Michael Kelley's Blog, page 19

God’s Masterpiece is Less Like a Painting and More Like a Mosaic

Dead or alive.

These are the only two categories of human beings Paul laid out for us in one of the most clear and concise presentations of the gospel found in the Bible. In Ephesians 2:1-10, the apostle starts with the devastating news that all of humanity is dead. Not wandering; not in need; not even in danger – but spiritually lifeless. And just as a corpse cannot resuscitate itself, so the spiritually dead are unable to change their condition. But then we come to verse 4:

“But God…”

But God had mercy. But God loved us. But God intervened, and just as He brought order from the chaos in Genesis 1, He breathed life into the deadness of humanity one by one as He awakened us to the truth of the gospel. This message is not how bad people can be good people; it’s how dead people can be living people. According to Paul, the equation of salvation is pretty simple:

“For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Salvation is by grace, through faith, and unto good works. All three components are necessary and work in tandem with each other. In that equation, there is a wonderful word that reminds us of the great artistry of God. In Christ, we are “His creation.” Other translations say we are His workmanship, or even more descriptively, His masterpiece. Like an artist who crafts his seminal and defining work, so does God re-create us in Christ, bringing us to spiritual life, so that we might walk in the good He has carefully planned out for us before we were even knitted together in our mother’s wombs.

When we think about this, that we are the masterpiece of God, our minds drift to the picture of a painter who one stroke at a time, intentionally paints line after line the perfect beauty that comes out on canvas. It’s a great mental picture, but not, I believe, one that truly captures the creativity and redemption of what God does in His children. That’s because this picture is too clean.

Maybe God’s masterpiece is less like a painting and more like a mosaic.

A mosaic is the process of taking shards of material – glass, stone, or most anything else – and assembling them in a recognizable pattern. It takes seemingly unrelated and in many cases useless things and puts them together to reveal something only in the mind and the heart of the artist. That’s starting to feel a bit more right, isn’t it?

All of us have those shards in our lives. They’re broken pieces of experiences, relationships, and patterns of living. They’re the leftovers of sinful choices, painful circumstances, and seasons of suffering. They’re the remnants of what seems like has fallen apart, and perhaps they would remain that way, “but God…”

But God is in the habit of putting broken pieces back together. And when He does, He makes something completely new and different with the old. He doesn’t put life back the way it was; in fact, no one could guess entirely what He’s making as He puts those pieces together, but when He’s done, you begin to see how it all comes together to form something beautiful. Mysteriously, painfully, beautiful.

Who could have guessed what God was doing when all life broke apart the day Adam and Eve ate the fruit? Who could know what was in His heart when the children of Israel were scattered to the nations? Who would have imagined how things would ever be okay again when there was 400 years of silence after the Old Testament? And then came that one Friday, when all the hopes and dreams of the true believers were nailed to a cross outside of Jerusalem. What could God be doing with this mess? This bloody, terrible, disfigured mess?

But then, over time, the pieces begin to come together. No outliers; no random pieces. Everything intentionally put back together, but done so in a way that you could never see coming.

Maybe that’s encouraging to you if your life doesn’t feel like a masterpiece today. Maybe today you look down and only see bits of broken glass. God is a good artist. But maybe not the kind you’re expecting.

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This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Patience is Grown Fruit

Nobody likes to wait.

In fact, most of the innovations we see in the world today are aimed at decreasing or eliminating waiting. A silly example, but consider how different an experience we have in going to the movie theater today as compared to just ten years ago.

A decade ago, you would go to the theater and wait in line to buy tickets. Then you would wait again for your tickets to be torn. Then you might wait in line again to buy concessions. Then you would wait again through the previews for the movie to start.

Then there’s today – you purchase your ticket through your phone before you go. You walk right in past the ticket scanner to the theater. You order concessions beforehand and have them delivered to your seat. And if you don’t want to wait through the previews, you can find an online listing of exactly how many previews and how long they are so you can arrive at the time when the movie actually starts.

You could run that same exercise in most any industry or experience and find the same thing – we hate waiting, and anything that decreases the amount of time we have to wait is embraced as positive.

Now I suppose in one sense, that effort at eliminating waiting is a good thing – it’s a recognition, even if it’s subconscious, that time is our most precious and most limited resource. That all of life is a ticking clock. And that given the scarcity of that resource, we don’t want to be time-wasters.

