Salty Faith - Jesse Russell | LW2023

Salty Faith - Jesse Russell | LW2023

In his thought-provoking talk "Salty Faith,"  Jesse Russell delves into the idea of Christians acting as the 'salt of the earth,' a concept taken from Jesus's teachings in Matthew 5:13. Through his personal narrative of helping a man, Russell underscores the implications of selfishness and pride, which served as the catalyst for his exploration of the biblical analogies of salt. Not only does salt represent preservation, tastefulness and healing in scripture, but being "salty" also demands self-sacrifice and total faith in Jesus. Russell emphasizes that being the salt of the earth extends beyond simply doing good deeds or assisting others but implies a profound relationship with Jesus.

Moving further into his sermon, Russell brings out the importance of focusing on Jesus's life and teachings rather than longing for personal achievements or recognition. He uses the narrative of the rich young ruler from Mark 10:21 to highlight the necessity of renouncing earthly possessions and cravings to wholeheartedly pursue Jesus. A call-to-action for listeners to reflect on their lives and pinpoint the obstructions that inhibit their spiritual growth punctuates his message. 

Taking the sermon to a close, Russell encourages Christians to cultivate contentment and expectation, even amidst trials, stressing that Christian faith isn't about attaining success, but about entrusting oneself into Jesus's hands and living out His teachings daily. He reinforces his message by citing a testimony of a young man's spiritual transformation and encounter with God following a challenging period of doubt and struggle. 

To condense, "Salty Faith," emphasizes discarding selfish desires, total faith in Jesus, and living with contentment and patience even in adversity, reinforcing that God's faithfulness permeates every aspect of a Christian's journey.

Transcript

I got like you were driving Laura.

Cool. Let's go ahead and get started so I don't try to squeeze in too much. I could be faster, it could be longer, depending on the second time through. Who knows?

I know pretty much all you guys, but know you a little bit less, so you might not know me as much, so I'll do a little introduction, but hi, I'm Jesse. This is salty faith. Titled my talk great. Emma told me to give her a shout out to emma Russell is my wife and I lead at Dayton. Been there for a good amount of time now.

Used to be debut, so I led Mia and Brooke technically, but yeah, that's pretty much me. I teach at Campbell. Good stuff. I teach at Reed Reed's. My co worker, technically.

Cool. Coach basketball, if you can't tell by all the Dayton basketball shirts I wear every day. Who's that weird guy sitting by himself with the date and stuff on? That's usually what people ask when they first see me.

I'm mysterious like, that cool. So let me pray and we can kind of jump right in. God, thank you for this day. Thanks for many blessings. Thank you for all the ones in this room.

Right now, this kind of randomly popped in my head, but it's cool to think specifically what you had even in the last session compared to this one, like you've specifically crafted. So I pray that you open the hearts to whatever you want to teach each person in this room. Or if it's just one, I pray that the words are yours and not my own and that whatever comes from me and not you, that you can just shut the ears of the people in this room and yeah. Amen. Let's get into it.

Okay. Is my accountability partner. I'll go to that introduction, give you a shout out. I'm all about pre shout outs, so if you could probably take a guess. Salty Faith.

We're talking about salt. Big. Like when the lord starts moving things on my heart, it's like usually just give me like a word or like a tiny little phrase and then I'll just sit on that for a good long time. This has probably been the longest thing I've sat in, which is funny because salt preserves things and just sits on things. So it's like, of course, as he teaches me about salt, he's like, sitting me in some salt.

I don't know, that was a goofy little thing. But just to kind of touch on the few things that the lord really started to open up with me and started to open up my heart, why he wanted me to learn about salt or think about it or whatever. When the word kind of popped up, the first moment, the very first moment, it kind of popped into my head. If you don't know my grandparents, you probably don't know there's less people in here that know me like that. But my grandparents started a church in Newport that's gotten a little bit bigger.

And I used to live in an apartment right next to it of a building they own. And I go to that church and on Fridays they do like, a food giveaway thing. They always have people coming up to get some food for the week that they need, if they're in need. And it's cool. It's cool to see that happening.

But there was a guy right outside where my apartment was, and his cart filled up with food. I assume he stole a cart from Kroger, so whatever. He had a cart, so that's great. He could carry it, but he couldn't get the cart over this little cement ledge like how they have in parking lots. And he was, like, trying to find a place to go, but the lot was closed or whatever.

And so I'm getting out of my car as I'm pulling in to go into my apartment, and I was just going to walk up, but I was like, no, I'm going to help this guy. I'm going to lift it over the curb for him and send him on his way, all right? And it's just funny because there was a big shift in emotions at first. I'm feeling really good about myself. I'm like, yeah, I just helped that guy.

