In the story of Elisha, the salt cast into the spring at Jericho transformed bitter waters into a source of life and healing. This act was more than a miracle; it was a profound illustration of spiritual restoration. Just as Elisha brought the cleansing power of God to a barren landscape, we are called to bring the “salt” of His presence into the everyday rhythms of our own existence. Inviting God into daily life is the first step in this transformative process.

The waters were healed by putting some salt in.

need to say something here. The salt did not heal the water. The Lord healed the water. But He healed it through the obedient act of His servant: getting the new bowl, putting salt in it, and throwing the salt into the spring of water. For us, inviting God into daily life is that act of obedience that signals we are ready for His intervention.

The second thing I need to say is that this is not about diet. It’s not about adding salt to make a bad diet good. More often the case is we have to subtract some salt from our bad diet to make it better. So, I want to make that abundantly clear. Don’t go away thinking Pastor Arni is advocating adding salt to your diet.

Okay, let’s go forward a couple of chapters to 2 Kings 4:38-41. This is another problem, similar but different.

There is a famine in the region of Gilgal. The prophet Elisha is meeting with a company of the prophets and he realizes they will be hungry, so he instructs his servant to put on the large pot and cook some stew for them. Somebody goes out to gather some herbs and finds a wild vine with some gourds on it. Quite possibly because of the famine he might have thought, “Ah, there is a solution to the food shortage.”

So he took a bunch of them and cut them up and put them in the stew “…though no one knew what they were.” When the men began to eat, they discovered something very wrong. “There is death in the pot!” And they could not eat it.

Here’s a hint, folks: When you’re gathering things from the wild to eat, know what you’re picking. Not everything out there is edible!

Back to Gilgal: They could not eat the stew. How do you get poison out of a pot of stew? Here is what Elisha says: “Get some flour.” He puts it into the pot and said, “Serve it to the people to eat.” And there was nothing harmful in the pot.

The stew was ‘healed’ by putting in the flour. Did the flour ‘un-poison’ the stew? I don’t think so. The Lord ‘un-poisoned’ the stew. But He did it by inspiring the prophet to a certain action which God then used and worked a miraculous work on behalf of the people in the situation. Now I have to say this: Adding flour is not the miraculous cure for poisoned food. Please don’t think that you can just add flour and everything’s going to be good. Flour is good, but it is not the cure-all for tainted food.

So, what is the point of these incidents? Well, there are two points really: The first and perhaps not the most obvious one is, when we’re faced with a problem, look to the Lord for the solution. He is willing to help us as He was to help them.

The second, and to me, the main one, is this: The human response to a situation is often to try to get rid of the problem—to take something out. God’s solution to our earthly problems is most often to put something in. I’m reminded of a story a colleague once told me about a parishioner who was in a bit of a pickle and was furiously praying,

“Lord, get me out of this!”

The pastor gently suggested to him that if he listened carefully, he might hear the Lord saying, “Let me into that!”

How do we approach the challenges and issues of life? How do we address the ‘bad water’ and the ‘poison’ in our own hearts and our own lives? We can try and try and try to get rid of some things. We can make resolution upon resolution upon resolution, and very, very often the result is failure upon failure upon failure. Why is that? Probably because we are pursuing a man-made solution rather than a God-made solution. When we focus on inviting God into daily life, we shift from man-made efforts to divine results.

Here is the situation: The reality of sin is that you and I cannot fix ourselves by ourselves. We simply don’t have the capacity or the resources to come up to God’s standard by our own devices. All of humanity is in exactly the same boat. We need help. We need something from outside ourselves to come to our assistance.

And that is where the Gospel comes in.

The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, came to earth from outside it. He was not and He is not restricted to earthly resources. He was not and He is not tainted with human sin. He gave Himself as the sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sin and to satisfy the demands of divine justice on our behalf through His death on the cross. And then He conquered death, hell, and the grave in His glorious resurrection.

But guess what? If the story ends there, our condition is unchanged. This is where so many people stop short. They give an intellectual or mental assent to the facts of the Gospel, but many do not enter into the experience of the Gospel. They will say, “Yes, I believe.” And believing is a vital piece of the fabric, a very vital piece of the fabric. The Word of God asks, “How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?”

And the answer is patently obvious: they won’t. So, believing is vital to the case, but the Word of God also tells us that even the demons believe—and shudder! We have not only to believe; we go to heaven on who we receive. Something from God must be added to our lives.