Gather With Girls And Make Disciples

Prayer For Listeners And Mentorship

Salt Of The Earth Identity

Light Of The World Identity

Plug Back In Through Scripture

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey friends, we're back, episode five in the So Blessed series. We've been walking through the Sermon on the Mount, at least the first part of it in Matthew chapter five. We've spent the last four episodes walking through the Beatitudes, talking about Jesus' invitation for us to experience his blessing in our lives. And we've got more of that to come. Although we've wrapped up the Beatitudes, there's more in Matthew chapter five that talks about who we are. Today we're talking about identity, who we actually are in Christ. And that is a blessing. And it takes us to a blessed place when we're feeling like we're struggling to receive the blessing or walk in the blessing. So I look forward to digging into that. Just a reminder, we gather here on the podcast to encourage you to gather with the girls in your life, the women in your life. For example, my 15-year-old daughter, she's gathering her friends this Friday night. They're going to make prayer boards together. And she grew up in middle school gathering with friends. We would use the Brave Girls Gather content. And now, as a freshman in high school, she's coming up with her own ideas because she knows the power of gathering. When we gather, we not only experience the beauty of being with one another, but we also get to grow together in Christ and we get to be equipped to walk out the purposes that God has for us while having a good time. And so we encourage you to not limit yourself to the resources that we put out. But if God inspires you to create a fun night for the girls in your life, do it, run with it. Grab a friend so you're not in and alone who can help you with the ideas and pulling things together and just make the most of it and see what God does. I encourage you in the next couple of weeks to consider how God might want to use you in the lives of the girls in your life. But we want to gather together and we encourage you to gather together, grow together in Christ, and then go make disciples because we don't want to just get together and share good information, but we want to get together and experience transformation that leads to multiplication. And that transformation comes from the power of the Holy Spirit. So before we go a minute further, I want to pray for us. Heavenly Father, thank you so much just for being who you are, God, being a God who loves us to a measure we cannot even begin to fully grasp and explain in this human condition, God. But I pray for each person on the other side of my voice, whether it be a high school girl who's navigating difficulty or who's considering pulling some friends together and doing something fun, or whether it's a woman who's wanting to connect more deeply with the girls within her arm's reach, or an older woman who sees the younger women in her life and feels called to pour in. Lord, I pray that by the power of your Holy Spirit, that we would get a glimpse of your goodness and your love today, that you just give us a little bit more of an understanding of who you are as we understand who we are in you. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Something we always emphasize here on the podcast and throughout our content is the value of intergenerational relationships. We need someone who's more mature than us, who's lived a bit longer, who's walked through things that we haven't yet walked through, uh, who probably were gonna walk through some things and they've walked through those things, and we need their wisdom. So if you don't have that in your life, or if you are that more mature believer and you don't have that person who you're pouring into, I encourage you to start praying about that now and ask God, who is it? Who's the person you want me or people you want me to pour into, or who's that person, God, you want me to reach out to and invite to mentor me to extend that invitation. So let's jump into today's content. So again, we've already walked through the first 12 verses of Matthew 5. If you haven't heard about it, go back and listen to the first four episodes. You'll get a lot of great information there that will lead into today. So let's dig into today's content. Again, we've already walked through the first 12 verses of Matthew chapter 5, talking about the blessed bees, the beatitudes. And today we are getting into verses 13 through 16. And in this section of scripture, Jesus talks about us and he calls us, his followers, salt and light. I want you to just pause for a minute and I want you to consider what does salt and light mean to you? Let's start with salt. I don't know about you, but I like to have some salt on my food. I like to have salt on my fries. Uh, you know, I am a sucker for some five guys fries. Sometimes my daughter and I, we will just call in to five guys and order a fry and we'll just share some fries, and they're so good. But one thing that makes me a little less happy is when those fries aren't salted properly. Salt makes things taste better. It also preserves, especially during the time when Jesus was delivering this sermon. Salt was used to preserve. It was used to stop things from decaying. And so, what does it mean when Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth? He's speaking into our identity. He's saying, you through me make the world taste better. You preserve what is good, you prevent decay. And if you're like, well, how does that apply to me? Like maybe put it in terms of my own experience. Just consider your days, maybe yesterday. The people who you come in contact with, people at school, people at your workplace, people in your homeschool community, people in your very home. When you are present as a follower of Jesus carrying the Holy Spirit, you make the world taste better. You make life when it tastes bitter, you make it taste better. And you might be like, well, maybe