Grace-Filled Conversations
Faith in the Public Square • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 2 viewsTalking about Jesus when it’s complicated
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
We have been spending this weekend in two letters.
Thursday we sat in Jeremiah's letter to the exiles in Babylon — the one that told them to plant gardens, pray for the city, and stop waiting on a quick rescue.
Friday we moved to Peter's letter, where we said you are beloved exiles, and that some of the people watching you right now will, on the day God visits, glorify Him for what they saw.
Thursday and Friday were about the city and the watching world.
Tonight is about the people you will see this weekend.
Tonight we sit at the kitchen table — because at some point being watched turns into being talked to.
The adult son who brings something up at Christmas.
The sister whose phone call drifts somewhere uncomfortable.
The friend who texts that she is done.
The deconstructing grandkid who is not sure he believes what we believe anymore.
And every one of us has felt the same thing in those moments: I do not know what to say.
That is where Paul meets us tonight. Colossians 4.
Four verses that change how the conversation starts before we ever open our mouths.
Let’s read them together now:
2 Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving.
3 At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains,
4 so that I may make it known as I should.
The Conversation Before the Conversation
The Conversation Before the Conversation
Look at the order Paul puts these verses in.
He's about to talk about how Christians speak. We know that because we've read verse 6.
But before he gets to speech, he spends three verses on prayer.
2 Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving.
3 At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains,
4 so that I may make it known as I should.
This is not an accident. Paul is a careful writer. He puts things in the order he puts them in for a reason.
The Christian who's going to have a grace-filled conversation with someone she loves prays first. Talks second.
Now, I want to show you two things in these verses that you’ll miss if I don’t slow you down.
First, notice who Paul asks them to pray for.
3 At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the word, …
Now, we would assume that in a passage about hard conversations with unbelievers, Paul would tell the Colossians to pray for the unbelievers.
He doesn’t.
He tells them to pray for himself.
The preacher. The apostle. The man who’s been doing this longer than anybody.
Paul, who wrote half the New Testament, is asking the Colossians to pray that he would know what to say.
If Paul needed that, what makes you think you don’t?
Most of us pray exclusively for the person we want to come home.
Lord, bring my daughter back to church.
Lord, soften my brother’s heart.
Lord, fix this.
These aren’t bad prayers.
Pray them. Pray them every day.
But, Paul’s first instruction here is different.
He says, pray for the one speaking. To see a door when it opens.
That he’ll have the right words.
That he won’t make the gospel sound smaller than it is.
When is the last time you prayed that before a hard conversation?
Before you sat down with your son.
Before you picked up the phone with your sister.
Before Thanksgiving dinner.
Most of us walk into these moments armored up.
We’ve prepared the argument. We’ve rehearsed the line.
We have not prayed that the God who knows that person better than we do would put the right words in our mouth.
Paul did, and he’s Paul.
Second thing. What Paul asks them to pray for.
3 At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the word, …
Not, “pray that they listen.”
Not, “pray that they change their mind.”
Not, “pray that the resistance breaks.”
A door. A way in. An opportunity.
Paul knew something that most of us forget.
Most conversations don’t change anybody, because they happen on the wrong day.
The hardest people in our lives have moments where they’re listening and moments where they’re not.
And the difference between a wasted argument and a holy conversation is usually whether God opened the door first.
So Paul says, pray for the door.
Don’t pray that you’d be allowed to break it down.
Pray that God would swing it open at the right moment, and that you’d be ready when He does.
Now, this passage is probably exposing a lot of us.
Many of us have been arguing people home that we’ve never prayed home.
We’ve replayed the conversation in our heads at 2 am.
We’ve drafted texts that we’ve deleted.
We’ve watched videos about how to respond.
We’ve stockpiled answers.
We have not been on our kneeds for them.
And we have certainly not been on our knees for ourselves before we walk in the room.
This is not condemnation. It’s a diagnosis.
Most of us haven’t been doing the thing Paul says you have to do first.