Like, I'm walking up my steps like a little trot. I'm a good person. But then immediately the Lord pounds me with just like, the sorrow of the selfishness and pride that came with that thought, as opposed to just being salt for the sake of being salt. And because he asks us to do it. And I'm serving him not my own ego.

And the Lord likes to roast me in his own way, obviously lovingly. But I'm thinking of like, oh, dang, there's like, people that aren't even they might be feeling good, but I'm sure there's a lot of awesome people in my church that are just out there actually giving away the food and interacting with these people. And I just lifted a cart that don't have the amount of ego that I have from just lifting up a cart right now. And there's tons of you guys doing your own things and different things like that in the world. And here I am getting caught up in this little moment.

And so that's when salt first kind of came a thing. And of course, as he's roasting me, he's like, I want you to be salt. That's what you should share with me. I'm like, Heck yeah, I want that. I don't want to have the ego that comes with that.

I just want to do it and not even think about it the next moment it happened. It just flows and time's going on a little bit. He's teaching me different things, and young life, like winter Leader Weekend or something rolls around and I didn't know when I jotted that down at the leader weekend that we were going to secede from Eli. So I'm not trying to roast them or anything. I promise you that's not the premise of this.

But I was a little bit disappointed because I'm sitting here, like, learning about salt. I'm pumped, and three times I hear Matthew Five get brought up, and I'm like, yes, they're about to say something about salt, because that's when he has a sermon on the mountain. He says, you are the salt of the earth, and all three times skipped right over it and said, you are the light of the world. And I'm like, Dang, why are we skipping on the salt? Pass me the salt, young light.

And from there, I started to sit and kind of think about, why the heck are we skipping out on the salt, genuinely, instead of just jokingly, and why are we just skipping to the light part? And we'll kind of talk about why I think that. And the last little thing, if you've ever seen the chosen, I guess I always say spoiler alert. But if you read the Gospel, not a spoiler, I guess, but in the second season, at the back part of it, it goes through the process of Jesus writing the Sermon on the Mount, basically, and nowhere in the Bible does it actually say that. So I'll take this as this actually happened, but they do a good job of portraying the character of Jesus very well, and so I believe in his heart, this is very similar to how Jesus would view us as he is about to share that.

And I wept like a little baby as he worked through it. He's writing it with Matthew, and he just kept, like, he wrote the whole thing, but he kept just being like, I want to start it with you are the he's he's adamant about that. And Matthew's all confused, like, what do they like, Why are we starting with that? And then it ends with a little piece. I actually might have forgot to share it last time, but it ends with how he adjusted it.

There we go. To the beatitudes before it and then the salt. But I was like, I love the fact that Jesus first thing he wanted to tell the people and he had a huge crowd, was, you are the salt. And I was like, he's teaching me this stuff, and this is awesome. I think it's an easy little campaigner's lessons or lesson in general, anywhere you're at, to just be like, salt is this Bible says it preserves.

And I'm getting a little ahead because I want to make a list on the Bible says it preserves and tastes good, and you're supposed to be that to the world, great. But I feel like the Lord's heart in it goes so much deeper with how much he talks about salt in the Bible and how much it connects in different ways to how our faith should be completely intertwined with being salt and how much Jesus meets us there in the midst of being salt. So it's not just this sheer act, but there's a lot that goes into it. So the three points, as we kind of adjust to that, if you're a writer and you want to know what your three points are going to be, the first one, we're going to talk about what salt is and why it's important. The second point will be how we should be and are salt.

And then the third is the mindset salty people should have. So those are three points. So getting into the first one, as I kind of said, Jesus, Matthew 513 14 said, you are the salt of the earth. He says those that use their saltiness should be tossed out because they have no use. Right?

So that's what he says. And that's kind of where the basis, like, the main idea of why salt is. That's the main salt verse, I think, in the Bible. But whenever you're faced with an analogy from Jesus, know, that dude was literally there when that was getting he like the intricate details of it go so hand in hand with him explaining it, even as a metaphor, that you should literally be looking up the science behind salt when he's saying it. My favorite thing that I ever got to do was when I was struggling with some slothful tendencies.

Pretty bad. Jared gave me scripture of, like, go to the ant who sluggered considers ways to be wise. And you know what? I freaking did. I spent the next week looking up tons of ant facts, and it was actually mind blowing because the Lord made those freaking ants, and it actually was powerful to know.

You're comparing telling me to be like that. Anyway, it's cool. I know ant facts now is the moral of that storytell. So with that, I just kind of want to list out some things that salt does or you can use it for or whatever. But the teacher and me like, I want to get you guys involved.

