Day 7 The Lord Prepares the Way

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. We are on to day seven, and today is perhaps one of the most common verses in the Book of Mormon, and yet one of the most outstanding.

This house perish today, of salvation God bringing. I зд appearing strong. Listened to and practiced over and over and over again.

And so today, if you are following along the 365 day plan, then today you should be reading 1 Nephi 3, verses 1–24. Now, don't freak out. 1–24, it's a little bit longer than we've been doing, but you could do 24 verses. You got this.

Today we are going to dive into chapter 3, verse 7, and that might ring a bell to many of you. I was going to do verse 6, but I'm not going to do verse 6. But you can read that one and draw what you want from that one about murmuring.

Instead, what I'm going to dive into is verse 7 here, and I'm going to approach it in a way that is just a personal story that I wanted to share with you. So, verse 7. Nephi has been told that he's got to go do these things.

His dad—the Lord—has commanded it. Nephi said, And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father, I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded. For I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.

Now, this is such a great scripture. It's so used by people to just say, oh, there's a go-to scripture. But listen to what it's actually saying here.

Nephi has prayed unto the Lord. He's figured it out for himself. And he knows that if the Lord asks you to do something, the Lord's going to help you do it.

He's going to open up the path and prepare the way to do it. This podcast is an example of that. I was like, what?

A podcast? And I just thought, you know what? I'm going to do this.

And the Lord's going to help me figure out how to do this. And the thing that comes to mind for me is an adventure I had back on my mission. Again, I served in Mongolia.

Sorry for the mission stories—I won't do them all the time. But this one's so good for this verse. I was a missionary serving in Mongolia, and we had a man come to church one Sunday who was quite intoxicated.

He was very heavily drunk, but he was asking about the church, and we told him to please come back when he was sober. And then we figured we'd never see him again, but he came back, and he came back asking questions. And he invited us over to his house, and we started meeting with him regularly.

And we met with him and his wife and his son, and his niece was there that was living with them. And eventually even his younger son was meeting, and they started asking questions, and we spent time with them, and we spent quite a bit of time with them. And eventually he and his wife and his son and niece—they all decided to get baptized and to join the church.

Fast forward several years, and I was living at home. I'm back in Utah, where I live, and I get a phone call, and it's the son. He says, 'Hey, I'm serving a mission in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I'd love to meet up with you.' I thought, 'This is amazing!' I went and met up with him, and I found out that his younger brother had decided to join the church.

I learned that his mom and dad were coming to pick him up at the end of his mission, and that they were going to go through the temple and be sealed together for time and eternity and be able to have an eternal family. Then he asked if I would be willing to be one of the witnesses as his family was sealed. And that was there just trying to do what I was trying to do, trying to do what the Lord asked.

I was trying to do my best to be a good missionary. And here the Lord had prepared the way. It wasn't what we had done or said that got the man to change his life.

For more information, visitselling.org. Simple 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.