God Wants Us to Use Salty Language
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Colossians 4:6
It’s true!
Now before you go spouting off four-letter words, God doesn’t mean salty like a sailor. What he means is making your conversations interesting.
So interesting that he’s a part of the conversation.
How easy it is to limit our conversations about God to certain times or places. We talk about God at church. But even there we might limit his conversations to the worship service and Bible study. Where else do you talk about God? Are you having a hard time coming up with any other examples?
No wonder our conversations are so bland!
“Man, it’s a hot one.” “Yeah, hottest I can remember.” “Ok, see ya.”
“What’d you do this weekend?” “Nothing much. Hung out with family. You?” “Yeah, same.”
Boring!
But the point isn’t to make our conversations more interesting from our perspective. It’s to make them more interesting from God’s perspective.
You see, what God is most interested in is the saving of souls. 1 Timothy 2:4, “[God] wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” When our conversations center on the truth of Jesus learned from Scripture, people’s faith grows. “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ” (Romans 10:17).
Now God isn’t asking every conversation to be a sermon about Jesus. But he does want our conversations to demonstrate what it means to live in the freedom Jesus brings. To be full of grace.
How often aren’t our conversations full of something else? Those conversations about finances or the children. Those conversations at work. Those conversations at the bar or by the pool. Those might be spicy conversations, but they aren’t seasoned with God’s salt. Thank goodness the salt of the gospel overpowers the spiciness of our sin-filled conversations.
But then there’s the bland conversations. A lot of words are spoken, but not much is said. Ask yourself, “What would change if I salted my conversations with grace?”
“It’s a hot one.” “Yeah, thank God for air conditioning.”
“What’d you do this weekend?” “Hung out with family mostly. We went to church together.” You can even share what you heard about what Jesus has done for you.
We want to share the good news about our God with others. Right? And we’re often afraid of giving a whole sermon on what Jesus has done. Instead, lead them to see Jesus in your everyday conversation. Salt them slowly, so that when the Holy Spirit makes them ready, they’ll be ready for the whole truth.