Day 19 The Causes of Dwindling in Unbelief

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, including our new listeners from Canada. Thanks for joining in from Canada, the land north of me.

It's great to have you join in today on our 365-day journey. We're still in the middle of Nephi's vision, and that's going to go for a few chapters. So just hold on and enjoy the ride.

Today, if you follow along on the path, we are reading from 1 Nephi chapter 12, verses 15 through 23. So we're finishing chapter 12, and then we're going to start chapter 13, 1 Nephi chapter 13, verses 1 through 9. And that's going to kind of shift gears in the history of things, but I think you'll be able to roll with it inside of where Nephi's kind of seeing things of the future here.

Today's a little bit of the other side of the coin from yesterday. We talked about prophets and about spoiler alerts, or how a prophecy kind of lets us know what's coming down the pike. Another thing that we're going to see here through Nephi is some difficulties.

We're going to see hard things that happen in the future as well, based on the conditions and circumstances that people bring into their own lives through their own choices. And so the verse today is chapter 12, verse 22. It's a very short one, and it's very powerful as we dive into it.

Verse 22 says, "And the angel said unto me, Behold, these shall dwindle in unbelief." Now you're going to have to search all around these verses because there's a lot of dwindling in unbelief happening. Pull words out of other verses in this chapter and in chapter 13, but see what you can find for yourself in terms of this dwindling in unbelief. Here are just a few of the things that I found that were indicators that may cause someone to dwindle in their own unbelief.

These are mentioned inside the chapter. See what you can find. I'm sure you can find more than I did, but here are some of the ones that I found.

I found temptation, anger. I found hardened hearts—this idea of no longer loving those around you or the way that you treat people. I found pride.

I found vain imaginations—these ideas that are more self-centered than anything. I found contention. I found idleness, darkness, filthiness.

In chapter 13, I found these heavy pursuits of gold, silver, scarlet, fine-twined linen. Basically, this list is not an all-inclusive list, but what it looked like to me was that the things that cause us to dwindle in unbelief are everything else that takes us from Christ. People search for things in their lives, and when they don't include Jesus Christ, it opens the door to dwindle.

Our journey is full of belief rather than the dwindling that Nephi experienced inside of his vision. That's all I have 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.