Day 101 Keep Your Covenants to Prosper

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 the hundreds.

We are on day 101 on our 365-day journey through the Book of Mormon together. And today we move into the Book of Omni. Omni is going to be separated in two days here.

We'll be here today and tomorrow. But Omni is really fascinating in the Book of Mormon because it is a book of, it is this incredible leap year of time. I shouldn't say leap year.

It's like leap hundreds of years. We have these very concise, sometimes even verse-by-verse accounts of these men that kept a record in a way simply because they were told to keep a record. And they basically wrote one verse of what we would call scripture and they moved on with life.

Now, I didn't cover the reading. I need to cover that. The reading today is Omni chapter 1, verses 1 through 14.

We're basically going to split the chapter right in half, and then tomorrow we do 15 through 30. So, let's get to our verse today. It's going to be Omni chapter 1, verse 6: "For the Lord would not suffer, after he had led them out of the land of Jerusalem, and kept and preserved them from falling into the hands of their enemies; yea, he would not suffer that the words should not be verified, which he spake unto our fathers, saying: Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall not prosper in the land." Now the preceding verse tells us that a good chunk of Nephites had been destroyed.

And this was roughly 300 or so years after Nephi and Lehi had done the whole "come to the new land" thing. I think this verse is very telling for us because we think of the destruction of the Nephites as the tail end of the Book of Mormon. And yet what we get here is an insight from this record that lets us know that when the Nephites unsuccessfully kept their covenant, right, when they broke their covenant with the Lord, the Lord kept his end of the promise.

If they did not keep their commandments, they did not prosper in the land. We see a little segment here where the Nephites were destroyed because they broke their covenants. It got me thinking a little bit of a time back in seminary.

This has been a long time for me, but I can remember a seminary teacher talking about challenges in our lives and having challenges in our lives. And look, he said that challenges come at different times in our lives for different reasons. But he said here a quick little checklist that you can do to see where you're at during the challenge.

And so I wanted to offer that to you today. The first thing that he mentioned inside of these challenges that we're facing, these hard times in our lives. First thing he says is, "Just do a quick checkup on your covenants." Are you keeping your covenants to the best of your ability?

Are you doing the best that you can to repent every day? What kinds of things are you doing to live those covenants? What does it look like for you as you're living those covenants?

Are you making sure that you're doing the best that you can to have the Spirit with you at all times? And I love that that's kind of the front end of the check here because there are times in our lives where burdens and challenges come into our lives because we're perhaps just a little bit off the covenant path. Maybe we've adopted a habit that snuck into our lives a little bit or maybe we just let things slide a little bit more casually than we should.

And so the first thing that he asks to do is do a quick check on your worthiness. The second thing that he offers is if you feel good about the worthiness aspect and you don't feel that that challenge is here because of any broken covenants or commandments, perhaps the challenge that you're facing is an opportunity for you to grow spiritually and it's a chance for you to step into the darkness a little bit and seek more of the Lord's hand in your life. And as such, the response was for their destruction.

And if we're not careful in our lives, if we don't treat our covenants at the level of the sacred nature that they are in our lives, maybe we don't face a full destruction being wiped off the land. But we certainly may face challenges for the Lord to help us humble ourselves and come unto Him. So, quick check if you're facing challenges in your life.

One, how are you doing with your covenants? Are you doing everything you can to have the Lord in your life? And if so, then two, perhaps it's just an opportunity for you to lean into the power of the Lord and embrace Him a little bit more in your life.

I'm grateful that we have Omni even though it covers so much in such a few verses because it gives us a little bit of insight to see that the Nephites fell out of their covenant relationship and destruction was the consequence for doing that. What a great reminder for us in our lives today. That's all for today, my friends.

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 and I hope you are too.