On February 1st, Thrive Africa held their Salt & Light Pastor’s conference.  From what I have read, the day was great!  It was filled with teachings and people having a desire to learn more about God.  If you want to watch a short video and read more quotes from people about the day, go to Thrive Africa’s post on the event.  Trust me, it is worth it!

I read Proverbs 4 this morning and one of the verses stuck out to me–verse 21.  I was reading it on Bible Gateway and the default version is the New International Version.  I started looking at it in a few others to grasp a broader view of what it means.

In the NIV, it says, “Do not let [my words] out of your sight, keep them within your heart;”

OK, so I should take these words and put them in my heart.  Check.

The Amplified version says it a little differently.  It says to keep the words in the center of my heart.  Not only are His words supposed to be within my heart, but at the center of my heart.  I kind of think of it like walking into a house.  In many houses, the center area is the family or living room; it is where guests come in and sit down.  So, God’s word’s shouldn’t just be somewhere within your house (in a place that guests might not visit), but in the center.  It should be in this room where it can be seen or found.  A little tougher to do sometimes, but OK, I’ll do it.

Then, I looked at the New Living Translation, where it tells me to let the words penetrate deep within my heart.  Wow.  This took on a whole new dynamic in my mind.  Going back to the house illustration, I am not only supposed to have His words within my house and not only in the center, but penetrated within the whole house.  It makes me think of having a strong incense burning.  You might use it in the center of your house, but the smell drifts to all the other areas.  It gets into the whole house.  The scent can be found in every room, even if it is faint in some of them.

I know that way of looking at it makes it seem quite temporary.  Once the incense is gone, the smell will go away, right?  But, what if there was prolonged use and someone burned that incense every day for years?  I’m not an expert, but I feel that the scent would eventually “sink” into places.  The carpet, the curtains, and the furniture, just to name a few.  Even after you cleaned them, there would still be a slight aroma of the incense.

It just made me think that that is how I want my life to be with Jesus.  I don’t just want Him within me or at the center of me, I want Him penetrating me.  I want Him so part of my life that others can tell no matter what part of me is showing, even if the part only has a “faint smell” of Jesus right now.

I added a new link on my sidebar.  If you look under “Websites,” you will see a link that says, “Jen’s Associated Content Page.”  Associated Content is a place where writers can go, write articles (among other things) and publish them.  The articles can be submitted for payment and, so far, that has earned me a couple dollars.  There is also payment that is done by the amount of page views a person gets.  So, you can help me out by going there and checking out what I’ve written.  I plan to use any money I earn on this for my mission work.

OK, so the post title comes from a skit we (interns) did at Thrive, but it seemed fitting.

The other day, I was preparing for the Missions Institute Bible study and read Matthew 5:13-16, which says:

As I went over this, one of the questions caught my attention–when does salt lose its flavor?  I know, you’ve probably heard this a bunch of times in church, but I my mind didn’t wander into metaphorical realms.  I ventured into literal realms and did a little reading about salt.

I discovered that table salt is made up of sodium and chlorine and that it is a rather stable substance.  Adding salt to water creates a mixture and there is no chemical change.  The elements are just given more room to move around and the salty taste is diluted as more water is added.  Some forms of sea-salt and rock-salt can lose their saline properties, though, when exposed to air for a prolonged period.

Some of the readings speculated that it was the latter to which Jesus referred, but it is not certain.  Nevertheless, I was struck with the fact that it takes an increased amount of an outside factor–diluted by a lot of water or flavor lost by a lot of air–for salt to lose to its flavor.  So now comes the application of this information to the Scripture.

If we as Christians are “the salt of the earth,” then how do we lose our saltiness?  Well, it makes sense that it takes us being exposed to an excess amount of an outside factor which is, in this case, the world or sin.  I thought of it this way:  We go out into the world each day and we are given this freedom to move around, rather than just being stuck in the little area of our room or house.  However, if we stay out in this wide open area for too long and don’t return to our small, little area, then it is easier to lose sight of God (Kind of like being in a big crowd and losing site of your friend, because there are so many people there).  If we want to keep our flavor, we need to continue to get out of the big crowd regularly and find a small room in which to sit down and talk with God.

