Making the Most of the Opportunity

"Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned, as it were, with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person." Colossians 4:5-6

I love how Paul says that we should "make the most of the opportunity" when he refers to our conduct with unbelievers.  We are to use wisdom and carefully consider how our conduct will influence unbelievers.  And then we make sure that our speech is like salt, preserving our testimony.  In Bible times, salt wasn't used to make french fries taste better, but it was used to prevent food from spoiling.  Thus, our speech is to be a preservative for our testimony.

When was the last time you considered how your conduct and speech would influence unbelievers?  I'm in my 4th year of graduate school and am surrounded by many unbelievers.  This verse has been a challenge to me, to make sure that I remember to maintain my testimony while showing love to unbelievers.  But sometimes when I'm not thinking about it,  I  forget that my conduct and speech still important. For example, I'm pretty sure my response to the telemarketer I talked to yesterday was not speech, like salt.  It was much more acidic and it ended abruptly when I hung up.

For stay-at-home moms and people who don't have a regular group of unbelievers to be around.  We need to make the most of the opportunities we do have.  So when someone rings your door bell to sell you cookies, or when the girl at the Target check-out counter wants to talk.  Let's conduct ourselves with wisdom and make the most of the opportunity by speaking words of salt!