You know, the conversation that changes someone usually starts in a room that person isn’t in.
You’ve been carrying these relationships alone. Lying awake. Worrying.
Wondering if anything you say is going to land.
Paul says you don’t have to carry it like that.
Pray.
Stay alert.
Give thanks.
Pray for the door.
Pray for yourself.
The God you’re praying to has been working on that person longer than you have, and He’s not waiting for you to find the perfect words.
He’s waiting for you to come ask him to open the door.
Stop trying to be the rescuer.
You are not the rescuer. You are the witness.
You are the one God is making ready for the moment when the door swings.
And when we start praying for those people instead of arguing with them in your head, the prayer changes you before it changes them.
You start to soften. You start to remember they’re not a position to defeat.
They are a person God loves.
Some of you have been so busy preparing your argument that you’ve forgotten how to love the person.
So, before we get to grace and salt, before we get to wisdom and reading the moment, Paul tells us to pray.
For yourself.
For the door.
For the person on the otherside of the table.
Then, we’ll talk about what comes next.
Wisdom on the Other Side of the Door
Wisdom on the Other Side of the Door
Now, to v. 5:
5 Act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time.
First, Paul uses a word here that we have to handle carefully.
Outsiders.
In the first century that meant non-Christians. People outside the church.
But for most of us in this room, the people on the other side of these conversations aren't strangers.
They live in your group text.
They sit at your Christmas table.
They share your last name.
Your deconstructing grandkid is not an outsider in any way that word usually means.
He's the boy you taught to ride a bike.
So when I read this verse with you tonight, I want you thinking about those people.
The ones you love who don't believe what you believe.
The ones whose phone numbers you know by heart.
Paul says — walk in wisdom toward them.
Two things here in the verse.
Wisdom
Making the most of the time.
Let’s start with wisdom.
5 Act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time.
Wisdom is not knowing what to say.
We treat it like it is.
We think the wise person is the one with the best answer ready.
Biblical wisdom is bigger than that.
Wisdom is knowing whether, when, and how.
Whether to speak at all.
Whether this is the moment. How much to say. When to stop.
When to ask a question instead of give an answer.
When to just sit with somebody.
Some moments call for words. Some moments call for soup. Some moments call for showing up to a hospital room and not saying anything theological at all.
Wisdom is being able to tell the difference. And most of us are still learning.
Let me tell you something I'm still learning as a parent.
Sometimes the wisest thing I can do is keep my mouth shut.
Because when my kids hear me, all they hear is a preacher.
They've heard the sermon before. They watched me prepare it. They sat through it last Sunday.
And there are moments — moments I am still learning to see — when the right thing isn't another lecture from Dad. e. The right thing is to let somebody else carry the conversation.
God has put other voices in your kids' lives. In your grandkids' lives.
The friend from college.
The aunt who's been quietly faithful her whole life.
The brother in Christ who works in the same office building.
Those people can sometimes say the exact same thing you would have said and have it land in a way it never lands when you say it.
That is not a failure on your part. That is how the body of Christ has always worked.
The wisest parents I know are the ones who pray hard, stay close, and trust other voices to do some of the heavy lifting.
Some of you needed to hear that tonight. You've been beating yourself up because your words aren't working. Maybe yours aren't supposed to right now.
Now the second half of the verse.
5 Act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time.
Making the most of the time.
The Greek word there is kairos.
It doesn't mean clock-time. It means the right time. The moment.
Paul is saying there are moments God has prepared in the lives of the people you love.
Most of them will not announce themselves.
You'll be doing dishes. You'll be in the car. They'll say something offhand at the end of the phone call.
And in that half-second, you have to decide if this is one of those moments.
That's why prayer comes first. That's why wisdom matters. Because if you're not paying attention, you'll miss it.
And if you're paying too much attention — hunting for an opportunity in every interaction — you'll force one that isn't there, and you'll close the door instead of walking through it.
So, let me comfort you with these words:
Not every conversation has to be the conversation.
