Pastor’s Pen: Are you a change agent for Jesus?

In His famous ‘sermon on the Mount’ - I call it the ‘Magna Carta for the Church’ or ‘Christ’s manifesto for Christian Living’ - the Lord Jesus challenges us to be the salt of the earth.

In other words we as born again believers have not been called to accept the status quo but to make a difference, to bring change for the better.

You’ve heard it said “He’s/ she’s the salt of the earth.”

Salt is a change agent, it makes a difference when added, have you ever tried to eat a fried egg without adding salt? Yuck! Salt brings taste, adds flavour and influences everything it comes in contact with.

Salt also stems corruption, many years ago before refrigeration people stored meat in salt, it preserved food from rotting quickly.

Salt is also a healing agent it heals, I remember wading in the sea at Hazelbank having injured my ankle playing football or gargling my sore throat with a cup of salt water (not at Hazelbank, in the house. Ha-ha)

As Christians God wants us to become change agents, people who make a difference for good, men and women who can help stop the rot in our society and instead bring healing to wounded hearts and poisoned lives through the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

The purpose of salt is to flavour, not to sit in a shaker.

Question: Are you still being salt? Are you making a difference where God has placed you, bringing taste, causing a stir, touching lives, making people say “I want what he’s got”, “I’ll have what she’s having”, “I want to be like them”.

It was said of the Scottish Missionary Rev John Geddie, “when he landed in the tropical island of Aneiteum near the Fiji Islands 1848, there where no Christians here and when he left in 1872 there were no heathen”. What a powerful example of the salt of the earth.

Sadly when a Christian loses their saltiness or flavour they’re only used for walking on - grit.

Matthew ch5 v13 says: “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavour, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.”

Come on Christian, become a person of influence, a change agent for Jesus beginning today.