Mission: Possible!

Colossians 4:6 – Mission: Possible

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to lead people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ! Mission: Possible. Actually, if you are a Christian, you have already chosen to accept the mission. When you trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you surrendered your heart and life to Him. You pledged your obedience, and He has commanded you to MAKE DISCIPLES! The good news is that Paul just doesn’t tell us that we are supposed to lead people to Jesus. He tells us how: walk in wisdom (live your life wisely) so that lost people will see Jesus in you; speak graciously – or maybe just speak grace into the lives of people. Tell people why you are living this way – because Jesus rescued you from sin and an eternity in hell, and His love has forever transformed your life. There is no better way to win people for the Kingdom than to show them what God has done for you. But as Paul says in Romans 10, someone then has to tell them how to be saved. Speak GRACE! Tell them about God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense: the hope of Glory given to us by Jesus’ death as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Paul didn’t stop there. He throws in that very interesting phrase: our speech should also be seasoned with salt. If you are like me, you believe that a little salt makes everything taste better. But in Paul’s day, salt wasn’t just used to flavor food. It also preserved it. And yes, salt stings like crazy when it gets into an open wound. And I believe that Paul was referring to every one of these functions.

Our speech should be pleasing: comforting, not criticizing; holy, not hostile. Our speech should save lives: always pointing to Jesus. And our speech should sting a little as we hold people accountable for the way they live. As a preacher, I have discovered that if I am not making a few people mad along the way, I’m not doing my job. Truth is, as a Christian, if we aren’t upsetting a few folks, offending them in some way, then we are not letting our light shine. We aren’t being the salt that Jesus told us that we should be.