Month: June 2018

Stay Salty

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. Matthew 5:13 #DailyBibleReading #BibleReadingPlan

Warning: this is a long meandering post because I started it six months ago, in the dead of winter (while dreaming of the beach) and then got stumped. The more I studied about Salt the more I was stumped as to what it meant. I kept coming back and adding to the post, but never quite could answer the question: what does it mean for me to be salt? What is Jesus really telling me? I’ve read it means to be a witness, I’ve read it means to add flavor to the world. I’ve read it means to be a preservative. But what does that mean in practical terms? Then today it finally hit me and I finished the post.

I live in landlocked Nebraska. There isn’t an ocean within anything less than a 14-hour drive. If my husband has his way we’ll always live in Nebraska, which isn’t a bad thing, except I love the beach. I love the sand. I love snorkeling with the sun on my back and sea creatures darting below me. I love the aftertaste of salt water on my lips.

In 2002, before marriage and kids, I was walking out of a grocery store and noticed a flyer for Team in Training, a fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The basic premise was that if I raised a certain amount of money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society I could be part of a group to train for a marathon and run the Honolulu Marathon. My hotel and registration, and even my flight, was paid for. I just needed to raise money and run the race.

I’m not a runner. Never have been. When we had to run the mile in high school I’d walk whenever the P.E. teacher wasn’t looking at me. But standing there in the parking lot with my cart of groceries and the Team in Training flyer in hand I was hit with the inspiration and  I made a decision – I was going to run the Honolulu Marathon and spend a week in Hawaii afterward, enjoying the ocean.

I did it. I didn’t run the whole thing, but I finished. I made friends, I lost toenails. I spent five days soaking my sore muscles in the ocean, enjoying the sun, saltwater, and sand. It was truly one of the best experiences of my life. I got a tattoo on my back to commemorate – a hibiscus flower and “2002” to mark the occasion.

I haven’t run since. Nor have I gotten another tattoo.

While wasting time looking at Instagram posts with beautiful pictures of the beach on StaySaltyFlorida‘s page (Yes, my stress relief is browsing beach photos on Instagram); I was again hit with inspiration and I told my daughter I was going to get another tattoo. This one: “Stay Salty” and some waves. She looked at me (maybe with a hint of disgust or fear?) and basically explained that tattoos are for younger and cooler people. So maybe I won’t get a tattoo. Or maybe I will. (Did I mention I passed out during my first one?).

Regardless of my tattoo decision, I do need to “Stay Salty”. And not the “I love having my toes in the ocean and wishing I could surf, salty.” I need the be the Jesus kind of salty.

Jesus said, “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 underfoot.” Matthew 5:13

Paul said,”‘Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Colossians 4:6 

Some interesting things about salt to consider:

  • God wanted the Israelite’s sacrifices to Him to be sprinkled with salt: “Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.” Leviticus 2:13 and “You are to offer them before the Lord, and the priests are to sprinkle salt on them and sacrifice them as a burnt offering to the Lord.”  Ezekiel 43:24 
  • “Salt Covenant”: As mentioned in Leviticus 2:13, and also “‘But you must not redeem the firstborn of a cow, a sheep or a goat; they are holy. Splash their blood against the altar and burn their fat as a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord. Their meat is to be yours, just as the breast of the wave offering and the right thigh are yours. Whatever is set aside from the holy offerings the Israelites present to the Lord I give to you and your sons and daughters as your perpetual share. It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord for both you and your offspring.” Numbers 18:17-19 and “Don’t you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?” 2 Chronicles 13:5
  • The word “salary” comes from the Latin word “sal”, which means “Salt”.
  • To “eat the salt of the palace” means that one’s loyalty is to the palace, or that is where you get your substance of life from, who you are loyal to, or who you are obligated to. (“Now because we eat the salt of the palace and it is not fitting for us to witness the king’s dishonor, therefore we send and inform the king,” Ezra 4:14 ESV)
  • Salt is a preservative and keeps food from spoiling.
  • Salt is a flavor enhancer.
  • We become salty through the trials and fires of life: “Everyone will be salted with fire.” Mark 9:49
  • Salt has medicinal purposes.
  • Our bodies need salt; salt is found in every cell in our bodies. It regulates our body functions and maintains our fluid balance.
  • Our body doesn’t produce salt; we need to get it from other sources.

So that does this all mean to me? How do I be salty and “Stay Salty” from my living room in middle America? That is a good question – the more I read about salt in the Bible and the historical use of salt in ancient Israel, the less sure I was about what Jesus was saying.  I’ve been stumped for the past six months.

And then it hit me: Love

If I call myself a Christian, my life should show it. How? By my devotion to God and my love for others. Jesus said Christians should be known by their love and their fruit.

God wanted the Israelites to sprinkle their sacrifices with salt. He calls Christians to offer themselves as a living sacrifice, by living a life of Love for God and others.

And just like our body doesn’t produce salt – though every cell in our body needs it – the love we are to share with others isn’t naturally produced within us. It comes from God. God loves us and fills us with love that we can share with others.

How do we Stay Salty, my friends?

  • By spending daily time with Jesus
  • By praying for opportunities to love others
  • By thanking God for his love for us
  • By submitting to His will – obeying Him, following Him, sharing Him with other
  • By intentionally loving others

We love because he first loved us.  1 John 4:19

Stay salty.

And send me tattoo ideas . . . in case I get brave enough for another one!