But on the other hand, the constant effort at reducing or eliminating time limits the exercise of one of the characteristics the Holy Spirit is producing in us as Christians – patience.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law (Gal. 5:22-23).

Typically when we think of the fruit of the spirit we skip over a few of them. Love and joy get a lot of press time, but we don’t think a lot about patience. But there it is, alongside all the other traits the Holy Spirit is growing in us. And make no mistake – He is growing them.

Fruit doesn’t just pop out on the tree one day; it is a process. And it’s a process that includes external, environmental factors. Those factors, combined with the health of the tree, eventually produces fruit. And this is a helpful reminder to all of us who cheer on the latest innovation in time saving. It’s a reminder that patience is grown over time.

Now to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with utilizing what’s available to us to make the most of time. But it’s also a caution to us that going faster is not necessarily going better. Even though there are a multitude of things that are more efficient now than they ever have been before, we are always going to be in situations in which we have to wait. And many times, those situations are reminders of just how little control we have of our lives.

Think less about wait times in movie theaters and more about praying for some significant change to happen in life. Think about praying for the spiritual awakening of a child. For a change in career. For a long lasting illness or chronic pain. These are times in which we are going to be found waiting.

But, like fruit, these are also external, environmental factors that, when combined with our own spiritual health and vitality, produce fruit through the influence of the Holy Spirit. These are the means by which fruit is grown.

So, Christian, if you find yourself in such a season of waiting, embrace what is being grown in and through you. Remind yourself that with God, no time is wasted time. He is always working. Always moving. Always growing.

3 Marks of a Person Secure in their Faith

God does not want to live with an abiding sense of insecurity. Rather, He desires that we are confident in Him, confident in His love for us, confident in who He has made us to be in Him, and confident of what He has laid up for us:

In him we have boldness and confident access through faith in him (Eph. 3:12).I am certain that I will see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living (Ps. 27:13).Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls (1 Pet. 1:8-9).Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen (Heb. 11:1).

The list could go on a long time. This is the posture of the Christian – it is not one of a cringing, pie-in-the-sky kind of hope, but rather one of steadfast confidence. It’s of a sure and certain belief that Jesus is who He said He is and He is doing what He said He would do. AW Tozer expressed this kind of confidence like this:

“The march, not the dirge, has ever been the music of Christianity. If we are good students in the school of life, there is much that the years have to teach us. But the Christian is more than a student, more than a philosopher. He is a believer, and the object of his faith makes the difference, the mighty difference.

Of all persons the Christian should be best prepared for whatever the New Year brings. He has dealt with life at its source. In Christ he has disposed of a thousand enemies that other men must face alone and unprepared. He can face his tomorrow cheerful and unafraid because yesterday he turned his feet into the ways of peace and today he lives in God. The man who has made God his dwelling place will always have a safe habitation.”

Yes. Yes indeed.

What are the marks of this kind of confidence? Surely they are not the marks of bravado and self-assurance that mark the so-called confident people of the world, for Christian confidence and security is entirely different. And yet that kind of internal security, brought to us not in and of ourselves and our abilities, but brought to us through faith in Christ and His work, does have signs. Markers. Evidence that we are actually secure in what we believe. Here are three such markers:

1. The ability to listen to someone who believes differently than we do.

It is a mark of security to listen. Especially to listen to someone who believes something different than we do. Conversely, it is many times our personal insecurities that keep us from listening and, instead, compel us to interrupt or to be planning our response while someone else is talking. When a person insecure in their faith finds themselves in a conversation with someone who doesn’t think, believe, or behave as they do, they take it personally and are quick to move on that perceived attack.

Listening displays not just the development of a polite habit; it shows that we have confronted our insecurities with the power of the gospel. In so doing, we are confident of our acceptance in Christ. And the confidence that comes from that knowledge, among other things, bolsters our ability to listen.

2. The ability to serve without recognition.

Jesus taught us clearly that we should be careful not to practice acts of righteousness in front of other people to be seen by them. But despite these words, the desire – even the need – for recognition is very strong in our hearts. We want to be seen. We want to be congratulated. We want to be lauded. And why do we want it – need it – so badly? It is because of our own insecurities. We need to be validated by someone else because we have failed to fully believe and trust in God’s validation of us in Christ.

