SALT

Snow Treasure, the first book I ever read, was about this kid who had this treasure and rode on his sled to take it somewhere. That’s all I remember. What an odd concept for a book, and yet it was the first one I ever finished. I was known to start books, read some, and set them down. Reading was just not my thing. People take so much time to be creative with books.  There are millions of books out there containing millions of concepts. And some of them have the oddest things in them.

“The worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. Everyone will be salted with fire. “

Guess what book that is from?  Ok, if you weren’t reading my blog and this was in a newspaper, you probably wouldn’t guess the Bible. But, yes, it’s from a place in Mark where Jesus was teaching his disciples how to be disciples. Sometimes when you consider what Jesus did, it seems like a lot of His time was spent teaching these twelve men. But, this instruction was absolutely necessary so they could share His message with the world.

 In the last twenty years, creative people have stormed the Church with their ideas of how to make the Church an awesome place.  We have watched churches create some of the coolest Vacation Bible Schools, youth events, servant events, and trunk or treats.

I once heard a pastor argue against this and say that the Church needs to be boring. He really said that in his sermon. Don’t tell stories, just preach the Word. I don’t know about you, but the Word of God is not boring. A dude with super strength who could kill a lion with his hands, a talking burning bush, the waters of a huge sea parting, a dead man coming back to life, and yeah, for my ladies out there, a man who would work fourteen years just to get a chance to be married to his wife. Those stories aren’t boring, but sometimes the hardest thing is trying to understand who God wants US to be.

It is one thing to think the Church is cool because of its exciting programs. It’s another to realize that God has called YOU to be His disciple in this world.  The problem is we don’t know what disciples look like, because our natural way of being does not even come close.

God refined the “Twelve” and taught them what it meant to truly follow Him and be His disciples. The Church at large is beginning to realize that we have a bunch of people who love Jesus, but are struggling at times to figure out what He wants their lives to look like, and how to be refined by Him.

These odd lines in Mark about the worm and salt appear right after Jesus talked about how He wanted the disciples to be, and what He wanted them to do. He refined them with fire at times. He made sure that they were salted with the right disciplines to be disciples.  He wanted their lives to reflect Him.  He wanted them to help share His Word.  He wanted them to change completely.

Even though Heaven is not here yet, and we are still on earth, He wants us to be involved in teaching about Heaven; in teaching about Jesus.  He wants us to discover the first step in being refined; and in allowing our lives to reflect Him. What does a disciple of Christ look like?  Are you being refined by the fire of God’s Word?

We will be discussing this during the month of October at Mt. Calvary. It is going to be awesome—refining and defining as we start to listen to the true disciple maker, Jesus!