Stay Salty

Rebellious Children

In today’s #DailyBibleReading I read about the rebellion of Israel and Judah in the Old Testament and the baptism of Jesus in the New Testament, approximately 950 years later.

I find the rebellion of God’s chosen people fascinating because it is so relatable. Israel had been divided into two – Israel and Judah – because of their rebellion. And they still disobeyed God and worshiped other gods. God sent prophets to warn them about the consequences of sin and to tell them to repent, but they didn’t listen.

Fast-forward 950 years and God sent John the Baptist to again tell His people to repent and turn back to God. Nine-hundred and fifty years of telling your children to clean up their act, but having them ignore you. Nine-hundred and fifty years of loving your children and watching them walk away and make bad choices and show you complete contempt.

What does this teach me about the nature of humans: We have a sinful nature. Our inclination is to sin, rebel, and walk away from God. We need a power higher than our own will to keep us from sinning. We need a savior.

What does this teach me about the nature of God: He is patient. (I lose it with my disobedient children after 10 minutes!) He is loving. He wants to see us saved and he wants us to turn to him. After watching his chosen people reject him for 950+ years he didn’t just throw up his hands and walk away. Instead, he sent his son to die for them and for the rest of humankind.

What does this teach me about me: I need God, every day. I need his grace. I need redemption. I need the power of the Holy Spirit – which landed on Jesus like a dove during his baptism – to keep me from rebelling. I need His strengh to keep me moving forward. I need his love, his patience, and his forgiveness.

And I am blessed to have it.

 

 

A Prayer for Tough Times

But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord .

At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.

Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.

Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me.

Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.

Hide not your face from your servant, for I am in distress; make haste to answer me.

Draw near to my soul, redeem me; ransom me because of my enemies!

Psalms 69:13-18

logs surrounded by body of water during daytime
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Early Church: Living in an Over-Sexualized Society

My #BibleReadingPlan has me starting 2 Corinthians today. A little background on 2 Corinthians can be found here.  To get a better understanding of Paul’s audience I wanted to do some research on Corinth and the church.

Corinth was a town in Greece, located 48 miles west of Athens, on an isthmus between the Mediterranean Sea and the Aegean Sea. It was a wealthy trade city and home to a temple for Aphrodite. If you studied Greek gods in 7th grade, you’ll remember Aphrodite as the goddess of sexual love and beauty. The temple was full of slaves – some estimates as many as 1,000 men and women – who worked as temple prostitutes. The trade ports and prostitution made Corinth a very wealthy city.Ακροκόρινθος / Acrocorinth - Corinth

By the time Paul arrived, the city had been devastated by an earthquake and invasion – and rebuilt – and the prostitution had left the crumbling temple and moved into the streets. It was known as a city where sailors would stop to party. Think if Amsterdam and Las Vegas met up and had a baby . . . you’d have Corinth. The Greek word korinthiazethai had two meanings: 1) to live in Corinth and 2) to get drunk and indulge in sexual pleasures.

This was a city that not only had a culture of living for sensual pleasure – but it also made it’s living off of it and got very rich in the process. The goddess many of the people worshipped demanded it.

So Paul arrives in this city and starts telling people about Jesus. He goes to Aphrodite worshipers and tells them about Jesus. He shares the gospel with people who are sleeping around, cheating on their spouses, practicing homosexuality. He tells the drunk on the street. He tells the greedy hustler who is making money of the sex tourist industry. He tells the people who are known for yelling and cussing at everyone.

This was the church of Corinth. People who met Jesus right where they were – whether in the middle of hustle or coming off a hangover from a night of partying. And Jesus washed them clean from their sin. Sanctified them. Gave them a new life. Justified them, regardless of their past.

‘Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. ‘ 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

This was like a church in the middle of the Vegas strip made up of Christians who had formerly worked on the strip, got rich off the strip, slept around and got drunk on the strip. Corinth was full of people who lived for sensual pleasure and whose religion even called for it. But now these Christians were washing clean and were learning a new way to live through Jesus, which makes Paul’s teaching even more impactful:

‘”All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful.

“All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.

“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?

For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. ‘ 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 

The people of Corinth understood temples – the ruins of a temple stood on a hill overlooking their city. They also understood slavery and what it meant to be bought with a price. They understood prostitution as it was a major industry in their city.

But Jesus was calling them to a different lifestyle. And He was also giving them the power – through the Holy Spirit – to be changed. He had died for them. And He was asking them to live for Him.

The greatest of these is love

Love.

Love is patient and kind. It does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It doesn’t try to get it own way and it isn’t irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

Without Love, all my “good works” mean nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

Love is the most important of all of the spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 13:13).

All of God’s laws and commands can be summed up by Love: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:14).

Love is a Spiritual Gift. What does this mean? It means if I am walking by the Spirit, He will produce fruit in my life. His love will pour out of me . . . if I am going deep with God, walking with Him, storing up His words in my heart (Psalm 119:11), praying, meditating, fasting, obeying . . . He will transform me (2 Corinthians 3:18). Love will be evident in my life.

Love should be my #1 barometer of how I’m doing in my walk with Jesus. If I notice that I’m being irritable, impatient, unkind, etc. it isn’t an indicator that I need to work extra hard at being patient and kind. It is an indicator that I need to get rid of things in my life that are keeping me from going deeper in my walk with Jesus. I need to keep my eyes on Him. I need to pray and obey. I need to be more disciplined in my daily walk and spend more time with God. And Love will be the result.

‘You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. ‘ Galatians 5:13-18