Friday, September 11, 2009

Today's Devotional Scripture

Today's Verse
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 by men.
~Matthew 5:13
Thoughts on today's verse...
Sodium is an extremely active element which always links itself to another element.

Chlorine is a poisonous gas.

When combined, chlorine stabilzes sodium and sodium neutralizes the poison of the chlorine.

The result, sodium chloride, is common table sals, a highly stable substance used through the centuries to preserve meat, enhance flavor and, prior to modern medicine, help clean and heal wounds.  (This is probably where the term "rubbing salt into a wound" came from.)

For a Christian, love and truth are a lot like sodium and chlorine.  Both are essential elements in a believer's life, but pursuing one without the other can be damaging and dangerous.

Love without truth is, well, flighty, sometimes blind, and often it will combine with strange or perverse doctrines.  It is highly unstable, tossed too and fro on a sea of emotions.

Truth, on the other hand, by itself can be offensive and sometimes even poisonous.  Spoken without love, it can turn people away from God.  It can wound, even kill a person's longing for the nurturing presence of the Heavenly Father.

When truth and love are combined in an individual or a church, however, we have what Jesus called "the salt of the earth."  We are able to heal those with spiritual wounds, preserve and encourage the best in one another, and bring out the personal zest and unique gifts of each person.

Today, let's seek to let our words and actions be grounded in truth and delivered with love.
My prayer...
Lord God, some days I am way too salty... then other days I lack any salt at all.  I think the one thing I miss the most in my cardiac diet is salt.  I'm the one who would always choose the salty snack over the sweet snack. So Lord, for today, I pray that you allow me to have the perfect balance of truth and love.  May I speak the truth in love and may I love enough to speak the truth.  In Jesus' name ~Amen!

Yours, because we're His,

Tamara

5 comments:

  1. Truth and love...what a perfect combination... :))
    P.S. Tamara...you know what? Sometimes, I think I need a saltlick...like the cattle that used to roam our field!!

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  2. Although I don't use a lot of salt, it does add that extra zing to food and the sugar is the treat so it is ever so wise to combine good things to make something wholesome like truth and love.

    blessings and extra prayers for our nation and world today,

    marcy

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  3. Hi Tamara!
    "grounded in truth and delivered with love"....
    Words to live by..
    Keeping you in my prayers....
    Love, Jerelene

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  4. We need both, truth and love to survive ..... God has given these to us in abundance......:-) Hugs

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  5. Where are you Tamara...is everything okay? No usual to go so long without our daily inspiration! will be saying prayers that ll is well!

    blessings and prayerful hugs,

    marcy

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