So maybe raise your hand, tell me something that salt might do. I already said two. You already said it. But it does make your food taste good. Yeah, it does taste good.

The taste of salt is fire. Just don't eat too much. That's the health teacher. Anybody else? Anybody else know what salt does?

Come on now. What is salt doing? Preserves. Preserves. All right.

So you throw that on some meat or something, put it in the cellar, it's not going to go bad quickly. It's preserving. All right. Those are the two big ones. The Bible says that one.

So those are cheat codes.

Does anybody else have anything? They think they do. Other people know. Hold on. I think no, you go helps, like, clear the roads.

Yeah, I like that. One. You can put salt out on the road. I probably still have salt somewhere in my shoe from last winter. That stuff gets everywhere, but it clears the road.

I like that one a lot. Does it help us hold water? I'm sure it does. I mean, we could look that up. Honestly, I like it, but I know that they put it in IVs when we have like blood loss and different things like that.

Any nurses in here? Can they confirm that? Natalie confirmed it for me last time. So it is true. Well, the idea of it is because of sports, but water rushes to salt and sodium and stuff like that.

So that's why gatorade and sports drinks have sodium, because the water just rushes through your bloodstream with that sodium. So it rehydrates you very quickly. Look at that. Salt. That's the idea.

Salt, ladies and gentlemen. But I got a big old list of different things. It can clean things, it can restore things, it can put out fires, it can prevent fading. You can use it as mouthwash in some way. You can use it for dandruff treatment, it can make your lips smoother, it can ease a sore throat.

They use it in agriculture, typically for the health of different animals. It can be used in bug repellent, it can be used in the production of different chemicals. List goes on. Salt can be used in a bunch of different ways. I think it's cool to know the many different uses of salt, and then the Lord goes and tells us that we are the salt of the earth.

And I think the Lord uses us in many different cool and unique ways, and I think that's just a cool thing to gather from that as you think about what the Lord's asking go back to.

But there's a couple of things that as we dive deeper into salt and the way that the Bible talks about it, I think there's a couple of things that I want to mention to even drive it a little bit deeper than just some of the other stuff. But the two big things that salt is a part of is one, he literally says all offerings should have salt. And then two, he talks about this thing called a salt covenant, and I had no idea what any of that meant. It's old Testament stuff when I first looked into it. So I'll help you out.

You don't have to flip there, but you can write it down if you want to inspect for yourself. But in Leviticus 213, Lord's kind of laying out some things with how offerings should go and stuff like that. Back then, they didn't have Jesus. They didn't have Jesus who died on the cross, so they could just work in it that way. But they were giving offerings and different things like that.

And part of the commandment was that all offerings should have salt with the purpose of reminding all the good people that there's a salt covenant with them and the Lord and that it's binding. And so what's the salt covenant? Since it was mentioned that in Offerings, it's a funny one that I like is mentioned and not funny, but it's cool. Two Chronicles 13 five, and it's not even about David, but the dude's referring to David when he said the Lord made a covenant of Salt with David. And basically what that was is if you know anything about David, like Lord loves David, does some goofy things, but he has a strong covenant.

Literally, Jesus came through the lineage of he. He said you're going to prosper in that way because of a covenant, which a covenant, by the way, if you don't know what that is, is just think of like a contract, but like olden times, it's binding, it's strong. And the Lords are more binding than an earthly contract. This one was specifically made in the essence of Salt, which Salt was for some reason considered a really strong covenant. Like if you ate salt with another person and then did something bad to that person, you would be looked at as the most foul, disgusting person ever.

And so in Second Chronicles Abijah little later down the line from David is about to go into a battle. He's got less troops than the other guy, but he confidently proclaims the other side. You fool. Do you not know that the covenant of salt made with David will prosper? And then because he's on the side with the Lord in that covenant, that's so binding.

And the Lords are so strong, even with significantly less troops, he wins that battle. And I just think that's cool that not even with the specific person he made the covenant with, it's so binding that the Lord is going to continue to show up and show out like that. And so these offerings that I was just talking about that are supposed to have salt are supposed to remind you of that strong covenant that the Lord promised. And I think to take it even a step further, to take it to now, we're asked to present ourselves as a holy and pleasing offering to the Lord. And so with that, we should also have some salt.

So there he goes asking us to be the salt of the earth. So cool connection how that all works. It's actually really cool, like how the Lord intertwined the way that he talks about salt from tons and tons of years ago even to now, and how he wants us to be with it. So I thought that's cool. Two things about Salt you may not have known that come from the Bible.

So if we are supposed to be salty, what does that mean? Why is Jesus asking it? Why is the Bible so clear that that's important? There's obviously some strong bond with the Lord that comes from it. And on a surface level, like I said, not that this isn't good, and for new believers, this is a really good thing to teach them straight up.

