Truth

TRUTH - such a powerful concept.

So rooted in the character of God, important enough to make it one of the Ten Commandments yet so easily dismissed in day to day life. I've lost count of the times when people have told me they had to tell a 'white' lie, or when I have exagerated or underplayed a fact so save face. Often we try and justify these things but u

ltimately they do offend our Holy God who knows the truth and wa

nts us to be truthful about ourselves and to speak truth.

The meaning of the word truth has been slightly twisted by the way it is used. In a recent sermon I heard the preacher explained that the phrase 'being true to yourself' was often an excuse people give to why the behave in a certain way. Yes we should face the reality of our sinful motivations, and acknowledge when we have failed God, but the truth is we must not excuse it.
The TRUTH is, that God has created a way in which he will remember our sin no more, and that truth can set us free from the bondage of UNTRUTH. Our enemy the devil will so often through untruth at us and ultimately he does this so that our faith will weaken and our winess become useless. How we must keep reading the word of truth to remind us of the wonderful promises of God that he has never broken.
Please enjoy the pieces that myself (Ruth) and the team have created for your inspiration. Please meditate on how the Truth of God is a reality and how we can practice being truthful and speaking truth in love to others. We would love to see any creations you make on this theme, please leave us a comment and we'll pop by!

Ruth

Kim

Hazel

Pauline


Lythan

God's everlasting love

Hi, Hazel here with the 'in between' post. In a few days' time it will be Valentine's day and there seems to be a lot of love around atm - in crafting challenges anyway!

Our own current Salt challenge is about love - love for our enemies - you will find the post here - and it's not too late to create something and link for our challenge as we still have a week until the next one.

It doesn't come naturally to us to love our enemies - 'We love because he first loved us.' (1 John 4:19).

Sadly, human love can sometimes let us down, but God's love is everlasting - Psalm 136 is a testimony to this fact - so many times throughout the Psalm the writer says: 'His love endures forever'.

And He is so generous: 'See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! ' (1 John 3:1).

'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.' (John 3:16)

'Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.' (John 15:13)

We pray that you will respond to God's love and accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour.

Loving our Enemies

Hi, it's Pauline with this week's challenge. I asked the SALT team to reflect on Luke 6:27-36 where we are challenged to love our enemies. I had an interesting discussion with some teenagers recently where they were talking about how we behave when we are with friends, and how differently we behave when around people we are less comfortable with or who we don't like. Being in a Religious and Moral Education class, the talk inevitably turned to religion and it was suggested that people who follow a command such as 'love your enemies' are pushovers, weak-willed people who cannot stand up for themselves. However, one pupil, summoning every ounce of courage they had, said that they thought the strongest person was the one who could rise above what people were saying to them and not end up in a fight at lunchtime. As a side note I work in a school for pupils with additional support needs and behavioural issues, so fights happen regularly and not just at lunchtime!

"Turning the other cheek" has made it into the English language as an expression meaning to go out of your way to avoid a nasty confrontation. Even though provoked, instead of lashing out, you turn the other cheek. The natural human reaction is to retaliate. On an almost daily basis we have pupils getting into fights over the smallest comment. We work with a restorative approach where we try to help the pupils understand their own behaviour and why they reacted the way they did.

People who have known each other for years can sometimes get into arguments (parents with children, couples, friends etc); tensions that may have been simmering for years boil over once again. And with the boiling comes anger, and with anger a willingness not just to defend, but to strike back. To get an advantage. To have the last word. To wound.

Though Jesus' instruction to turn the other cheek is intended to mean when dealing with a sworn enemy, the principle applies to every area of our lives. Don't retaliate. Don't hit back. This isn't easy though! My layout shows a class photo from when I was in my final year at school. Not all the people in the photo were friends, some went out of their way to make me miserable (or so it seemed at the time). It has taken me a long time to come to a place of acceptance where I don't find myself bearing a grudge against people who made me unhappy. I can't say that I've necessarily reached the place where I can love my enemies, but I believe that I have reached a more healthy stage.

I hope you enjoy the team's creations on the theme. It's not an easy one to contemplate and I really appreciate their willingness to think about things that are not necessarily happy things to contemplate. Remember to link back to us if you create something on the theme. We'd love to see your interpretations.

Pauline
Stacy

Kim

Lythan

Hazel



Ruth

one little word

Did you choose your one little word this year?

My word for this year is LISTEN, I chose this word because i think sometimes i am just clearly not listening. I am very easily distracted with my computer or scrap booking or the phone. I am very easily irritated by my children and found many times that i just don't want to deal with it. So when preparing for this post i thought why not share my word. My word means to me that i need to take a step back and just listen to my kids, my husband and GOD. I really believe that he is calling me to live a life in grace. I read a blog post yesterday in fact that i can totally relate to you can read it here.

What i got from that post was that maybe i am looking to occupy my time, my brain or just plain bored. Whatever it is i could use my time more wisely and focus on GOD. In turn it will help me to listen to my life and focus more on my life and less on my computer.

God says in Psalm 46:10 " Be still and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the nations , I will be exalted on the Earth" and what he is really saying is Attention, Attention See all the marvels of God, He plants flowers and trees allover the Earth, Bans war from pole to pole, breaks all the weapons over his knee. " Step out of traffic take a long , loving look at me, Your God, Above politics and above every thing...............

