Ep 62: Salt and Sugar

0:00 Well, good morning, I'm Daniel Dalp and this is for your Sunday Morning drive, the short podcast with the goal of providing some motivation, some drive and encouragement on your way to worship and helping you recenter your mind on those spiritual things on hectic Sunday mornings. We are brought to you by the Ministry League network of podcasts. Ministry League offers some awesome resources and other shows that you can listen to and find all of them free and all of them available through their app or through ministryleague.com. I'm so thankful that you're making us a part of your weekly routine. If you do have time or you have a moment, give us a share with a friend and leave us a rating or review wherever you listen. Let's go ahead and get the show on the road.

0:40 This is episode 62, Salt and sugar. Let's go to church. Are we there yet? Have you ever heard the phrase salt and sugar look the same? Now, I'd never heard it until recently, but it's true. And if you've ever reached into your pantry and grabbed the salt when you were meaning to grab the sugar, it'll be a jolt to your taste buds, especially if it's an ingredient for cooking or baking. The end result just isn't going to come out quite right. And while they might look indistinguishable, their nature, their purpose, and their tastes are completely different. And that isn't to say that 1 is better than the other, but they're just both intended for different things. You can't just swap one out for the other when you're in a pinch.

1:40 Here's an example. During the COVID years, it seemed that people got into one of three things. You either made bread, you were either getting chickens, or you were watching Tiger King. I'm never going to financially recover from this. I got the 1st and the last one. One of those times I was trying to make bread. I was using this recipe and I happened to mix up the salt and the sugar. It wasn't great, but salt and sugar look the same. So how was I to know? If you pay attention, that is a pretty easy thing to solve. But how do we solve this problem in a more spiritual sense? Well, it it's solved through discernment. And I think there is some spiritual, if not some practical application that we can take away from this old saying not everything that looks good is good for us.

2:26 And this can take all kinds of forms and it can manifest in all different kinds of ways. For instance, in our relationships, someone might look kind and trustworthy and even supportive, but they turn out to be manipulative and harmful and sometimes even hateful when out of the public eye. And that's not just in our romantic relationships. That can unfortunately even take hold and happen between brethren. Or we look at the opportunities that might open up to us. Something that looks like it could be or a step in the right direction could just be a bad decision in disguise. And of course, spiritually, something might sound churchy. It might have a Christian tone to it. It might even be spoken with authority or with confidence and the individual that speaks. It might even have a lot of followers. But we got to be careful.

3:12 We have to have discernment because that thing that sounds really good to us in the moment, it could be the snarl of a wolf instead of the bleeding of a sheep. Matthew Chapter 7 verse 15 says Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from the thorn bushes, nor vigs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. And a good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and it's thrown into the fire. So you will know them by their fruit, fruits just like that bread, salt and sugar might look the same, and so might a wolf cause plain as a sheep.

4:00 But their fruits, their taste, their results, that's where the true measurement is. And of course, don't necessarily trust your own intuition, either your own conscience or your own wisdom, unless it is tempered by the Word and the wisdom of God. Proverbs chapter 14, verse 12. There is a way which seems right to a man, but it's end is the way of of death. We've all been there. Something might seem right, it might look right, it might even taste good. But if our discernment is not guided by the Word of God, we just won't come out right. We might even be salty when we should be sweet and sweet when we should be salty. Isaiah chapter 5, verse 20. The end of that verse says woe to those who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

4:45 Be wise, be careful, and learn the difference between salt and sugar with godly discernment. Well, those are my thoughts for your Sunday morning drive. Now it's time to hear yours. And as always, don't forget that you can always share your comments or your thoughts to our discussion questions at for your Sunday morningdrive.com. Our discussion questions for today are how do we go about acquiring godly discernment in terms of salt, sugar, and unintended consequences? What has been a time in your life where you got one when you expected the other? And how did you learn from that going forward? And what scriptures come to mind when you you think of having a discerning heart?