But off the surface, being salt, you think of, oh, you preserve the people around you, like you're helping out with the poor or whatever. You taste good, so people enjoy the taste of you being around.

I mean, Paul even says that our words should be seasoned with salt, so even our words just are tasty and preserved as we speak. On top of that, I even like the other illustrations that we came if you wanted to add it, that an IV literally gives life to these people. The roads, like, you clear a path for people when you're salt. Like cool illustrations, but what's easy to forget, and it sounds cool, is that all of those things take a great deal of sacrifice to be. And this is why I think that they skip over it and go straight to light, because light's fun.

It's warm, it's inviting. People are drawn to it. There's not too much sacrifice to being light other than you got people around you that want it. Some people are blinded by the light and might despise you for it, but usually they stay away or just hate you from a distance to that point. When it comes to being salt, though, if you're the salt on the bottom of my shoe, you're getting trampled on.

If you're tasteful, you're getting devoured. If you're preserving, you're just having to sit in one spot for a long time and just saturate there, the list kind of goes on. But you're just being used and used and used, and there's not a whole lot of fun things that really sounds from it other than like you get to see the benefit of it. But it takes a great deal of sacrifice to be any of those things that come with salt.

And I think the big thing that you have to start to realize is that the only way that you can be salt is through complete, secure faith in the one who's asking you to be it so that you can endure all those different challenges that come with the sacrifice of being salt. And there's a great beauty that comes with it, and we'll talk about that more in depth. But for now, I want to move on to the second point of how we should be and are salt. Okay, trying to get you if you could flip to Matthew 25 40 just to kind of have that ready to go, salt, people being salt, let's get a picture of what that looks like for us being it. And the best way I want to do that is encourage you guys a little bit, because there's not a person in this room that has not been salt in some way or another.

So congratulations. To some degree, you guys have been salt. I'm proud of you.

Off the bat. Reed my boy. I work with Reed. He teaches gross little freshmen how to do math. All right?

That's a difficult thing. It takes sacrifice, but he does it. That's being salt to those students. Sam wipes old people's butts that can't wipe their own butts. That's disgusting.

But somebody needs to do it. Sam is being a tremendous awesome salt. I didn't plan any of this, by the way. I'm just popping out things that will look out to the crowd. I remember an awesome time with Johnny that we were at a leader weekend once, and some college people came, and they just flocked to Johnny with any question and just has this wisdom, and they trust him.

That's being salt to those dudes. That's awesome. Michael coaches soccer. He's gone all the time doing that soccer stuff. Michael is an excellent example of salt, okay?

Jacob Morgan plays League of Legends with me when I'm sad and lonely. He's an excellent example.

I mean, the list can go on and on with all of you guys. You guys do awesome things, whether that's in your ministry, your job, or just passing in life. I know you guys know how to be salt. I know one thing about this community we're good at. We're good at being salt, whether you always see it or not, because that's just how we're, like, bred to think once we get into this relationship with Jesus.

And so to kind of keep pointing out things. Like I said, Paul literally says our speech should be salty. And then in Matthew 25 40, he kind of touches on this of what the whole essence of it is. And the king will answer and say to them, assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. And if you want to know what's before that and after that before that, he's on a parable about a bridegroom with oil in her lamp being prepared for Jesus to come and servants going out and doing what their master asked.

And then he drops this bomb that if you do things unto the least of these, you're literally doing it to Jesus. And then he goes on to even say again, if you don't do that, I will say, I don't know you. You never knew me, and I never want to be in that place. I would never, ever, ever want to get to heaven. Think I did all these great things.

But because I wasn't with Jesus, he says, I don't know you. So the big part of salt is that, one, if you're doing things unto the least of these so the freshman that Reed teaches, or Jacob, when I'm the poor soul that needs a League of Legends partner, right? You're literally doing that to Jesus. I would hope you would be way more hyped to see whatever difficult person or thing you have in front of you and know that that's literally like, jesus is asking me to be with them. And you would be so excited to do that because Jesus died for you.

So I would hope if he's your Lord and Savior, you'd want to serve Him in any way possible. But he's saying the least of these. If you do that to them, you're doing that to me. I think that's a huge place to kind of start your view of what being salt is.

And so to see some people that kind of do that and talk through it, I'm going to kind of give some examples, but right now, I'm going to give my best john Piper impersonation. But is this a tragedy right here? I got this from Reader's Digest. Okay, I didn't actually get this from Reader's Digest, but I wanted to throw that in because I like a laugh. So.

