Day 2 Joseph Smith's Prayer Begins the Restoration

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells his followers that they are the salt of the earth, and in the same sentence offers a warning that savorless salt is good for nothing. Join me in an attempt to be savory salt as I share each day one verse of scripture and one small thought. Perhaps this small daily emphasis can lead to greater savor in your life and ultimately you and I can be savory salt.

Hello, my friends and family, wherever you're listening from. Thank you for joining me and know that I am cheering for your every success. You came back.

Welcome to day two. Just a quick reminder for those of you, if you don't remember what we did yesterday, the idea here is to pace yourself throughout an entire year reading the Book of Mormon. And today, if you are reading according to the plans of 365 days, you will be reading the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses, as well as just the first page of the Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Now I really wanted to share, I know this podcast is going to dive in and I promise, in fact, I promise I'm going to get to a verse a day, but I got to read the entire Book of Mormon. And that includes these front sections as well that aren't necessarily broken into verses. So if you're the person that's like, ah, I don't want to read all the intro stuff, I hope you stick around.

But if you want to go straight to day four, day four is where we're actually going to be diving into the verses of the Book of Mormon. Okay. It's going to take three days to get up to that.

But if you're sticking around, good job for that choice, by the way. If you're sticking around, I want to dive into the front end of the Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith. That's going to be the verse for the day and the thoughts that come around it.

He says right at the beginning of this, this is from his own words. He says, "On the evening of the 21st of September 1823, I betook myself to prayer and supplication to Almighty God. While I was thus in the act of calling upon God, I discovered a light appearing in my room, which continued to increase until the room was lighter than at noonday, when immediately a personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor." Now you might be saying, "What in the world did you pick that one for?" Well, I think it's interesting here that both the Restoration of the Church here, the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the earth and the bringing forth of the Book of Mormon both started because Joseph Smith was willing to pray.

He sought to pray and supplicate to Almighty God, as it says here. I think that's so interesting, and I want to bring in for the start of this year a thought for you: What mighty things might happen in your life if you would take the time to pray? Now, these don't have to be elaborate and amazing and incredible.

I don't even picture Joseph Smith having these elaborate, amazing, incredible prayers. I imagine him kneeling down and talking directly to his Heavenly Father. And so, at the beginning of this Book of Mormon over the next year, I wonder what it would be like if you took the time to pray to Heavenly Father and talk to Him about the experiences you're having as you go forward.

The experiences you're having day to day, the thoughts that are coming into your mind, and maybe even some questions you may have. Because the experience that Joseph Smith had, yes, he's going to be visited by an angel, right? And this angel is going to tell him that there are these plates in the mountain and, go and you can see them.

And all of this just sounds incredible and amazing, which it absolutely is. But to some people, it sounds completely absurd, which it could do as well. So how do you know?

Well, perhaps you take the thing that Joseph Smith decided to do and you pray to Almighty God. Talk to Him, ask Him, share with Him your thoughts and your feelings and see what may happen as you dive into the year with the Book of Mormon here. So if you have followed day two or if you're going to right now and you're using this on the front end of your study, again, you're going to be covering the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses and the Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

I really wanted to get in and use one of these to share from either the Testimony of the Three Witnesses or the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses, but I'm going to let you do that on your own. So that's day two. That's all we have for today.

And remember that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. Keep it small, keep it simple, and always seek to be savory salt. I'll be here tomorrow.

I hope you are too. I'm Bill Stepney. We'll see you next week.

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