Bible Study

December 2005

Salty Salt
By a Christian Worker on the Field

In a culture where there is no electricity and the people have to hunt and gather food on a daily basis, the people use air drying and salt to preserve their food, the same as was done during the days our Lord walked the earth and spoke to the disciples from the top of a mountain. Jesus told the disciples (and us) how to live in order to be blessed. After those famous beatitudes, He told us what we are if we do walk according to those precepts. We are the salt. Salt isn't just used to flavor your food, though it does make it tastier and serves to enhance the natural flavors of food. In His day, it was used to preserve food that would perish. So, if salt lost its saltiness it WAS good for nothing. If the salt loses its savor you've just lost a whole goat, and that would be worthless. Around here, a goat cost more than a month's wages.

So whenever I go on village visits, I am interested to see the clothes lines hung with strips of thinly sliced meat. They usually rub the meat with a bit of oil and then salt it before hanging it to dry. After it's dried they pound it into a powdery beef jerky stuff and use it in a sauce called sharmoot (which is delicious, by the way) If the meat isn't properly taken care of? It is usually rotten and your sauce tastes and smells horrible, it can make you very sick to eat such a sauce.

The salt helps to preserve that which is DESTINED to rot and make it into something good and useful. So it is with us—those of us who believe and follow the one True King. Looking around at corruption, at squalor, at the incredibly impoverished living conditions we see that this place NEEDS salt. And it needs salty salt. That starts right here with us, I dare say. So please pr for us to be salty in this needy land. Pray for God to send more salty laborers to work alongside us to preserve more people from corruption and decaying lifestyles on earth and eternity in the rotten stench of hell.

How will you be salt on your campus today?

The nations are all around you at your school. How will you bring flavor to the lives of the international students around you so they know the richness of our Lord? Write down some practical ways you will be salty salt in your world this week.

Write a prayer asking the Lord where He wants you to spread your saltiness during your school breaks – on mission in your hometown? Around your state? Around the world?

Find a mission project on thetask.org and pray for God to send salty students to fill those projects to that His name and salvation will be made known among the nations. Ask the Lord if you are to be part of that project. Write the project title and number below.

Please continue to remember the radio/broad seed sowing work. The teams are working wonderfully and the Father is blessing the work tremendously. Continue to pr for wisdom and for stamina for these teams, for them to "gel" and for the Spir*t to move and direct them in all things.

Please remember the brothers here in town. They have exciting things to share about how the Father is working and causing their numbers and “interested friends” to grow and multiply. Ask the Father to provide for their every need. Right now we're in the throes of hot season (it was 120 degrees on the front porch today) and after this, if the Lord wills it, the rains will come. That season is when the prices for grain sky rocket and people suffer the most because of living in the mud, malaria, and just being hungry. Pr for these brothers to be Salt in their villages and families. Many of them stand alone. Some of them stand in small little groups. But they all fight daily battles with their flesh when they're wronged, or when they're hungry or when they face tragedy. Ask the Father to strengthen them and lift them up on wings like Eagles.

Please remember your brothers and sisters here who suffer so much, and I DON'T mean us!!! We are humbled to tears when we intercede for our CA brothers and their families. They endure things we just don't understand. But perhaps the Father would will that we all be a bit tougher and more eternally minded. Those are lessons we learn from these brothers. Toughen up. Tighten up. Keep your eyes fixed on the hills from whence your HELP comes from! Live for His kingdom and His glory. They are amazing.
Remember them in your time before the Throne. Remember them when you hold the fork up to your mouth and have had to choose from a smorgus-board on your plate just what your bite would look and taste like. Remember them when you tuck your little ones into beds with sheets and a bedroom with a roof and walls and electricity. Remember them when you tuck yourself into bed… in your own room snuggling down in the midst of comforts. Remember them when you pop a Tylenol at your next uncomfortable head-achy moment when they cant' even afford the pain medicine to fight the pains of malaria. And still they march on. Usually, undaunted—unabashed. Laughing and singing songs with words like this:

To the death we will follow You J, to the death.

OH for a faith like that. Father, increase our faith. Father bless our brothers and sisters who suffer physically and in so many other ways. Help us to toughen up and keep our eyes fixed on the Kingdom and on Your glory! We are SO blessed, we don't feel guilty because of our blessings, but OH Father make us thankful and help us to remember those who suffer when we realize how comfortable we are. Help us, Father, to be truly salty. To not lose our savor… To be used of you to preserve, cleanse, and season the perishing world. Bless us in order to make us a blessing. Bless the CA brothers and sisters, Father, and make their numbers grow for Your glory… make their roots go deep! In Your Son's precious Name, Amen.