A Christian who is secure in their faith will willingly, and joyfully, serve without recognition. Indeed, they will seek to do so and will rejoice that God sees and takes notice of what is done in secret.

3. The ability to rejoice with another without feeling entitled.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). Simple enough, right? And yet very difficult, unless we are secure in our faith. Sure, we slap high fives or buy the Hallmark card, but we aren’t really rejoicing because somewhere down deep inside of us we feel entitled to what someone else is receiving or experiencing.

It’s only through the security the gospel brings that we can truly, and wholeheartedly, rejoice with someone else. It’s because we are secure in God’s love for us, and therefore we no longer see others as threats to us. Or in competition with us. Our security in Christ has conquered our sense of entitlement because we know that in the gospel God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

This is what we are moving toward, friends. It’s constant progress toward a greater and greater sureness and certainty of Jesus and His promises. So may it be with us; so may it be that we are, at long last, filled with a God-centered security unique to the children of God.

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This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. What is Sloth?

We certainly don’t talk a lot about it, but it should be something we are aware of in our own lives.

2. Prepare Yourself for Worship

This is worth thinking about as we gather to worship together. The article contains several suggestions about how to make sure we are ready for that weekly meeting.

3. Can You Still Be Persuaded?

As the article says, wisdom remains open to to reason.

4. Braves Triple Play

Just making sure you saw this.

2 Implications of Being an Ambassador of Christ

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20).

As I understand it, the role of ambassador is a wide and varied one depending on the place where an ambassador is serving. But for the sake of simplicity, there are three things common to every ambassador: the nation of origin, the temporary station, and the person him or herself. So an ambassador is appointed for a given time to live in a nation that is not their own, and while they are there, they are the appointed representative of their nation of origin. They do not represent their own interests; they represent the interests of their own country. It’s also important to understand that when a person is serving as an ambassador, everything they do is taken as representative of their nation. This is what Paul says we, as Christians are – and we should regard ourselves in this way. No matter how else you regard yourself – as a lawyer or teacher or dad or grandmother, you must regard yourself as an ambassador. Though there are many implications of that, let me highlight two of them.

1. An ambassador doesn’t just carry a message; they are the message.

In other words, there is no real “down time.” Let’s take an extreme example of this by way of illustration.

Let’s imagine for a moment that Tennessee and North Carolina were different nations, and you are the appointed ambassador from the nation of Tennessee to the sovereign nation of North Carolina. When in this new nation, your family chooses to eat at a BBQ restaurant, and that’s when you discover that the BBQ sauce in Tennessee and North Carolina are very different. After lunch, you make a statement in public that sounded something like, “Vinegar should never be the base of a BBQ sauce.” Now you may have been just expressing a personal opinion, but you have to understand that a statement like that, with a role like yours, is not merely an opinion – it is a statement of the foreign policy of the nation of Tennessee.

Silly example, but it helps to highlight the importance of the position. As an ambassador, you are the embodiment of the policies, culture, and values of the homeland. There isn’t an on/off switch to this – it is who you are. You don’t only deliver the message; you are the message.

2. An ambassador is by nature relational.

Though the ambassador lives out the policies and values of the homeland, they must also be adept at understanding and relating to the nation in which they are serving because their real job is about diplomacy, and diplomacy always involves relationships. The same thing is true for Christians as ambassadors. 

Notice here that the message given to us as ambassadors is reconciliation. I suppose Paul might have said that the message given to us is justification, but he didn’t. Justification is a legal term. It’s used in the judicial system. And that is exactly what happens to us when we come into Christ. It is a declaration that God makes, that a sinner is declared to be righteous, not because of his works, but because of the work of Christ. So if you can imagine a defendant in a courtroom in which the evidence is absolutely rock solid that this person is guilty, and yet the righteous judge from the bench declares that this person is not only not guilty, but that he is righteous. That is what has happened to each of us when the old has gone and the new has come (v. 17).

And yet Paul writes here not that we are ambassadors of justification, but that we are ambassadors of reconciliation. And reconciliation is different. It’s personal. A judge may acquit the accused without ever entering into a relationship with him. He just announces the verdict. The accused hardly ever expects to be invited over for dinner by the judge. In fact, the accused probably never wants to see the judge again.

