Salt: How Your Words Can Make a Big Difference

Jesus called you the salt of the earth. Salt is a small thing, a pinch you could easily overlook, and yet it changes everything it touches. Your words are exactly like that. They may seem small, but they can make an enormous difference.

Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.

Colossians 4:6 (NKJV)

Here is the first thing to settle. Your words are never neutral. Every time you open your mouth you are doing more than passing along information. You are either building someone up or tearing someone down. There is no third option.

James says the tongue is like the rudder of a ship, a small thing that steers the whole vessel toward safe harbor or onto the rocks. A few words can set the direction of a marriage, a friendship, a child's entire sense of who they are. Small in your mouth, enormous in its consequences.

Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder... Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things.

James 3:4-5 (NKJV)

Speak as an oracle of God

If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God.

1 Peter 4:11 (NKJV)

Peter says if we speak, not when but if, we should speak as the oracles of God. Before the words leave you, ask one question: what would God say to this person right now? Tell yourself, whatever I am about to say should be what God would have said to this person, because I am His oracle. This is why giving someone a piece of your mind is almost never a good idea, unless it is a piece of Christ's mind you are handing them. Let me give you four ways to speak that can change the world around you.

Announce who they are

First, speak prophetically. When Paul says preach the word, the word for preach means to announce, to proclaim, not to preach at someone but to announce over them. Say it when you see it, and say it even before you see it. This is how heaven talks. The apostles took a man named Joseph and called him Barnabas, Son of Encouragement, and that became the life he lived. They said it before they saw it. God called a childless man the father of many nations. He called sinners like us saints.

But he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men.

1 Corinthians 14:3 (NKJV)

You have heard the phrase, see something, say something. Let me give you the Christian version: say it before you see it. Call the thing into being. Speak over a person the good that God has put in them but that life has beaten down, and watch it begin to lift its head.

So say it. I like the way you talk; you encourage me. You are so kind, so courageous, whatever you are doing, please keep it up. I do not know how you do it, but I wish I had your patience. Pastor, is that not lying? No. It is prophetic speech that builds back up what the enemy has torn down. Did God lie when He called a childless man the father of many nations? Announce who they are in God. Say it when they are it, and say it when they are not yet it.

Remember, you are not the world police. You are here to love people, not to catch them. Barnabas was given his name, Son of Encouragement, before he had ever earned it, and he grew into the very word spoken over him. Words do that. They go ahead of a person and prepare a place for them to become who God says they are.

Speak knowledge with humility

Second, there is a way of being right that closes every door. When we say it is obvious, or you clearly, or lay something out as flat fact, we are speaking knowledge with pride, leaving no room for humility to come through. Reprove, yes, but begin with I may be wrong, or correct me if I am mistaken, and then offer your view.

No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. You do not actually have the right to tell someone what you know until you have first shown them that you love them. This is something we forget as Christians all the time. We are not the world's police force; we are here to love people, not to patrol them.

Job's three friends spoke the way most of us speak. Eliphaz accused Job of a secret sin and told him God was punishing him for it. Bildad blamed the deaths of Job's children on their own wrongdoing. Zophar told him God was exacting from him less than his guilt deserved. Even young Elihu had his turn. Every one of them was certain, and every one of them was wrong. When God finally spoke, Job laid his hand over his mouth, and the Lord rebuked the friends who had been so sure of themselves.

Speak wisdom with patience

Third, exhort. The word almost means to beg someone, to invite them, the way a lawyer pleads a case. It is the same word used for the Holy Spirit, our Helper and Advocate. So this is not do it because I said so, and if you don't you are a fool. This is patiently, gently, slowly helping someone see for themselves why this is what they should do.

Wisdom is the practical application of knowledge, the moment you want to tell someone what you think they ought to do. Paul says do it with all longsuffering. The patience is not decoration. It is the very thing that lets the wisdom land. Rush it, force it, hand it down like a verdict, and the very same wise counsel will bounce off. Offered slowly, as an invitation, it finds a way in.

Speak discernment with love

Speak these things, exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you.

Titus 2:15 (NKJV)

Fourth, there is a place for rebuke, but notice where the authority comes from. Love is what gives you the authority to rebuke; love is the mandate. Until you actually have a mandate over someone, until you have loved them, do not rebuke them. You are not a global policeman. You are a global lover, called to love everyone the way your Father loves the world.

You will never have authority over what you do not love. And here is the sharp edge of it: what you merely speak judgment against, you can never have authority over. So we must never judge, never pronounce sentence over someone, because the moment we do, we forfeit any power to help them change. This is exactly why the world so often hears the church as judgmental, because we speak against people we have never met, never sat with, never taken a single afternoon to love.

The prayer we need is an honest one: God, give me words of knowledge and wisdom and prophecy to speak love and life into the world, and take this heart and mind of judgment out of me. When that prayer is answered, your mouth stops being a weapon and becomes a well.

Change your words, change your world

So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.

James 1:19 (NKJV)

Be quick to listen and slow to speak. Hear God first, and hear the person first, before you answer. That single habit will reshape the way you talk to everyone around you.

Hear God first, before you speak to anyone. Then let your mouth carry announcement, humility, patience, and love. Announce who people are becoming. Offer what you know as one who might be wrong. Plead your wisdom gently. And reserve rebuke for those you have truly loved. Four ways to speak, and every one of them a little grain of salt.

You really can change the world with your words. Not the whole world at once, but your world. The place where you work. This church you worship in. Your home, your family, the people at your own table. Change the way you speak, and you will change the world you live in. That is what salt does. A little of it, and nothing tastes the same again.