Some are just deposits. A kind word. A faithful presence. A question that didn't come with an agenda. A meal you cooked without making it about anything.
Those count. Those matter. God is using those.
You are not behind. You are walking the path Paul actually laid out — prayerful, wise, awake, and trusting that the moments will come.
Grace and Salt
Grace and Salt
Now, verse 6 - the verse most of us have heard before.
6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.
We tend to read this verse like it's a balance.
Some grace. Some salt. Find the middle. Don't be too soft, don't be too sharp.
That is not what Paul says.
He says always gracious. And seasoned with salt. Both. All the time.
Not a dial you slide between. A meal that has both ingredients in every bite.
Let’s take them one at a time.
Gracious first.
The word means full of grace. Speech that sounds like grace.
And here's the test. Does the way you talk to the people you disagree with sound anything like the way God has talked to you?
Because that's the standard.
The same God who has been patient with your sin, slow to anger over your rebellion, kind in your foolishness, faithful when you weren't — that is the God whose grace is supposed to season your speech.
Now stop and think about what your conversations actually sound like.
The way you talked to your kid the last time politics came up at the table.
The text you sent your sister that you halfway regret.
The tone you took with the friend who said something you couldn't believe she said.
Did any of that sound like the way God has talked to you?
Look — gracious doesn't mean weak.
Gracious doesn't mean you don't say hard things.
Jesus said hard things constantly, and people walked away from those conversations more loved than when they walked in. That's the trick. That's what we've forgotten how to do.
Gracious means the person you're talking to walks away knowing they were seen. Not steamrolled. Not dismissed. Not handled.
Seen. Even when you disagreed.
Please listen carefully:
The grace in your speech is not generated by you. It's not a tone you manufacture.
It comes from a heart that remembers what God has been like with you.
The Christian who can't speak with grace usually has a short memory.
We forget how patient God has been with us. So we can't extend it to anybody else.
If your speech with the people you love has gotten harsh, the answer is not to try harder to be nice. The answer is to go back to the cross and remember how you got here.
Now salt.
6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.
What does salt do?
Three things. And we need all three.
Salt preserves.
In the ancient world before refrigeration, salt was how you kept meat from rotting.
Christian speech preserves something. Truth. The truth about God, about people, about sin, about hope.
Speech that has lost its salt is speech that's gone soft on the truth to keep the peace.
We know what that sounds like. The Christian who never disagrees with anyone. The believer who's so eager to be liked that nothing they say has any nutritional value.
That's not grace. That's just being agreeable. And the people in your life can tell the difference.
Salt flavors.
Salt is what makes food interesting. It makes you notice it.
Christian speech is supposed to be the kind of speech people notice. Not because it's loud. Because it's different.
There ought to be something about the way a Christian talks that doesn't sound like every other voice in the room.
Hopeful where everybody else is cynical. Honest where everybody else is hedging. Kind where everybody else is performing.
When your grandkid drives home from Thanksgiving and his roommate asks how the weekend was — there should be something he can't quite explain about the way you talked to him. Something was different about her. That's salt.
And salt makes you thirsty.
This is the one we forget. Eat something salty and you reach for the water.
The best Christian speech leaves the other person thirsty for something. Curious. Wanting more.
Not pummeled. Not lectured into the ground. Thirsty.
Some of you have been trying to drown people in the gospel. Paul says salt them. Make them thirsty. And then trust God for the water.
Now put grace and salt together. Because Paul did.
Salt without grace — we know those Christians.
The ones who are correct and unbearable.
They can quote the verses. They can name the heresies. They can win the argument.
And nobody listens to them. They've got salt with no grace, and they think the resistance they're getting is for the gospel. It's not. It's for them.
They're loud, they're sharp, they're right — and the people God put in their lives are running the other direction.
That is not faithfulness. That is just being difficult and calling it conviction.
Grace without salt — we know those Christians too.
The ones who are sweet, agreeable, easy to be around.