Because the content of the ministry is reconciliation, Paul doesn’t just proclaim something. Reconciliation requires that one become an active reconciler oneself. It plunges us into the midst of people’s lives. It means we not only share the message that a person can be brought into the family of God, we involve ourselves deeply and relationally with those people. With our friends. Neighbors. Co-workers. You bring those two implications together and you find this conclusion:

Christians live the message of reconciliation to an estranged world.

3 Questions for a Christian to Ask Before Having a Difficult Conversation

I don’t like confrontation. That’s part of my personality. Truth is, I would rather move quickly past disagreements and arguments even if it means that I bear more of the weight of the consequences myself. But as I continue to grow older, and as I continue to grow in responsibility, I am learning that confrontation is something I cannot run from.

Neither, however, should it be something that I seek after. I don’t believe any of us should. We shouldn’t go running around looking for someone to disagree with us for the sport of it. Inevitably, though, confrontation is going to happen. It’s going to happen in our homes, our workplaces, and our churches, and the best way forward is to have a simple, humble, and direct conversation about it.

At the risk of overthinking such a conversation, though, I have found it helpful to think a bit before that conversation. Again, this might be just part of my personality, but I find that when I have given a little consideration to the matter, it helps me to be slower to speak, quicker to listen, and slower to become angry during the middle of it. Here are three questions I’ve found helpful to think carefully about prior to having a difficult conversation:

1. How did we get here?

Chances are, you and another person did not come to odds overnight. Perhaps there is a history of disagreement or rubbing one another the wrong way. At least there are circumstances in your past and in the past of another that have made this particular instance hard to deal with. If we take a little time and think about not just what happened, but how we got there, then it helps bring a greater understanding and empathy to the conversation. Further, thinking about how we got there actually helps you and another person not get into a habit of continually butting heads with one another.

2. What fault do I bear?

This is always a good question to ask. Doing so will help us from walking into a conversation with guns blazing. Let’s be honest – we all know our hearts well enough to know how duplicitous we are. Because our hearts are divided, there is almost always some element of a disagreement that we need to own up to.

Asking this question will help us to recognize that the vast majority of the time, disagreements and arguments and hurt feelings are a two way street. In fact, if we seriously ask this question, then it might be the whole conversation turns from a confrontation to an apology and a request for forgiveness.

3. What is the “win” in this conversation?

The purpose of asking this question isn’t to try and engineer a desirable outcome for me. Rather, it’s meant to provide clarity. So what am I really after in this conversation? What do I really want to change?

Many times, I’ve found that the true answer to this, for me, is for another person to feel bad. Or to own up to their own mistakes. Or for them to apologize. And if that’s the outcome I’m after, then I would do well to go back and ask questions 1 and 2 again. But if I can enter a tough conversation with an end goal in mind, then I can help to move both of us forward together in reconciliation.

Confrontation and difficult conversations are a part of life. As a Christian, we don’t have to run from such talks. But neither should we go into them with our tempers flared. Instead, we should be able to draw from the strength and patience of Jesus and handle even difficult conversations with grace and salt.

Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Freedom

According to Thomas Jefferson (who likely borrowed the quote from others), “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.”

Jefferson meant, at least in part, that from a national perspective, freedom is not something that can be taken for granted. It is not just achieved once, but over and over again; indeed, as soon as a nation stops paying attention to freedom it will be encroached upon by threats from the inside as well as the outside. That means if a nation wants to be free, then the price for that freedom is being always on watch. Always on guard.

Jefferson isn’t the only one who thought a lot about freedom; the Bible has much to say about it as well, albeit a different kind of freedom. It was Paul who originally wrote:

“Christ has liberated us to be free. Stand firm them and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

There is an active command here – to stand firm in the freedom Christ has bought from us. In the same spirit that Jefferson argued, freedom is not to be taken for granted. It must be watched and fought for. If indeed you are careless, you will naturally drift away from the freedom for which Christ has set you free.

That sentiment makes sense politically, doesn’t it? Jefferson’s quote above has been used and reused again and again in a variety of disagreements, conflicts, and wars over the past 250 years or so in our nation. It has been the battle cry for the United States to take a proactive stance both at home and abroad. And the effort lives on – if we simply exist, then we will drift into non-freedom. We must fight.