I thought of how I’ve been caught up into staying in that big crowd of people for far too long before and not returning to that small room to visit God.  Not all the things that enticed me to stay in that big crowd were bad.  Spending time with friends isn’t bad; working overtime because someone is sick isn’t bad.  But those small things add up.  They keep me from spending time with God and I start forgetting what it is He likes and dislikes and what He expects of me as a friend and follower.  It’s like any other relationship.

For example, over the past year, I got to know Katy.  Even though we are miles away now, we still take time to talk online or by phone.  If I didn’t talk to Katy for several weeks, I’d probably forget what things she likes and what things she dislikes and I would eventually lose sight of what she expects of me as a friend.  So, just like that relationship, if I desire to keep my relationship with God strong or “flavorful,” then I must regularly spend time with Him.

These are just the thoughts I had as I went through that question.  I’d love to hear what you all think, so feel free to leave comments.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been volunteering at my church, Rainbow Forest Baptist.  There hasn’t been a lack of work with the programs and such that are done there.  Here are some highlights of what I’ve done:

• Stuff and address envelopes for missionary letters
• Put inserts in the bulletins
• Help organize name tags and packets for orphans
• Collate papers and put them in binders

Some people would look at this and think that is awful work to do, but I’ve enjoyed it.  Not just the work, but getting to know the people at the office has been great, too!  And, it is neat to know that I’ve helped impact other countries with some of the work I’ve done… cool, eh?

Not much else to say, so I just thought I’d talk about that a little.  Tomorrow, SpiritFM is teaming up with God’s Pit Crew at Wal-mart.  They are collecting water and non-perishable food.  I am going to get a few things to donate to them to help the people of Haiti.  It is so tragic to hear of the earthquake damage and death tolls.  I am praying for the people and want to a little more than that.  So, I will give some tomorrow to help these precious people.

This stuck out to me while I was reading a little while ago.  I started thinking of how many times I have been quick-tempered.  You know, something doesn’t go the way I plan and it becomes frustrating to me.  Rather than trying to see it from another perspective, I just look at it from my way and get mad.

But, this tells me that wise people stay calm.  So, even when someone or something insults their intelligence or beliefs or even who they are, they stay calm?  Wow… I have some work to do.  I’ve had people tell me I’m stupid or use other hateful terms towards me before and my first reaction is to become angry and defensive.

I guess thinking upon it though, how can I really show them Christ if I do get angry and yell?  Would I really be acting different from others in the world?

Part of this starts with controlling my emotions.  And, I need to take time to see the situation in different perspectives.  Did the person really say or do this or that just to make me angry?  Did they say what they did because they really meant it, or were they just angry at the time?

So much can go into staying calm and, as I said before, I have a lot of work to do.

How do people believe that demons exist yet do not believe God exists?  Or, why does it seem that people that are opposed to God are much more accepting of the existence of demons?

This is just a thought that came to mind as I thought back upon a conversation that I had of the paranormal a couple days ago.  It wasn’t a thought at the time, but an afterthought as I was doing some reading about demons.  Because as I read, it seemed to me that the existence of God and demons are relevant to one another.

So, I post to get peoples thoughts.  I will point out that this isn’t being posted to make anyone mad and I am definitely not saying that anyone is wrong for their belief system.  It is just something that doesn’t quite make sense to me, so I want to hear others’ feedback and hear your opinions.

And, please, no arguments within the responses.

The past few weeks have been busy, but I wanted to take time to update you all on what I have been doing.  I hope you enjoy it!

Dec Update

This is the verse I am working to memorize over the next couple weeks:

1 John 2:15-17

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

If you talk to me over the next couple weeks, check and see how I’m doing with it.