Day 47 The Lord Magnifies Efforts for Abundance

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 to Day 47.

And man, it's like things just start moving after Nephi bears such strong testimony. We go in today on our 365-day journey for reading the Book of Mormon into 2 Nephi 5:1-14. We're going to split this chapter in half, and it kind of just snowballs really fast for Nephi.

It's like Dad passed away, and then my brothers tried to kill me and all my family, and we ran for our lives. And so Nephi and his family, a lot of family members, Zoram, Sam, they all run. And so this promised land civilization that they spent time building is all gone, and they have to start from scratch again.

That takes us into verse 11, which is our verse for the day. We see a little bit about what it was like to live with Nephi and his people as they were rebuilding for the umpteenth time in their experience. Here's what we get.

Verse 11. And the Lord was with us, and we did prosper exceedingly. For we did sow seed, and we did reap again in abundance.

And we began to raise flocks, and herds, and animals of every kind. I love this point of view as Nephi is looking back over his life at the time where he had to run away from his brothers to save the lives of him and his family. And then he says, "We were with the Lord, and the Lord was with us, and we did prosper exceedingly." Look, here's that promise again.

It's happening, and Nephi sees it happening. And there's a phrase in here that I want to really emphasize. It says, "we did sow seed and we did reap again in abundance." I want to tell you that I know that when we are living our best lives, the commandments as best as we can, keeping our covenants as best as we can, we reap in abundance with the Lord.

The Lord magnifies our efforts when we do everything we can in obedience to living the commandments of the Lord and living our covenants. I can say that I've seen times in my life when this is true, and I want to share a very special experience that I kind of got to watch from the outside in, of sorts. It was during COVID.

I've mentioned before, I do humanitarian work in Kenya with an amazing group, 100 Humanitarians International. During COVID, there were some pretty intense lockdowns in Kenya, so much so that the people were not allowed to go to markets to get food. They reached out to us and said, "What can we do?

We don't have any food that we can get." And we did our best to try to send some funds over to, at a bare minimum, get rice and beans for the community. And I can remember specifically a story with one of our community directors getting bags of rice and beans. The Lord magnified those efforts and said, "You know what?

There is enough beans and rice because I can make sure that there's enough beans and rice." I want to tell you that when we are doing the best we can, the Lord magnifies our efforts. Through the lens that I talk about every day on Savory Salt, the smallest things can be amplified. It's in scripture, "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass." So keep your efforts to the best of your abilities, and then watch and let the abundance of the Lord fill your heart and your life.

That's all I have for today, my friends. Remember, 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.