Seasoned With Salt

Good Morning,

Colossians 4:6 (New International Version)
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Colossians 4:6 (New Living Translation)
Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.
1 Peter 3:15 (New International Version)
...Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.

It struck me as I read the verse we all know from Colossians that, too often, many of us do NOT present our reasons for hope, our knowledge of God, and our relationship with Jesus Christ with what Paul called "seasoned with salt." Yes, a lot of us know the Bible and can quote Scripture "chapter and verse" about the Good News of God's plan of salvation. We know what God has told us about all of this. However, we don't present what we know with personal and anecdotal speech when we DO talk about God. I guess we expect people to believe what the Bible says simply because, well, it says what it does and WE believe it.

I think that we need to pay closer attention to what both Paul and Peter wrote for us to understand about witnessing and doing what we can to present the Gospel message.

Peter reminds us that we need to be able to give the reason for our optimistic hope about the fact of our salvation through our knowledge of, and relationship to, Jesus Christ. He tells us that we ought to do this with "gentleness and respect" and I would add that we also need to remember that those to whom we speak do NOT have the understanding we do of the Bible nor do many of them even believe what is written IN the Bible. So we don't need to be quoting verse after verse of Scripture to someone who is skeptical ABOUT that Scripture. Paul says that we need to "season" our conversations with "salt" and that, like Peter, we need to know how to answer the questions that come.

The salt we need is our own personal experiences about what God has done in our lives. Think about it for a minute here: Food without salt is bland and simply does not taste all that good. It's the same with our conversations. Simply giving Biblical facts without telling of our own encounters and observations of God in our life is, well, it's pretty bland and doesn't ring with the truth of a life lived with Jesus.

We really need to understand more fully and be ready to speak more boldly about what it is God wants us to say when we encounter those who do NOT know Him. Our conversations have to be personal and "seasoned" with our own experiences. We DO, of course, have to know the basics of what the Bible tells us about the Gospel message...I think that does go without saying, because that is how we can do more to explain the hope and security we have in Jesus Christ. Then, as Peter points out clearly, our conversations also have to be taken on with true gentleness toward the one we are speaking to and with respect for that person in every way.

In other words, our conversations need to be done with true love for the ones to whom we speak. If we do that, I think the rest will take care of itself.

Love, peace, and blessings,

David