Devotional: Seasoned with Salt

Leviticus 2:13 'And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt; you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt.
(NKJV)

I've been reading through the Old Testament lately.  The other day I came across the verse above.

 The Old Testament grain offerings were to be offered with salt.  It was called "the salt of the covenant of your God" and it was not to be lacking from the grain offerings.

Fast forward to the New Testament where we are told that our speech is to be seasoned with salt.

Colossians 4:6 Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.

 But what does our speech have to do with sacrifices?  Check out Hebrews 13:15

 Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.

Praise to God and giving thanks is our sacrifice to Him. It isn't human nature (at least not mine!) to give thanks and praise to God.  It is human nature to complain, gossip and sin with our lips in other ways, so when we mortify our natural tendency to sin with our lips and give praise and thanksgiving instead to God, this is a sacrifice.

We are to let our speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt.  A little salt on your food causes you to crave more.  When we season our speech with praise and thanksgiving to God it causes others to want to know more about what causes you to do this. It acts as salt in our conversations.

The Old Testament grain offers were to always be offered with salt.  I would venture to say that God did not consider it a sacrifice if it was not completed with salt.  Our speech is a sacrifice to God.  If we fail to include the salt (praise and thanksgiving), then it is not an acceptable offering to God.