Don't Lose Your Saltiness

In Matthew 5 Jesus uses three examples of the power of our wittiness, connected to the actions of our life. The Christ-like life is compared to a city set on a hill that cannot be hid. It is compared to a light not placed under a covering but on a high place, a lamp stand, so that it may give light to all in the house. Jesus is teaching this is His Sermon on the Mount.

 

Yes, I believe that it is of utmost importance that we live such a visible life. I believe that we must present ourselves in such a way as to show those around us the way to Jesus. We cannot hide the Christ-like-life! Yet, before Jesus ever mentions a city set on a hill, before He ever tells of a light on a stand, He tells of the importance of keeping our seasoning. All the display in the world will not be effective if the taste is bad or even bland. Before you can ever have an effective visible life, there are some personal actions that will have to be lived right if one is to become that city on a hill a lamp on a stand.

 

Matthew 5:13 says, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.” NKJV Both Mark and Luke reiterated this again in this fashion.

 

"Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"   Luke 14:34-35 NKJV

 

Your ability to season (Salt) a circumstance is a God given ability.

The way you live your life can drain your anointing out and cause you to lose your dreams and visions. The way you live your life can cause you to become a wore-out, dried up soul with not even a smile to give. The way you live your life can cost you the chance to win that soul you are reaching for and touch that life you want to see come to God! The life could be a family member and someone you really love. We don’t live just for ourselves. We don’t just walk through this life alone. We have a lot of other people’s emotions connected to our life. These people know about our flavor or seasoning. Understand you can become so caught up in life that you lose your anointing and your tenderness, you lose your smile and your laughter. You can become dry like path dirt (trampled underfoot by men).

 

You can’t allow life to take from you your love and patients. 

You can’t let life have your mild mannered ways and your self-control.

You can’t allow life to cause you to grit your teeth and keep you frustrated.

You can’t allow life to take your peace and confidence.

You can’t let life take your joy, your gentleness and your contentment.  (Read Galatians 5:22)

 

A well-lived life is an ongoing journey!

Some people only live their life in a someday mode. Always looking to what it might be someday and never living in the day that God has for them at the moment. A well-lived life is an ongoing journey, what is happening now will touch a lot of my tomorrows and how I respond today will change relationships possibly forever. A well-lived life is characterized by many things. It has many elements to it that in their right place make for a well-lived life. Learn to live life with and through:

 

Excitement – Life is not all fun but some of it had better be. There needs to be a certain amount of excitement and longing expectation in your life. You need to feel that, “I just can’t wait” feeling every once-in-a-while. You are never too old for excitement. If you think you are you’re on the road to becoming a bitter boring old person.

 

Adventure – Take a walk in a new direction. Do something you have never done before. Lose your excuses that are telling yourself, you have always done it that way. Try something new. Take a step into the unknown. Adventure will take you out of the status-quo mode. There is nothing like adventure to put excitement in your life.

 

Success – Live life so it can produce right. Life has to have success but success comes by planned living.  Prepare and live so that you can have accomplishments. Stop living to just exist, stop floating in the amiss of life, stop living to just get through another day. Catch a reason and make it produce with the talents God has given you. Nothing brings adventure like success; it causes you to want to take another step.

 

Challenges – There is no such thing as a well-lived life without challenges. Another word for challenges is trials. Challenges make you try harder and pray more. Don’t every live or think like you will not have test if you get it all together. Life has challenges; life has trials, work on them and fix them. There is nothing like a challenge to bring you sweet success.

 

Problems – Even a well-lived life will bring you problems, its part of the process. You can’t live perfect enough not to have problems. You are not the only one having a problem nor are you the only one having your problem. Yet, you can’t allow problems to make you unstable. If you go to pieces every time something goes wrong you will lose your ability to season life and people will stay away from you and you will become gritty path dirt. There is nothing like a problem to give you a fresh challenge.

 

Struggles – Again expect hard time, plan on dealing with them. Struggles often last a long time sometimes a lifetime.  There is no such thing as a life without struggles. Lose the day-dream that has you always wishing for a perfect life or a life without needs and struggles. That only happens in fairy tales. You will have bad days you will have struggles. Apostle Paul, after listing many things that were struggles in his life makes the statement, “But none of these things moved me.”  Don’t allow bitter times to make a bitter life. You cannot lose your ability to season the life you are living.

 

There is a big difference in the last three. Challenges are often for the moment. Problems often soak up or weeks and months. Struggles are the touches of life that sometime we carry a long time. How we deal with these will say much about how well we are seasoning life.

 

Life is swifter than a weaver’s shuttle Job said, so you have to slow down long enough to check you life’s vital signs. We are all better at this than we would like to admit.

We know when something is not right. We know what we should be doing to make a difference. You’re smart, you know what you are doing, you know what to do. The real issue is whether or not we are willing to pull out of the fast lane long enough to find out what’s going on with our life and fix what we know we need to fix.  Jesus preached and said that His children were to be like a light on a stand, a city on a hill but also like salt that didn’t lose its ability to make life taste better. I ask you, can anyone even tell you have walked through this life? Does anyone even know you have been here? Or are you like a salt-less cracker dropped in a boiling pot of soup that just dissolved and no one knows it was there. Don’t lose your saltiness.