Thank you, John. The rest of you are confused if you have no idea who John Piper is. But I truly do want to compare two things like he did in that sermon and ask which one is the tragedy? So this first one, we got a leader, ambiguous, no one's specific, that is doing good, quote unquote. They're super pumped about getting people to club.

They're super adamant about getting as many signed up for camp. They have a huge Bible study, huge campaigners. Tons of people are meeting Jesus. They're at all the games, they're at all the things they're doing, all the conversations, right? The ministry is thriving, and they're proud of how they look in comparison to this thing that they have built.

Specifically, they is the key word versus random Christian. Out of nowhere. In olden times, we'll say when smallpox first appeared and this person noticed that people were quarantining themselves, and if you got it, they would literally just throw you out in the streets and be like, don't associate with us. And there's dead bodies lined up in the streets of people just dying from smallpoxia nowhere else to go. And instead of isolating themselves, this Christian decided to go out into those crowds of people to care for them in whatever need.

And before even seeing any of them sit healed in their efforts, they themselves died and never got to see any of the work that they were doing because they just decided to step out. Which of those is a tragedy? My argument is that the first one is the tragedy, and the second one is awesome. The first one, all those things are great. We run club.

We do all those things. I want you guys to do that. That's awesome. I want that for me. But the thing is that we view our success through the lens of how good our ministry is doing, how good we're able to do this or that, and all of a sudden, our riches are stored up in these things and not in Jesus.

And so if you've heard the John Piper sermon, he makes the joke about someone collecting shells and showing that to the Lord. I would argue that sometimes we get caught up that we would go to the Lord and be like, Lord, here's my ministry that I did. But then all of a sudden, the Lord's like, I never knew you. What is that? Because it was not through the enjoyment and awesomeness that comes with following Him in his every step, we view this thing that we need to accomplish when we don't even know what tomorrow holds.

Like the Lord specifically tells us, just trust me day by day. That's why I literally invented sleep for you, so that every day you can just trust me in a new way, and that's what our life should look like. And so I'm not saying, by the way, that all of us, when COVID starts ramping back up, should just go like hug and kiss people with COVID I don't know. But in this example, this is a true thing that I guarantee you has happened. I'll probably meet someone in heaven.

That was this exact person I just mentioned, because it was a very common thing that Christians were the forefront in the first outbreak of smallpox to helping cure it, because they would actually go into it that there's somebody that on an outside looking in thinks that was a complete waste. Like you threw away your life. Some of those people might not even have been healed in the efforts you had, but they went faithfully where the Lord asked them to go, and nothing about that is a waste in my eyes. I think that is literally the coolest thing ever, actually. And so that might be convicting, trust me, as convicting as the Lord was teaching me this, to view it that way.

But we get caught up a lot in while you guys are great at being salt, we get caught up in wanting to be salt instead of wanting Jesus to show us how to be salt and to desire Him above all that. So we'll get into that deeper but just ways. I think people were great at this that I think most of us should have a good picture of because we all read the books last year, but CT, stud and Gladys, we read that. We got those books last year. My favorite parts of the book, not even Close, is not the parts where tons of people meet Jesus.

Those are awesome. I love that, don't get me wrong. But my favorite parts of those books is one in C. T. Sud is when he's in China at the time, he's learning the language and he gets roasted because all him and his budies are like, screw learning the language.

We're just going to pray that God is just going to implant it in our head like he did that at Pentecost. He can do it with us and. Hudson Taylor, another epic legend, comes up to him and roasts the crap out of him and says, even if I could bestow that upon you or myself right now, I wouldn't do it. Because the process of learning the language is getting ingrained with the culture, being with the people and saturating in that and letting the Lord build upon that. You don't need some fancy miracle to learn the language.

I want you to be in it with them because that's a part of being salt. That was like my favorite part of CT Stud. I love that he got roasted on that, because I promise you, we probably all get caught up in the same thing of Lord. Can you just instantly make this happen or make this look that way or change this in my life or give me this sort of thing when the Lord's like, I'm literally giving it to you? You're just not seeing the day by day process with me and the way that it comes forth.

And my plan is so much better than your so weekly minded dream of just having something implanted out of nowhere that you would forget about the next day anyway, and then you move on to Gladys. I call her glady the baddie. I don't know. She has a great nickname. She's awesome.

If you read the book, she's freaking does. I don't even think she like she was really the goal was to spread the gospel, but the whole time she's doing it through being salt. Like, have you read the book at all? It's freaking awesome. My favorite one, I'll get to in a second, but she literally reformed a prison.

She got a job that was releasing all these ties that were helping women have healthy feet in China because they used to tie them together or something. It was literally her job to go remove that. She adopted like a million children. She was helping people escape when China was getting invaded early on. And there's just a list of things that she just keeps doing that was just serving people.

