustered together with all the other salt.
It's to get out and change the flavor of some things!
Well, according to Jesus, "You are the salt of the earth." That's His
word to His followers in our word for today from the Word of God in Matthew
5:13. He goes on to say that "you are the light of the world," and that
light is supposed to be "put on its stand, and it gives light to everyone
in the house." You don't put all the light bulbs in one room in the house.
You've got one blazing bright room; the rest of the house pitch dark. You
don't keep the salt all stored up together in the shaker. You scatter it
around so it will be in contact with the things that need their flavor
changed.
And Christians were never meant to be all clustered together in their
spiritual salt shaker, just salting each other and soaking up more blessing
and fellowship. The salt has to be in direct contact with the meat or the
vegetables that need it, so you and I have to be in meaningful contact with
people who really need our Jesus. We're not supposed to be hiding out,
playing defense all the time, trying to keep from being contaminated by
avoiding the world that Jesus left us here to change!
If your social life, if your discretionary time is pretty much all with
Christians, you're probably missing your mission! We'll do that in heaven.
Right now we've got to be involved with some people who aren't going to
heaven yet! It's time for you to take all that you've been storing up
spiritually and start taking it to places and people where it's really
needed.
It's time to be intentional about building relationships with that
neighbor of yours, with that lost co-worker, with some of your
fellow-students who need Jesus. It's time to look around your community and
find some human needs that you can be involved in meeting in Jesus' name.
They're all around. It's time to look around your community for a place to
volunteer that will bring you in contact with some unreached people with
some really deep needs. You need a community connection that will put the
salt of your Jesus' life in contact with some of the lives that really need
the flavor of Jesus; with some lives that He gave His life for.
We need to be actively involved in the life of our church. God wants
that, but not to the exclusion of connecting with the world that God so
loves. You are the spiritual salt where you live. Get out of that salt
shaker!
Copyright (c) 2007, Ron Hutchcraft.
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"From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been
forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it."
Matthew 11:12
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