Walking through the valley of the shadow of death

Thanks for the comments and creations on praying for holiness - we really appreciate your contributions. It is Lythan choosing the theme this time and as a Minister, at the moment my life is filled with funerals and terminal illness. Although this brings with it sadness - especially when the people who have died or who are bereaved are known to me - yet I am also left with a sense of hope in the resurrection and an awareness that through even this darkest of times, God is with me. I often liken bereavement to walking through the valley of the shadow of death from Psalm 23 - it is a dark and horrible time, but it is not a time of being alone "I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." as the Psalm goes on.
You may like to think about what the psalm says to you, or think about how you can comfort others.
Other verses that might strike creative thoughts in you are these
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
By his great mercy he has given us
a new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 1 Peter 1:3

As ever, if you feel inspired to create a card, scrapbook page, or other project based on this week's challenge, please leave us a comment with a link back to your blog or gallery. We'd be delighted to share your artwork!
And here are the Salt team interpretations.

Lythan

Kim


Pauline

Hazel


Stacy

Ruth

Not in my strength...

Hi there Salt followers, Ruth here for our 'inbetweeny' post.

Just want to tak the opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year!

Got a few thoughts for you today, and hopefully something to encourage you.

Most of my children and myself came down with a horrible flu like illness just before Christmas, and I feel like I have been chasing my tail ever since then. Generally I am quite a confident person, and am organised enough to get through the jobs I need to do at home and in the community. However there have been moments of late where I've felt a sinking feeling in my stomach when facing the day.

However, I have been reminded that it is not in my strength that the day should be faced, and it is not me that should be the centre of my world. Often when feeling down it's very easy to slip into a spiral of pity and woe. God wants better for us and of us. By coming to him again and again, laying our burdens before him, confessing our sins and re-dedicating our lives to him we can find our strangth renewed. More importantly we can get back on track and do the thing that makes us most happy and content - Glorify God.

So in those times of self doubt or even selfishness, let's look to God to be our strength and inspiration. In him we will find forgiveness and the motivation to keep living a life in honour to him.

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." So we can confidently say,

"The Lord is my helper;
I will not fear;
what can man do to me?"

Hebrews 13v5-6

Pray for Holiness

Happy New Year!! We pray that your holiday and new year were blessed events and we look forward to what the Lord has in store for us in 2011!

Since New Year's typically brings with it resolutions, such as losing weight or exercising (both good goals by the way!), I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to also meditate on spiritual matters. If we seek to first renew the inward man then we can be sure that the outward man will also improve.

The Scripture verse for this week's challenge, Pray for Holiness, is from 1 John 5:15, "And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him."

I tend to have a "I can do it myself" kind of attitude when I approach challenges and while I don't think that's necessarily a sinful attitude to have I do think it can prove to be a stumbling block to real practical and spiritual progress. I'll give you an example. I'm not a terribly patient person and I found out early on that having children is not for one who is lacking in patience. So...I prayed, I prayed and asked God to make me a patient person. Guess what? He didn't. You know why? I expected God to hit me on the head with some magical wand and turn me into a totally different person...pesto, chang-0...I'm now and forever more...patient. What I failed to realize is that God doesn't work that way. He works by us stepping out in faith, behaving in the way He's instructed us to behave in Scripture, and then relying on Him, through prayer, for the strength to do those things He called us to do.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones had this to say on the challenge verse, "We can pray that all the precepts, all the promises, and all the prophecies in the Bible with respect to ourselves may be fulfilled in us. "For this is the will of God, even your sanctification" (1 Thess. 4:3). If you pray for sanctification, you can be sure that God will sanctify you. It is God's will that we may know His love; ask Him therefore to reveal His love to you by the Holy Spirit, and you can be certain He will do so. And it is the same with all the various other promises that are in the Scriptures. "Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you" (Matt. 7:7).

Are you concerned that you do not love as much as you ought? Tell Him about it; ask Him to shed His love abroad in your heart, and He will do so. Are you concerned about some sin that casts you down? Pray a confident prayer. It is the will of God that you should be delivered from sin; so pray for it. Are you concerned that your heart shall be clean? Offer David's prayer ("Create within me a clean heart, Oh God; and renew a right spirit within me, "Psalm 51:10) and I assure you, on the basis of the Word of God and His character, that He will answer you, and the blood of Christ will cleanse you from all sin and all unrighteousness. Go through your Bible, and make a list of the promises of God to you; then take them to God, use them in His presence, plead them, and you can be quite certain that you have your petitions. You already possess them, and in His own time and way God will give you a full realization of them and a full enjoyment of them."

It's been almost seven years since I became a parent and I still struggle with patience from time to time but since I confessed that I couldn't "do it by myself" and began to "ask, seek, and knock" while simply exercising patience and praying for strength, I have seen an amazing transformation; not only in my own attitudes but more importantly in the behaviors of my children and in my general mood during the day. The bottom line is that God has called Christians to live differently. We are called to live a holy life; the Scriptures promise us that whatever His will is for our lives (live holy), He will enable us to do. We simply need to grab hold of God's promises and never let go...Not only is He able to grant us the strength to live as we ought but I suspect that He delights to hear and answer our prayers. If we would only ask...

If you feel inspired to create a card, scrapbook page, or other project based on this week's challenge, please leave us a comment with a link back to your blog or gallery. We'd be delighted to share your artwork!!

Kim
Pauline

Hazel

Lythan

Stacy