And my favorite one, my favorite one, she worked so hard to get to China in this one little town she didn't even know, but the Lord brought her here. And there's this older lady that's there that's doing mission work. And then there's only one guy that met Jesus in the town that's like a cook, and they own this little place and they were trying to make a goal of how to spread the gospel. And basically the idea was if you could get their mules or whatever into the stables, somehow they're not going to leave. And so they're forced to stay in her inn.

And while the older lady's in there in the nice warm inn chatting up about the gospel, getting to share all that stuff, another dude's cooking up a good meal and they're getting to share in that. Gladys is literally trying to get mules to get into a stall and then proceeds to clean the muck and crap off of these things.

The whole time, though, she's sitting there praying that as they hear the gospel that it would saturate and that they would meet Jesus. And it makes me tear up. I cried a lot more last time, but tears are still going to come. It makes me tear up because I desperately want to trust Jesus that much that if he stuck me in a manure field stable and said, this is like your task from me, you should faithfully adore and love that, that's changing the kingdom forever in that way. Because I don't know if I would I like shiny things, not poop.

But that might be what he asked us to step into. And so to kind of mention my life, it's hard. It's really hard. When I actually was faced with this difficult understanding of what being salt is truly, is that I was like, I don't know if I'm salty, I think I've done salt things, but am I truly a salty person that you asked me to be? Like, at one point I felt that my first year weekend ever.

Rick isaiah 68. Try to flip to it if I don't miss it. There we go. Missed it last time. Isaiah 68.

It's something I literally, for a long time, the only thing that I actually wrote something in my Bible because it impacted me that much. It's something I would say to myself every day, but Isaiah 68, it says also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, here I am. Send me. And I was just placed on Dayton at the time, and I was just starting to see how the town was.

And an hour felt like a minute as I was in the prayer room on my knees weeping because I was begging him to send me. And he did. I definitely got sent. I'm still getting sent. Freaking.

Me and Brooke probably know more than anyone they're in the midst of all the craziness, had crazy things themselves. And there's a point this is a disclaimer for myself more than you guys, but I just want to proclaim it. There's a point where I'd want to share this because I'd want to seem like the greatest supper for Jesus, but there's so much selfishness he's had to rip out of me with that, that I truly am sharing this because I want you to see how the Lord has impacted my life. So in the midst of all this, just like the guy with the cart, I was feeling like a good person, doing good things, and I stopped there. But Dayton is really tough.

Dayton has more broken families than ones that are together. There's a lot of drug abuse, a lot of broken things. Like Emma had a girl at camp that was in her one on one saying, like, I just could never believe in Jesus with how awful my life's been with my I think her dad's dead or either in prison. Her mom ODS on some type of drug every month almost. It seems her mom's got a boyfriend that says really creepy things to her.

It's just like, what kid deserves a life like that?

And I'd love to say that was the one off ball, but I hear that from every kid and it drains on you. It just continues to pound on you. And I always would think if I could just see a bunch of meeting Jesus and cool things and I'd have a campaigners group and all this, then that would feel so much better. But I don't have that. As a matter of fact, past Nolan, if you know who that is, there's nobody that's even attempted to try to run with me.

Nolan's great. But then there's this next guy. I'm not going to drop names because I'm giving too much business about him, but if you know him, you know him. I know Mia dealt with this a lot, but the next guy up. Awesome things were happening with him.

Like super broken home, like tough stuff about it. And he was in a bad place. A lot of drug abuse was for sure addicted to it, but the Lord was pulling him out of it. Weird it is to have a Bible study. And my first question is, what drug did you do this week?

Like, starting off, but he would tell me because he knew I wouldn't judge him. And we would work through that and let the Lord do what he's doing. And he got to such a cool place where he was, like, wanting to spread it. But then COVID happened, and his mom passed away from COVID and he fell right into this pit of drug abuse.

And it just kept getting worse. And he kept distinguishing himself from me till a point where literally at 10:00, after a basketball game, he asked me to get canes. And we proceed to sit in the car as he tells me how he was about to take his own life the day before.

And it's hard to see the goodness of what you're doing in that moment. And it's not like it got easier. So he fades away, distance himself from me. I get two guys that say they want to start a Bible study with me within one week. They both just say, like, I don't really want to talk to you anymore and don't talk to me anymore.

And then I had dudes I was hanging out with, and then none of them wanted to hang out with me. And so I had like, not that numbers are a big deal, but I had three dudes that didn't even really want to be at the camp trip. And they're all being buttheads. And I'm like, whatever. But then I come home, the basketball coach resigns.