They never disagree with anybody. They never bring up anything uncomfortable. Their faith is pleasant and private and entirely unobjectionable.
People love them. Nobody is changed by them.
They've got grace with no salt, and the cost is — nobody is ever made thirsty by their lives. There's nothing to lean toward. Nothing to ask about.
Grace and salt — that's the speech that works.
Speech where the person walks away thinking, I don't agree with everything she said. But I want to keep talking to her.
That is the conversation Paul is teaching us how to have.
The kind that doesn't end the relationship. The kind that opens the next door.
Honest question tonight. Which side are you heavy on?
Some of you in this room know your stuff. You will not be moved on the truth. And the people in your family have stopped bringing things up around you.
Some of you are warm. You're patient. And you have not said a hard true thing to anybody you love in years.
Both of those are sub-Christian speech. Paul is calling us up to something fuller than either one.
He's calling us to talk like Jesus talked. Full of grace. Seasoned with truth that preserves and flavors and stirs thirst.
Always the one. And the other.
And here is the comfort.
You do not have to choose between being kind and being clear. Paul says you can be both. The verse assumes you will be both.
The Christian who has been told her whole life she has to pick — pick between truth and love, pick between conviction and compassion — has been told a lie.
Jesus didn't pick. Paul didn't pick. You don't have to pick.
Grace and salt. Always. In every conversation that matters.
How to Answer Each Person
How to Answer Each Person
Now look at how the verse ends.
6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.
Each person. Don't miss those two words.
Paul does not give the Colossians a script.
He doesn't give them five steps for hard conversations. He doesn't give them a tract to memorize. He doesn't give them a flowchart.
He says — when you've been doing the rest of this, you'll know how to answer this person.
Not people in general. This one.
Because the deconstructing grandkid is not the hostile sibling.
The wounded friend who got hurt by the church is not the skeptical coworker who never went.
The adult son who's angry is not the adult daughter who's just tired.
They need different things. They're carrying different wounds. They're asking different questions even when the words sound the same.
And Paul says — if you're praying, walking wisely, speaking with grace and salt — you'll know what this one needs.
That's the renewed hope I want to leave you with tonight.
You can stop hunting for the perfect line. There isn't one.
There's only a person sitting in front of you, and a Spirit who promised to give you what to say in the moment if you've been preparing the way Paul described.
The conversations that have been keeping you up at night — they don't need a better script. They need a more prayerful, more wise, more grace-and-salt version of you.
And that version of you is being made, slowly, every time you do what Paul said in verse 2 and devote yourself to prayer.
Hear me on this. Some of these conversations are going to go better than you think.
Some of them aren't going to go anywhere for years.
Some of the people you've been praying for are going to surprise you in the next twelve months. Some of them you'll be praying for the rest of your life.
Both of those are normal. Both of those are part of the work.
You are not the rescuer. You never were.
You are the witness. The praying, watching, wise, grace-and-salt witness Paul has been describing for four verses.
As We Close…
As We Close…
Friday night I told you that some of you are witnessing to people who will not come home in your lifetime.
Tonight I want to add this. Some of you will see it. Some of you will sit at a Thanksgiving table five years from now, or fifteen, and the grandkid you've been praying for will say something that makes you stop chewing.
And you'll realize the prayer worked. The wisdom worked. The grace and salt worked. Not because you found the right words. Because God opened a door, and you'd been getting ready for years.
Tomorrow morning we go somewhere harder.
Micah 6 and John 11. Truth and tears. How Jesus held conviction and compassion together when the culture is asking us to pick.
Sunday in worship we'll close in Hebrews 12 — the kingdom that cannot be shaken.
But tonight, you take this home.
Pray. For yourself. For the door. For the person you've been carrying alone.
Walk wisely. Know whether, when, and how. And trust other voices to do some of the heavy lifting God never asked you to carry.
Speak with grace. Always. Speak with salt. Always.
And trust that the God who's been working on that person longer than you have is going to use a faithful, prayerful, grace-and-salt witness to bring some of them home.