And we must fight on a personal level in Christ because of our natural propensity to drift back into slavery. If we are not vigilant, our natural bent is to drift toward bondage. But slavery to what? And why? Surely once we have tasted freedom we would never, ever revert back into what Jesus has freed us from. Or so you would think.

Later on in the chapter, Paul writes this:

“For you were called to be free, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love” (Galatians 5:13).

If we are not vigilant, we will instead finding ourselves viewing freedom as an opportunity for indulgence. The thing is, this indulgence in the flesh may be either conscious or subconscious.

Consciously, we can indulge our sinful nature by looking at the grace of Jesus as license for immorality. We can simply sin and sin and sin, always counting on the fact that Jesus – sweet Jesus – is ready to forgive. We become grace abusers in this case. But we might also indulge our flesh subconsciously. This was the situation of the Galatian church. They weren’t grace abusers; they had drifted into the slavery of legalism. Though they had started out living in grace, they had chosen to revert back to the law and were resting in their ability to merit favor before God by their own acts of righteousness. This, too, is an indulgence of the sinful nature.

They were indulging their sinful pride. This is our drift. This is what happens when we are not vigilant.

A bit ironic, isn’t it? That our commitment to grace alone must be guarded? That we might either consciously or subconsciously yoke ourselves in slavery? And that in either case – when we abuse grace or when we negate it, we are indulging our sinful nature?

It’s true. And because it’s true, we must watch. We must stand firm. We must, for lack of a better term, try hard at being free.

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This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Wednesday Links

1. Going to Church is Hard, but Worth It

We should not expect it to be easy. Physically making it to church is hard… and it’s supposed to be. But the blessings always outweigh the cost.

2. Invite Gen Z into Service and Discipleship

Church was not meant to be a spectator sport, and perhaps this generation instinctively knows it. What an opportunity.

3. In Your Race of Faith, Run Together

Along the same lines as the other articles this week, here’s another reminder that we are meant to not only be encouraged, but to actively pass on that encouragement to others.

4. What the Worst Team in NBA History Learned About Losing

Long article here, but very interesting with several leadership insights.

The Gravity of That Day is Measured in the Behavior of This Day

Maybe you love your calendar. You love the sense of organization. Of priority. Of the feeling that you have your life ordered, sequenced, and planned. And you love that you can set alarms, based on your calendar, to remind you of particular times and dates you need to remember. If you’re an introvert, you love your calendar because a calendar appointment is a very convenient way to extricate yourself from a social situation you don’t want to be in. 

But then again, maybe you hate your calendar. In many ways, the calendar – especially when it’s full – is a reminder that time is your scarcest and most precious resource. That there is always something more to do; somewhere more to go. All those appointments can give you the sense of organization, but they also weigh you down with the burden of constant responsibilities.

But whether you love or hate your calendar, we can all agree on this: We need our calendars.

Martin Luther had a slightly different take on the use of the calendar, and on the Christian perspective on time, and it is in many ways a perspective that Peter seems to have shared. Luther once said, “There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day.” What he meant by this day, is THIS day – the one we are in. The one the Lord has given to us with all its joys, pains, mundanity or excitement. This day, whether the first day of school or the first day of summer; this day whether the first day of a new job or the day of retirement. This day whether it’s the day of someone’s birth or the day of someone’s death. There is this day, and there is that day. THAT day is the day when Jesus will return. 

This day, and that day, are constant themes throughout the letters written by Peter. He writes about that day, over and over again, and he writes about the way we ought to live in this day in light of that coming day an equal number of times. So it should come as not surprise that in the closing to his second letter, we find him once again doing the same thing – reminding us that Christians live this day in light of that day:

“So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him” (2 Peter 3:14).

To put it another way, live this day in light of that day.

Now to a lesser extent, we do this all the time. Our lives in the present – in the right now – are marked by the knowledge of another day that is coming. We might, for example, know that there is some kind of big meeting or presentation at work that will happen a month from now. And if we are wise, our behavior this day is influenced and dictated by that day that is coming. So we prepare the reports, we organize the information, and we prepare the initiatives.

Or, perhaps we know that some time in the future our family wants to go on a vacation together. Again, if we are wise, the knowledge of that day will influence the way we behave in this day as we save money, make restaurant reservations, and get all the stuff ready to go.

