What Does Your Speech Taste Like?
Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person. Col. 4:6 (NASB)
My wife is a fabulous cook. She has a way of taking seemingly ordinary ingredients and turning them into something special. One of the keys is the way she seasons her dishes. They aren’t bland, but rather have vibrant flavors that satisfy the palate. One of the key seasonings she uses is love. Her food is more than sustenance. It is a gift of hospitality rooted in the love of serving people.
According to Colossians 4:6, our speech should taste something like that. Grace should season it. Grace should abound in our conversations. Grace should temper our dialogue, even when we are engaging hard discussions. Gill’s Bible Exposition puts it this way: It (our speech) should be in the exercise of grace; it should be in truth, faithfulness, and sincerity, without lying, dissimulation, and flattery; it should be in consistence with the grace of love.
Notice the verse says: “with grace, as though seasoned with salt”. Grace is salt to our speech. As salt brings out the flavor in food, so grace brings pleasantry and a savory pleasure to our conversations. At least that is the way it should be. I confess that if someone tasted my speech and interactions with others over the last week it might not taste that good. I wonder if instead of words like, “this is delicious”, people might say, “this is spoiled”, or “something is wrong with this”.
This can also apply to words nobody else hears. Like how we talk to other drivers on the road, the unspoken words about people in the gym, on the golf course, at the grocery or even in church. For our words to be seasoned with grace, our hearts and our minds must be transformed by it. This is a continual process. Daily, our hearts and minds need to be steeped in the love and grace of God with profound thanksgiving for what He has done for us.
Others are watching and listening to us. Our words and expressions are seen and heard by people everywhere we go. Our speech is one of the most public barometers of what is going on in our heart. Matthew 12:34 says: For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
So, what does your speech taste like this morning?
Live this week on purpose,
Ron Klopfenstein
