Week 17: Day 4

Intro: Hello and welcome to Orbit, a short reflection to help you put God at the centre of your life from the team behind Satellites - I'm Lucy Rae. Each weekday we share a little bit of the Bible with you, give you a chance to pray and think about it, and provide you with one practical way to put it into practice today.

Bible: Today's reading comes from Colossians 4:6

Let your conversations be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Thoughts: As earlier in the week - Paul is imprisoned by people because of his faith. There will be many that he could have been a little frustrated by and yet he teaches us how to have conversations with those around us.

At the youth group I used to be a part of we used to shout “JAMES 3:9” at one another if we were caught in a brutal banter battle.

James 3:9 says: With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.

It was just to catch out when maybe the jokes had gone a little too far and were starting to mar the image and truth of who God had created that person to be.

Paul gives us three helpful pointers here for how best to chat with people:

1. Let your conversations be full of grace - he uses the word ALWAYS. Not sometimes…always. How often I forget that when someone annoys me. Maybe someone has frustrated you today, maybe a guardian or friend. How can you solve that dispute but still with grace?
2. Be salty but in a positive sense. This led me to google WAY too many purposes of salt….you know some of them are super niche. BUT salt has so many uses but no purpose unless it touches something or is in contact with someone. Paul is encouraging us to use our words they have purpose but that relies on us actually saying something.
3. Lastly so that you may know how to answer everyone. This doesn’t mean know the answer to everything BUT know how to answer with grace and with purpose. We chatted a couple of days ago about writing out a couple of sentences personally about our relationship with Jesus which also might be helpful here!

Action: I find it – and maybe you do too – SO easy to cut someone down with words rather than build them up. I heard it described once that you come to church to be built up, not beat up. I challenge you today to embody building people up - can you encourage 10 people today? I think you can.

Outro: That's it for today's Orbit. Thanks so much for joining us - we'll be back with another reflection tomorrow.