Or you might be in a season in which you have a child that is moving out and going to college. And you know, and have known, that day is on the calendar, but you don’t wait until that day to think about it or prepare for it. No, you make the most of time you have together. You try and teach and experience the things together that will be helpful to your son or daughter when they are on their own. You pour yourselves into him or her because you know that day is coming.

In all these examples, THAT day is not just something you wait for; it is something that is so significant that it actually influences the way you think, plan, and behave in THIS day. You might even go so far as to say that the true gravity of that day is measured by the behavior of this day. It is THAT day we are looking forward to, which Peter acknowledges in verse 14: “Since we are looking forward to this…” he writes.

But if we are looking forward to that day, the day of the new heaven and earth, the day when righteousness is real and justice is served, the day when every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord – if we are looking forward to that day, then there ought to be something different about this day.

Which brings us to an important question, friends – when we look at our lives, is THIS day influenced at all by THAT day? If the answer is no, then perhaps we should ask ourselves just how real THAT coming day is to us at all.

3 Things Salt (and a Christian) Does

Have you ever wondered why, when you become a Christian, God just doesn’t take you to heaven? It doesn’t work that way. When you become a Christian, you still go to work. You still have the same family issues you had before. You still exist in the same world you did before you started following Jesus, but everything is different on the inside.

The Bible tells us that when we follow Jesus we become citizens in a new kingdom, members of a new family. But even though everything changes on the inside for us, God leaves us here on the earth to represent Him and His kingdom within the kingdom of the world.

Christians, through the church, are God’s plan to exert influence for what really matters. This influence happens in a lot of ways. As we live and work in the midst of the world, we are mixed into a culture that’s around us. The temptation for us is to try and isolate ourselves from the influences of the world. We tiptoe around our lives scared that we might get a little sin on our shoes. But this isn’t the way God intended for His people to live. He intended that they stride through their lives with confidence, retaining their uniqueness as His people all the while influencing those around them.

God intends us to be above influence and exerting it instead.

To illustrate this, Jesus compared His followers to salt in Matthew 5:13. The illustration has many levels, because salt does many things when it’s mixed into food:

1. Salt seasons.

Nothing spoils a dish quite as quickly as being bland. It’s amazing what a pinch of salt can do to bring out the true flavor inside food. Similarly, when Christians exert their influence in the world, we season the world with the gospel. Throughout history, we see how this has happened as followers of Jesus have contributed to the overall good of the world. Amazingly, God has used His people to extend His love to the world, and not just through sharing the gospel. In fact, most of the major social innovations the modern world has known have come as a result of the work those who love and follow Jesus. Health care, education, and most other social programs are the result of Christians seasoning the environment they live in with their influence. God is even today loving the world through the work of Christians as they season it.

2. Salt preserves.

This doesn’t mean as much to us in the day of refrigerators and processed food, but Twinkies that can withstand a nuclear blast haven’t always existed. When Jesus preached this sermon the first time, people used salt to help preserve their food. Salt kept the food from going bad and enabling it to last longer. When Christians exert their influence in everyday situations they keep the world from going further bad than it already is. Make no mistake – judgment is coming. The fact that the sun rose this morning isn’t evidence of God’s apathy; it’s evidence of His patience. Sin and evil continue not because God doesn’t care but because He, in His love and mercy, desires men and women from every part of the world to come to know Him. In the meantime, though, Christians help preserve the world and culture they live inside of. They display integrity, goodness, and honesty, and as they do, they hold up a society whose trajectory is headed lower and lower.

3. Salt makes you thirsty.

Think about the last time you ate something that was well seasoned but was still very thirsty. Along with enjoying the dish, you probably needed your glass refilled several times. That’s because salt makes you crave water to quench your thirst. Whether the world knows it or not, it is thirsty for something more. Something lasting. Something eternal. When Christians exert their influence and display what they have found to be uniquely satisfying, it salts the palette of everyone else. Suddenly, their thirst is more acute; they are more aware of something missing in their lives. When people see the way Christ-followers react to trouble, hardship and difficulty as well as prosperity, the difference in what they have in Christ rises to the surface. And it makes people thirsty. Christians in turn are ready to show them the way to Jesus, the fountain of life that never runs dry.