Day 12 Exercise Faith to See God's Power

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'm cheering for your every success. Welcome back. Here we are on day 12, and day 12 in your journey is another adventure for Nephi and his brothers.

But that's okay because some of you like adventure and excitement and surprises inside of your reading. And that's exactly what's going to happen here inside of 1 Nephi chapter 7 for our day 12. So if you are following along the 365-day plan, today what you're going to read is 1 Nephi chapter 7, verses 9 through 22, and 1 Nephi chapter 8, verses 1 through 4.

And that's the beginning of another chapter. Today our verse today is going to come out of 1 Nephi chapter 7. Nephi and his brothers are going to be asked to go back to Jerusalem again.

Oh my goodness, what is happening? But this time they're going back and they're going to find family that is going to end up traveling with them. And Nephi and his brothers are going to find wives and have families from this family.

So there's an exciting time for Nephi and his brothers. However, they end up complaining again, having a hard time, and verse 12 is where we're going to go today and share a little thought around it. Verse 11 kind of feeds with verse 12, just so you know.

But verse 12 says this. It says, 'How is it?' This is Nephi talking to his brothers, by the way, because they're rebelling against him and complaining. Verse 12 says, 'Yea, and how is it that ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things according to his will for the children of men, if it so be that they exercise faith in him?

Wherefore, let us be faithful to him.' I think Nephi is saying here, how could you have forgotten? Like, we've been able to get the plates from Laban. We've been able to travel.

The Lord has kept us alive in all of our wilderness adventures. How have you forgotten that? And the Lord's able to do all these things.

It got me thinking about a principle that I teach when I'm training and working with leadership teams. And it's a principle that I just call, 'You see what you look for.' I know there's nothing sexy about that, no cool thing with it. It's just, you see what you look for.

And the example I love to give is cars. If you are starting to really think that cars are cool, and you look out and you like, 'Wow, I love'—I don't know, let's use things I love: Ford trucks. All of a sudden, it's like everybody drives a Ford truck.

Now you might be listening and saying, 'What are you talking about? What, a what, a Ford truck?' Or you might be listening and saying, 'I always see Ford trucks!' More people weren't magically driving her car. It's just that she was more aware of it.

So what's Nephi trying to say here? Well, he's saying, 'Man, have you forgotten the blessings of the Lord? Try looking for those blessings and you're going to see them.' Because what was happening is Laman and Lemuel, they were looking for the challenge inside the challenges.

They were looking for why everything they had to do was hard and difficult. And you know what they saw? They saw hard and difficult.

They saw the challenges in the challenges. And Nephi is trying to say, 'Hey, why don't you look for the blessings? Because if you see the blessings, you're going to see more of the blessings.' I think gratitude to Heavenly Father is a very important principle here.

The more we show our gratitude to Him, the more we're going to see His blessings in our lives. So that's the principle today: the more you look for it, the more you're going to see it. The more you look for it, the more you're going to see it.

Look for the blessings of God in your life and you will find them. And on the flip side, look for the challenges and the hard things in your life. You're going to find them because life isn't easy for any of us.

So we can choose which side of the coin we want to go with. And for Nephi, he's saying, 'I'm going to choose to see the blessings that come.' That's what I would encourage you to do as well. Look for the blessings and see the blessings in your life.

That's all for today. 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.