Appropriating the Happiness That Is In You (Part 1)

In this opening message, Dr. Michael Youssef confronts the modern Church’s failure to be salt in a decaying world. Preaching from Matthew 5:13, he declares that only those who have climbed the ladder of the Beatitudes—marked by brokenness, righteousness, purity, mercy, and persecution—are true disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to preserve society from moral collapse. Salt is not optional; it is the believer’s mandate. But when we mix with the world, we lose our saltness—and our usefulness. Drawing from Jesus’ words and the context of the Sermon on the Mount, Dr. Youssef calls believers to repentance and a renewed commitment to bold, uncompromised witness. Christ commands us: be salt—or be trampled.