I don't see myself doing that. Well, that's because there are times and there are days and there are seasons where the enemy will cause us to forget who we are. Our problems mount, uh, we get caught in a cycle of negativity and we forget who we are. And that is a significant strategy of what the enemy uses. He uses lies and he uses an attack on our identity, causing us to forget who we are. But when we consider that through the Holy Spirit in us, when we show up in a place, we make the bitter better, we preserve what is good, we prevent the good things, the righteous things from decaying, that's an encouraging thought. I don't know where you are this morning. I don't know how you're feeling this morning. I don't know if you're feeling down, I don't know if you feel like you're lacking purpose. But Jesus is saying, he's not just saying that you're gonna do this, that you're gonna be the salt of the earth. He's saying you are the salt of the earth. I liken it to if you are a daughter in a family and you live in a particular city and you go to a particular school, or if you're a woman and you work at a certain place and you are a wife. Those are things that just identify who you are and they don't change. And this is who Jesus says we are. He's telling his disciples, you are the salt of the earth. Next, Jesus calls his followers the light of the world. Let's consider light for a minute. We can more appreciate light if we consider what it's like to be in the dark. When you're in the dark and you can't see, you stumble, you can run into things. It's harder to navigate because why? You can't see. I realized the significance of light in a fresh new way. A little over a year ago, about a year and a half ago, when a hurricane came through Tampa, Florida and wiped out the segment of the city where I lived, wiped out the electricity. And it wasn't just like the homes went dark, but the street lamps went dark and the stoplights went dark. And so when you were driving down the road at night, it literally looked like you were in a different place. You couldn't even really see very much where you were going. It was scary. You had the lights on your car, but it was just barely lighting up the road before you because the lights that normally illuminate the sky around you were out. And so that's what walking in darkness can feel like. And if we're navigating through even our home in the middle of the night, we're trying to be quiet, we're prone to stumble into something because we can't see. And so Jesus says, your identity, and this this is for you, listener, your identity is you are the light of the world. You walk into places where there is darkness and there is a light illuminating off of you. You brighten up the place. Again, whether that's at your school or your workplace or someplace in your community, even at your church, you are the light of the world. Followers of Jesus illuminate spaces. You might have your own personal places where you're walking through something and you might consider that's darkness. That feels like a place of darkness. When you gather together with other believers, their light is shining into that darkness. And the opposite is also true when you have someone in your life who's walking through a deep dark place. Maybe it's even someone who's not a follower of Jesus. You illuminate the light of Christ just by being present. And again, this is a place where we can forget our identity. We can feel like, I'm not light. Do you know what my life is like? I'm walking in darkness right now, is what it feels like. And that's a place where, again, we forget who we are. We forget that we are the light of the world. And that's something that can't be taken from us. It is just who we are. And through the study of the scripture, we get recharged. It's kind of like, you know, there's certain types of lights where you plug them in and it charges up the light, right? And then it the light will go for a while. But if you want the light to continue working, eventually it's going to burn out. You got to plug it back in, or you got to switch the light bulb. And so when we get into the word of God, it's like plugging into the charger and it's recharging our hearts. And this is why our time with Jesus daily and our time in his word matters. Because we get our eyes reopened and we get our hearts reawakened to who we are. And I certainly hope that is part of what you are experiencing today. Now, our connect with God moment in this section of scripture is to consider how God wants us to live out our identity as salt and light to those around us. Maybe for some of you, it's you need to step into that. It's you need to tell yourself, I am the salt of the earth. I am the light of the world. Ask God to give you a vision of the fullness of what that looks like in your workplace, in your home, in your school. Let's be silent before him right now and ask him for that vision. Now, I just gave us a little bit of time there, but if you need more time, I want to encourage you to pause the podcast and take the time. If you have the time, take the time to sit with the Lord longer on that and write that down and share it with someone you trust. Now, if you're following along with a Bible study that goes with this podcast series, you're gonna see that at the end there's a connect with others moment. And this is an opportunity for you to consider someone in your life who needs to experience the salt and light inside of you. Maybe it's someone who's walking through something that's making them bitter and they need the better words inside of you to encourage and lift them up. Or maybe it's someone who's walking through something really heavy and really hard, and there's a small way that you can bless them either today or later this week. Consider that as you move on with the rest of your day. And until we meet back here again, our hope is that you will gather with the girls in your life, that you will grow closer to Jesus and each other, and that you will go and make disciples.