“One day Jesus saw a vast crowd of people gathering to hear him, so he went up the slope of a hill and sat down. With his followers and disciples spread over the hillside, Jesus began to teach them: “What happiness comes to you when you feel your spiritual poverty! For yours is the realm of heaven’s kingdom. “What delight comes to you when you wait upon the Lord! For you will find what you long for. “What blessing comes to you when gentleness lives in you! For you will inherit the earth. “How enriched you are when you crave righteousness! For you will be satisfied. “How blessed you are when you demonstrate tender mercy! For tender mercy will be demonstrated to you. “What bliss you experience when your heart is pure! For then your eyes will open to see more and more of God. “How joyful you are when you make peace! For then you will be recognized as a true child of God. “How enriched you are when persecuted for doing what is right! For then you experience the realm of heaven’s kingdom. “How blessed you are when people insult and persecute you and speak all kinds of cruel lies about you because of your love for me! So leap for joy—since your heavenly reward is great. For you are being rejected the same way the prophets were before you. “Your lives are like salt among the people. But if you, like salt, become bland, how can your ‘saltiness’ be restored? Flavorless salt is good for nothing and will be thrown out and trampled on by others. “Your lives light up the world. For how can you hide a city that stands on a hilltop? And who would light a lamp and then hide it in an obscure place? Instead, it’s placed where everyone in the house can benefit from its light. So don’t hide your light! Let it shine brightly before others, so that your commendable works will shine as light upon them, and then they will give their praise to your Father in heaven.””
This is from Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount. And this is what seeking first the Kingdom of God looks like. This is what total reliance upon the Lord looks like. This is what laying your rights down in pursuit of the righteousness of God looks like. The teaching says that you are the salt of the earth. It’s saying that if you lose your flavor - if you lose the essence of who you are in Jesus, you will be trampled on by others. This is exactly what has happened and why we are where we are as a nation. Along the way from our country's founding, we as American Christ followers have lost our saltiness. We have lost the very essence of what Jesus was talking about in this Sermon. It is time and I think it is happening... for us to regain our boldness, and change the taste and the flavor of the world around us. We are the ones called to be that change and to bring our distinct difference as Christ followers to a world that desperately needs it.
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