This is Why…

Be sure to read this to the end. It could make a big difference for you and many in your sphere of influence.

We are the salt of the earth. but to a large extent, we have lost our saltiness. How is it possible? How can salt become less salty?

Technically speaking, salt will always taste like salt. It cannot begin to taste less like salt any more than gold can become less like gold or silver become less like silver.

Yet Jesus said that if salt loses its flavor, it is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. (Matthew 5:13)

How will you know when the salt (the church) has lost its flavor? When the church is thrown out of society and persecuted underfoot by men.

In Canada, there have been over 90 churches burned down – with no arrests or repercussions. Certainly here in America, the church is under attack and targeted more than ever.

We see our culture disintegrating in front of our very eyes. Criminals walk free and give America the bird as they smirk and walk away from a justice system that let them walk free. 

I don’t need to give you a litany of obvious signs of decay. It is salt that prevents decay and the salt has lost a lot of its saltiness. But how can salt become less salty?

That’s the BIG question and the answer is really SIMPLE.

Through dilution. Watering down.

Take a glass of red wine for example. It will always be red wine and have its desired effect. Take a 12-ounce wine glass and pour 1 ounce of pure red wine into it. Then taste it. If it’s a good wine, you might enjoy and savor its flavor.

But then add 11 ounces of water into that same glass that has 1 ounce of wine in it. The red wine is still in the glass, but it is now so much a part of its watery environment, so mixed in, that it loses its identity and its flavor and is no longer desirable. Might as well flush it down the toilet. Wine is not my thing, but you get the idea.

In Jesus day, an unethical practice was to mix fine sand with salt taken from the Dead Sea to dilute the purity of the salt. When folks used the diluted salt on the backyard dunghill to dehydrate it and reduce the foul odor for example (Luke 14:35), it did not have the desired effect and was essentially worthless.

So how has the church lost its natural salty effect?

Same way… Through dilution.

In what may have been an honest attempt to reach the lost (and I’m being generous in that assumption), we became nearly indistinguishable from them. Our light has become darkness (Matthew 6:23).

Imagine being in an arena with absolutely no light whatsoever except for one person with a lit candle… Everyone can see that light, and many will want to find their way to it. Put that light under a bushel and that poorly lit arena becomes a place of great darkness.

I will leave it to each of us to ask the Lord about that dilution. I am not throwing punches at anyone. Just asking honest questions.

You can’t blame the heathen for acting like heathens, but when believers do the same (whatever that looks like) we cease being salty, and can expect to be trodden down.

Jesus said that salt is good (Mark 9:50) and salt makes many foods taste better. Butter, popcorn, steak… You name it, salt greatly improves the flavor of most foods.

So what makes a person in the marketplace salty so that others will want to have a taste of whatever makes you like you are?

Is it carrying a Bible into business meetings? Is it opening a client meeting with prayer? While those actions may attract some interest, they may also have the opposite effect.

Those are personal decisions best left up to the individual and however the Lord may direct them. But one thing I know for sure that is extremely desirable to almost everyone engaged in the marketplace, is success.

When I moved to America from the second largest country in the world, I got a job in sales. I had recently left an unsuccessful sales stint in Toronto and had little confidence I would succeed in my new environment.

I prayed and asked God to teach me His ways this time and help me succeed so I could be an influence on others for the kingdom of God. In my first year, I worked less than most, but set sales records that resulted in my promotion to sales manager which gave me a position of influence. In the year that followed, my team increased their results 430% and several of them came to Christ.

Do you see the connection?

People pay more attention to you when you excel in an area of interest for them, then if you’re unsuccessful but “religious”. So I suggest you learn to excel in your field of interest and use the resulting platform to introduce others to Jesus Christ.

Since then, what I learned from God’s Word and ways has helped me turn many companies’ sales around in dramatic ways including helping one company that had dwindled down to three agents and were considering shutting down, to become the 16^th fastest growing privately held company on the INC 500 list.

In that company, where I had the responsibility of growing and managing sales, a revival broke out with many salvations among its then 60 or so employees and they started an employee led Bible study at noon on Wednesdays!

Being successful in sales opened up so many opportunities for me that even included doing two corporate training events for an international life insurance company where their entire sales force (a total of approximately 75 agents) came forward to receive Christ.

For me, learning how God does things, incorporating those strategies into my sales and professional life not only gave me success but also a platform for Him. Turned out people liked that salt.

There are lots of ways to be salt in the marketplace, but for me personally, learning God’s ways and demonstrating their supremacy above so much of what the world has to offer, is how God has led me.

If you would like to learn how you can be a bright light in the marketplace by unashamedly following Christ and learning and applying God’s ways, I’d like to invite you to my first ever 3-DAY SELLING AMONG WOLVES CHALLENGE. (Details here)

I’m on a mission to raise up 100,000 kingdom men and women who know how to compete in the battle for resources and use their winnings to not only take good care of themselves and their family but also to be a salty and highly effective witness to the nations.

For 3 nights only, I’ll be teaching the wisdom and strategies God has given me that have helped thousands of folks in the marketplace, improve their results (some quite dramatically) while being a witness and salt to their surroundings.

If this doesn’t apply to you but you know someone to whom it does apply, please share this with them.

Until next time, be fruitful and multiply!

P.S. Here’s your link to find out more and to register.