Seasoned Word

Colossians 4:6 Your speech must always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person. (NASB) For people that know me, if you invite me to eat, I will go anywhere. There is no food to which I will say no. I have eaten […]

Colossians 4:6 Your speech must always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person. (NASB)
For people that know me, if you invite me to eat, I will go anywhere. There is no food to which I will say no. I have eaten things that some people would never touch, such as pickled pigs’ feet, all kinds of gizzards and chicken feet, among many other foods. My parents taught me to never say no to food, because we never knew if we were going to have another meal, of if we would have enough to eat. Always accept it and eat it, and if at first it doesn’t look good, ask for salt and pepper, which may help the flavor.
That lesson made me think of the words of the apostle Paul. Sometimes we are going to have to have unpleasant and difficult conversations with people we love. But no matter how difficult these conversations are, we need to add grace, which is the “salt” to our speech. Each person is different in the way they perceive our words. Our posture, tone and volume communicate as much as the words we say. When we talk to our family and our neighbors, we need to season our words so that we help them and not push them away from God.

Kidmin 101

This past Sunday night, I shared five core values that our Children’s Ministry is founded on. These values are what helps keep each event, activity, and class in line with our overall mission. The core values are: 1. Know: Our children will learn to know God and the...

Faith On a Shelf

I have this hat that my dad brought back to me from a business trip to Atlanta when I was 9 or 10 years old. You can see that I’ve worn it a lot. In fact, I wore it to just about everywhere I went during the summer when I was a kid. Church camps, grandparents’ house,...

“Jesus Loves Me”

After being led in this song by two of our young men Sunday night, I was reminded of a quotation from Karl Barth. On April 23, 1962, Karl Barth (the renown 20th Century Swiss-German, neo-orthodox theologian) spoke at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University...

That’s Not a Candle

Several years ago, there was story shared about a woman from Connecticut whose power had gone out during a storm. She left her house to go to a local hardware store to purchase some flashlights, but the store was closed. She returned home and found what she thought...

The Post-Christian Problem

I attended the New Day Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee at the end of last week with a small group from Riverchase. It was a good conference and I left encouraged about the opportunities we have to fulfill the call of Christ to make disciples. On Friday evening,...

Josiah’s Reform

In the thirty-one years of his rule, King Josiah proved to be a faithful man of God and a great king of Judah. He served God from the beginning as a young king and grew into a greater understanding of God’s will and a determination to follow that will. He made a...

You Are What You Eat

You Are What You Eat You’ve heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” Simply defined, it means that you should eat healthy if you want to be healthy. This phrase can trace its roots back to the early 1800’s. It came from the 1826 work The Physiology of Taste, in which...

It Is Well

Above the piano in our house is a large wood sign with the phrase, “it is well with my soul” on it. Kimberly and I purchased it during a season of our life together where we were not completely sure what the future had in store for our little family. Since then, the...

Do Over

  I messed up on recording my recent radio programs. The sound quality was so bad Mark could not run them on the air. So, I deleted them and recorded them again.   I sure wish I could do that in real life with all the other mistakes I make. Just delete them...

Don’t Believe Your Preacher

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. (2 John 1:9 ESV) Here is the test. The “teaching of Christ” is, of course, the very word of God. So, if your...