The last thing I had to be with kids I don't even have anymore for the moment being because there's no coach. And I'm just sitting there with my hands up in the air like, Jesus. At some point you have me so pumped to go and now it's hard to even get out of my bed, to step out into the streets of it.

What is this? Is this right? Am I doing something wrong? And so much discouragement fell upon me, like I was drowning in discouragement. Sorry, that snot runs out of my nose, by the way.

But in all of that discouragement, the Lord started to show me that it was more than just doing good things than doing the right things, making the things that look good look good. And I like this little joke I threw in there. I was being salty instead of being salty. So salty is a term, whatever, you get it.

And it turns out my selfishness and pride was leading the charge in the midst of all this discouragement. And so I dare say that a lot of you guys can relate to some of these moments of discouragement in whatever different walks of life and places you have it. I'm sure you can relate.

Like I said before, you guys are great at being salt, but for some reason we are terrible at seeing the beauty that comes in the midst of being salt. And so that goes into the third point, and that is the mindset salty people should have. There's a big difference between someone who wants to look like they're salty and someone that is actually salty. So a good one. To kind of point this out, it was the first person Jesus Loki asked to be salty in a weird way, the rich young ruler in Mark ten.

If you want to flip there, feel free.

Mark Ten, how are we doing on time, by the way? What time is it? Oh, I'm shedding. We'll get it, we'll get there. Mark 1021, where we're starting.

So this guy comes up to Jesus, he's asking how he can get into heaven, basically, and Jesus says, Double checking on the right spot. Mark 1021. Yeah. So then Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, one thing you lack, go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come take up the cross and follow me. But he was sad at this word and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions and just I guess I should just go ahead and read this one too.

But Luke 1732, jesus kind of emphasizes this point even more that he was imploring to try to make with this rich young ruler. So Luke 17 32 33. Jesus says, Remember Lot's wife? Cool thing, by the way, how I said this is all connected. Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt, as we're talking about salt.

So cool. But remember, Lot's wife, whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. Preserve. That's the thing salt does. Cool.

What Jesus is trying to point out to this rich, young ruler as he asks him to be salty is that he's talking to him personally. I want to make that very clear. He's not saying this so that everyone's like, oh, we got to do the exact same thing this guy does. No. Nowhere in the Bible does it say, get rid of everything you own.

Usually it talks about tithing, which is like a portion of it not even a whole thing. It was specific to this guy. He had riches held up, and he knew that was the thing he was clinging to. And so he said, you have one thing with love. Told him to get rid of it and give it to the poor and be salty and do that instead, instead of holding on to that.

And he finishes it with follow me. Like, take up the cross and follow me. The only thing Jesus wanted from this guy was not the riches to be passed amongst the poor people. He wanted to. That's a good part.

And if you interact with poor people, your idea of how money works and stuff changes a lot. But that wasn't what was going on. Jesus was begging this guy to get rid of the things he was clinging to so that the only thing left was Him and Jesus, and he could follow along. And that was the way to get there, was to be salty so that he could be with Jesus. And so how I said, this is a really hard thing to do to be salt.

The reason you can get through it is because Jesus is not asking to follow some rules or for you to puff yourself up, but he's asking because he wants you so desperately. And in the midst of salt, you will find so much of his goodness. In the midst of sorrow, pain, frustration, all the good stuff. And that's why he asks us.

Two big kind of things that really stunk into heart knowledge for me was one's, a quote from a book, and it says, discouragement is disillusioned self love, and self love may be love for my devotion to Jesus, not love for Jesus himself.

Like, how many times have I and I'm sure you guys been discouraged by this or that going the wrong way. That's just you loving yourself. You know how crazy that is? It's not you loving Jesus in that moment or loving these kids so much that you're like, there's discontentment for people not knowing Jesus, but to be straight up discouraged is pride and selfishness and love for yourself, and you miss the mark where Jesus just wants you to love Him. That's why he's asking you to do it.

And so we get into how are we like the rich young ruler? We don't have these great riches, I don't think any of us do, but yet we store up our riches a lot of the times. An idea of how we serve Jesus instead of just Him Himself. We have all these things we cling to like our ministry or what we're doing for Him, or how good my relationship is with Jesus compared to others. And we miss actually being with Jesus Himself and we don't shed those apart.

And from that we get so discouraged because then we're not resting, but we're instead putting all this stuff on our shoulders that's not ours to begin with, it's his. And so the second thing that got deep into my heart is that his goal has never been the end or success of how you follow Him. The clubs, the campaigners, the people that meet Jesus, how good you spend time with Him has never been the goal, has never been the measure of your success with Him. The measure of your success is simply the process of following Him in the midst of the day to day as you are choosing to follow Jesus. That is the most success you can ever have as a follower of Jesus.

