What's in Your Salt Shaker?
When life shakes us, what’s inside will come out. Does it carry the flavor of Christ?
What happens when you shake it? Whatever is inside comes out. If there is salt in there, salt comes out. If it is filled with something else, that is what people are going to get. When life shakes us, people can see what we are seasoned with. They can hear it in what we say and see it in how we walk. The salt that comes out can become our testimony, and the light lets others see whom that testimony points to...
I am not saying I have responded perfectly every time I have been shaken. I am saying we need to pay attention to what comes out. And you better bet certain people do take note on their mental clipboard and hold you to it.
In my case, since I profess to be a devout follower of Jesus Christ, if what is shaken out of me doesn't carry the flavor of Christ, I need to do some serious soul-searching and allow Jesus to examine my heart.
Jesus asked what good salt is if it loses its flavor. I don't want to go through the motions of calling myself a Christian and never examine how I am living.
What about you?
Some people walk down the aisle, profess Jesus as Lord and Savior, get baptized, and go through the whole nine yards.
But Jesus' words in Matthew 7:21–23 ought to make us stop and check ourselves: “I never knew you.”
I do not want to use those words to pronounce judgment on somebody else.
I want to ask whether I truly know Him and whether I am walking the walk as well as talking the talk.
The day I made a profession was not the end of my walk with Jesus.
"There are some that seems stuck on those facts, but works without faith is dead, and so is faith without works...They say they are going to heaven someday, but are they? I wonder if you know of someone like that. I do. When things shake in their lives, what stays and what goes?"
I have been shaken in my own life. My job history, my divorces, my mental breakdowns, and going on disability in 2002 are all part of what I have lived through. God has been faithful to me even during times when I have not been faithful to serve Him.
My faith was still there through all those years I was shaken, even when my devotion to the Word of God and the body of Christ was here and there.
I got 'remarried' in 2010, and in 2012 I started blogging.
Around those years, I began to see how much closer I needed to be to God. The desire to draw closer led me to put His Word ahead of the other things in my day that tried to take priority. I can't give you one exact date when everything changed. I can tell you that somewhere along the way, a light switched on inside me.
My outlook, which had once been so negative, began to change.
I remember being put on Abilify in 2006 and staying on it. My voices stopped, though nothing else did.
My thoughts were clearer than they had been for decades, and I was able to distinguish each thought, single out the negative ones, and block them. That medication saved my life, It helped me during that timeframe.
I then started to catch thoughts before I put them into practice. I would ask myself whether they lined up with Jesus and His instruction in the Word.
If they didn't, I didn't have to follow them.
I could bring them captive to the obedience of Christ, as 2 Corinthians 10:5 says, and cast off the negative self-talk that had entangled me.
Having a thought and choosing to live it out are two different things. God was teaching me that I could respond, or not, to whatever was going on in my mind.
Then, on November 1, 2025, I began reading one chapter of the Bible a day.
That may not sound like much to some people. For me, it has been way more than reading. I have tried daily Bible reading plans off and on for decades.
A chapter in the Old Testament, a chapter in the New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs—I could not keep up, and eventually those plans fell by the wayside. I needed to tone it down to one chapter a day.
Why one chapter? Just go with me to a mental snapshot in my mind and see it all from a different angle...
Let me take you back to eighth-grade football 1977.
I wasn't from a sports-oriented family, and I didn't know a lick split about football. I spent almost the whole season warming the bench. In the last game, they finally put me on the field. I think I was a tight end.
The coaches and everyone were yelling, “Go! Go! Go!”
And I stood there blank because I didn't know what the “Sam Hill” I was doing. I still don't know why anybody expected me to know.
I have even wondered whether my parents had something to do with my ending up in football, but I don't know that for sure. I hated it!!
Guess who we were playing that night? The El Dorado Wildcats!😂
That is what a big reading plan can feel like to someone who needs to learn one step at a time.
You cannot hand somebody instructions to build something and expect the whole thing to be built overnight...
One chapter a day was a step I could take, and then take again the next day.
I have read through the New Testament already since November 1, and today I am on Genesis 30, continuing through the Old Testament one chapter at a time. If I keep that pace, I could finish around March 16, 2029. But the date is not the heart of what this has done for me.
The Word has become so enriching to my spirit.
I can now slow down and relish the sweet smell and savor every morsel of the Living Word!
It nourishes me in a healthy way, and I can tell that my spirit loves it.
Sometimes I find a little nugget of truth or a tidbit of knowlege just to carry with me through the day.
Within this last year, that devotion has brought me to a place in God's presence where I need to be.
I don't choose to leave the presence of God's Spirit behind at all.
When I step out of my bedroom door, aka my prayer closet door, my desire is to keep walking in the presence of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus' name. What He puts into me in private is what I hope people will see when life shakes me in public.
Hebrews 12:26–28 speaks of what can be shaken being removed and of receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
Those verses are speaking of God's unshakable kingdom. They also make me consider my own life: what am I holding on to, and what has God been working in me through the shaking?
I hope that when people see me shaken, they see a man who is strong in his faith and devoted to Jesus, no matter what happens...
Things may still need to fall away from me as He works, but my desire is to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29).
So what is in your shaker?
What comes out when life shakes you?
If something comes out that doesn't line up with Jesus, take it to Him.
Spend time in His presence.
Let His Word feed your spirit, even if you begin with one chapter a day.
And when He carries you through the shaking, don't hide your testimony.
Let the salt come out, and let your light point people back to Jesus.
That gives Him all the glory, seasoned with grace!!
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