Grace & Flavour

Words are very powerful and have the power to build up and encourage but also the power to tear down and discourage. The bible has a lot to say about how we should use our words with one another.

The Early church had such a dynamic culture with the power and presence of God being deeply experienced through the Holy Spirit at work through, miracles, people becoming Christians, sacrificial sharing and an amazing sense of being together as one body, filled with the love and presence of God. I guess the kind of church we would all want to be part of. However, the church was not perfect and it had to learn how to deal with  challenges in a Godly way for it to continue to thrive and remain blessed.

In Acts 6 the story starts when a clique mentality had arisen because the distribution of the food to widows seemed to favour one group over another and a complaint arose, when you look at the word complaint in the original language it means “murmuring”.

To have a valid complaint is one thing, but to be grumbling, gossiping, murmuring complaining with others about the actions, mistakes, or just the way others do things is a sinful way of dealing with it. To maintain a healthy culture, we must guard our minds, hearts and lips and work together to find Godly solutions as they did in the early church by the appointment of men who were to be full of the Spirit and wisdom to sort these problems out.

As Gods family, we are the body of Christ, and God’s wants us to be together in unity and harmony, serving and joining with Jesus in His mission. That will take effort especially where we have learn to work out our differences in a Godly way. I am sure many of us have worked in places where there was always discontentment, murmurings and complaints about the management, the customers or other staff members and where the managers spent time  also complaining about the staff. They are never positive places to be and you can easily find yourself joining in with the way things work there.

But as Gods people we are called to live differently, to have our conversation seasoned with Salt means we add a good flavour to the environment where ever we are, so its good place to be and thrive in. Salt melts cold ice, and in the same way our words can melt cold hard hearts, build unity and harmony even in disagreements. Salt preserves and our words should always preserve goodness, encouragement, thankfulness, kindness and our unity together.