Challenge: With Grace

Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.  Col 4:6 NASB

I like formulas.  I like things to be predictable and expected.  If I could do the same thing in every situation, it would make life so much easier!

But that’s not the way the Christian walk works.  It’s not that God changes in every situation because He is always the same.  But, He does tend to work differently in different situations.  He made us each unique.  No formula works for the work of God in and through us.  There is the constant of His grace, not of His methods.

Looking back at this verse, I honestly don’t know how I went from what Paul says here to this train of thought.  Maybe it was the idea of “each person” needing to be responded to in an individual manner.  Whatever the case, this is the challenge I sensed today: to be led by the Spirit and the grace of God in all interactions rather than trying to rely on a formula.  Whether it be in my personal interaction with the Lord through prayer; in my interaction with my husband, fulfilling his needs; in my interaction with my children each day as they require discipline; my interaction with fellow believers per the biblical instruction to not forsake assembly; or my interaction with the world and their need for a Savior.  There is no set pattern which works day in and day out for these interactions.  Only the submission to the grace of God will work.