Colossians 4:2 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Paul coached the newly birthed church at Colossae to tame their tongue by seasoning their conversations with salt. He does not say that our conversations must be spicy, tangy or sugary. Sprinkling this invisible ingredient adds flavour, taste and savour to our delicious meal. Chloride is necessary to produce stomach acids and facilitate the absorption of nutrients in the intestines during digestion. Similarly, our tongue must be seasoned with salt for the hearers to digest the content of our conversation. Our tongue must be tamed to have meaningful, insightful and simulative conversations delivered gracefully, gently and elegantly. On the contrary, an untamed tongue is blunt, brash and brusque causing indigestion, heartburn and heartbreaks to the listeners. A conversation with good content could be inspiring but an impactful conversation is always seasoned and delivered with love, truth and authenticity.
The way to test the quality of our conversation is to taste our own words and examine it if they are too strong, salty or bland. Only a message that has touched our heart will transform the listeners. If we advocate a theory that we do not practice, our conversation will be tasteless and unpalatable. Preachers who do not “walk the talk” make the listeners indignant, infuriated and irritated.
Three checks to validate if our conversations are seasoned with salt:
1. Flavour: Both bland as well as salty food cannot be enjoyed. No matter how much effort goes into the preparation of the dish, it is this unseen element that makes it edible and appetizing. Do people enjoy talking to us? Do people want to talk to us or do they avoid our call? Do we add value to the people who give us their time and listening ear? If the answer is yes, our conversations are perfectly seasoned. We will only revisit a restaurant that serves good food. When we dish out wisdom, seasoned with love, people will be drawn towards us. We must allow the Holy Spirit to season and flavour our tongue with knowledge, grace and love,
2. Fervour: Our conversations must be selective but significant and inspire the listeners to become passionate, resolute and fervent in faith and their walk with the Lord. James 1:19 Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. We must listen more than we talk and must be slow to judge. We must be able to impart the zeal that is burning in our heart, with others. Paul was able to inspire the crowd wherever he went as he was zealous, enthused and full of fervour. When we involve the Holy Spirit in all our conversations, we will be filled with fervour.
3. Foster: Our conversation must foster, cultivate and encourage faith and not fear. There are people who can only talk about the crashing stock markets, increasing redundancies or housing prices. Discouraging conversations drop toxic seeds or snake eggs in our heads and if we foster them, we will be hatching fear, dread and depression. Cultivating the truth of God’s Word will make us fruitful. When we are full of good delicious fruits, we can sow good seeds into the minds of the listeners. Foster faith not fear in others.
Let our conversations be full of flavour instilling faith, fervour and festering hope in the minds of our listeners.
1 Corinthians 1:5 For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge.
Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, tame my tongue to be the tongue of a learned so I may speak health and healing, love and knowledge, gracefully to the weary. Amen
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