That's where all your success lies because you're putting it in his hands and he's molding you and crafting you and getting the gross things out. You still have so many gross things. Like Rick was saying, we got planks in our eyes, like what are we missing? And then we're out here trying to perform miracles when we're gross things ourselves, when that's Jesus's job.

I wanted to end there and I'm kind of pissed about it because the Lord's cool and it makes me mad how stupid I am sometimes, but I wanted to just end there. Like, we are going to do hard things and you're just going to have to trust Jesus. And I love Ecclesiastes. I'm an Edge Lord and I wanted to just be there and I wanted to say, like, I still got tough stuff going on, but there's a disservice if I end there. Because in the midst of the hardship, there's a big difference between being content where the Lord has you and not just like, if nothing's happening, nothing's happening, whatever, but there should still be such great expectance for what the Lord's going to do in the midst of it.

You should know time and time again the Lord showed it and if you don't see it, there was a great talk. I hope it's on deep roots that you should go listen from Trish Payette at a leadership where she was imploring us. Like, don't miss what the Lord has right in front of you in this moment. Don't let discouragement take the mantle. You don't need these big awesome things to show to God and say, here it is, he's showing you things every day.

Did that kid say hi to you at that football game? Like, were you able to beat this one thing that you've been struggling with right there's? Lists and lists of small little things that are monumental in the kingdom of heaven that the Lord is begging you to see, but you've closed your eyes to it.

And I myself have done that. And I forget that the work that I'm doing, I press on knowing that the Lord's going to complete it. The sower and the reaper will rejoice in heaven together because the Lord brings the growth. And it's a blessing. I love college.

It's a blessing that I get to see you guys basically take these dudes that I thought were like, there's not a chance, and all of a sudden they become followers of freaking Jesus. Like, there's Joey. Who's one. But literally as I was writing this, and this is the part that pisses me off because I wasn't going to add this, but it's freaking awesome, and I'm going to cry reading it. Is that Nolan, that dude that's in college, that guy that I was talking about that was telling me about suicide and stuff like that, nolan got it to come to a worship night, and Nolan texted me, just some encouragement for you.

We just had worship night, and I noticed something different about this guy during it. We talked afterwards, and he said ever since stuff happened with his family, he hasn't felt God or had any kind of feeling in his words until today. He said he doesn't just want to get back to where he was. He wants to get closer to God than he ever was before.

And I get to sit in all this muck and get a little beacon of hope from the Lord that this dude named Nolan that I got to talk to is out here loving this other kid that in my brain was going to help me teach other kids about Jesus. But the Lord is so faithful to the work that you guys do, and he's going to complete it. We press on knowing that he will complete the finished work, and it's not ours to complete. So I'm begging you, leave the discouragement to the side. Stop loving yourself so much that you have to do this or that and just trust that the Lord's asking you to be salt.

And in the midst of it, you're not going to know. You're not even going to be able to see right in front of you. But you just got to trust and step out in faith knowing that this hardship produces fruit that you couldn't imagine. And that person that died with the smallpox trying to dedicate to them, there's going to be glorious moments in heaven of people that were probably saved from that.

We press on because we know Jesus died on the cross, and he's got everything covered for us. So while you guys are great at salt. Stop being stupid like me and thinking that that's the measure of your success. Get in the midst of that filth and trust like the Lord is causing success just by listening. I hope you guys have awesome campaigners groups and different things like that, but if you don't, my least favorite thing is when someone said our numbers were down for Club.

I don't give a crap you had one person show up. I haven't had Club in forever. But the Lord is so faithful in wherever he's asking you to go. So go expectant. And through that you'll be able to endure whatever muck comes your way.

Whatever salty task he puts in front of you, it's just going to be the overflow. And it feels so much better to not have the pride of I'm a good person, but instead knowing that I'm a filthy person, that the Lord can use me in such a radically awesome way. So let me pray and stop snouting all over the place. God, thank you for this day. Thank you for the people in this room.

Thank you for how your words cut deep into us. I pray whatever plains were pointed out in their lives while sitting in here that they can continue to meditate on and ask you about. And Lord, that we can just become salty people. Not people who speak a good big game and look like salt, but people that when we come to you, you're going to say, well done, our good and faithful servant, not the other way around. If I didn't know you, because we do it in pursuit of you and your goodness, knowing that we're nothing without you.

So help us to be the salt of the earth, Lord Jesus name, I pray two minutes past my allotted time. I'm sorry. He's not sorry. He's not sorry.

Now we're going to see but me and me, a friend from my.