Daily Reading: Mark 9
Scripture Focus: For everyone will be salted with fire. (Mark 9.49)
Devotional Thought: When in South Carolina, I love getting a ham biscuit. Not just any ham biscuit, but a salt-cured ham biscuit! It is delicious! There’s nothing quite like southern, salt-cured ham!
Before refrigeration was available, meats were sometimes preserved through a process called salt-curing. The salt would draw out the moisture from the meat and prevent the meat from spoiling. Another process to cure meats was smoking, where the meat was preserved by exposing it to smoke that sealed it and removed the moisture from it. It was this process to which Jesus referred in Mark 9, when he said “Everyone will be salted with fire.” Impurities will be removed and destinies will be set.
There are two fires that salt people. One is the fire of the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist said of Jesus, “He will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” This baptism removes impurity (sin) and preserves (seals) us in Christ. The other fire that salts us is the fire of adversity. Trials and troubles of life purify us in another way. They make us focus on what is important. In this kind of purification and preservation, we – as disciples of Jesus – “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely… [to] run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12.1).
Have you been salted with fire? Adversity is a part of life, whether we seek it or not: "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward" (Job 5.7). So, do not fret if you have adversity. Instead remember it is purifying and preserving you.
The purifying, preserving fire of the Holy Spirit, however, is something you can seek. Have you prayed to be filled with the Spirit?
Prayer: Lord, when I go through the fires of adversity, help me to rely on you. Purify my soul, O God! Fill me with the Holy Spirit and fire that I might be “salted with fire.” Amen.
Psalm of the Day: 6.6-10
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