Day 130 Selfish King Noah vs. Servant Leadership

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. I know that I'm cheering for your every success.

Oh, my goodness, we are in this ping pong of the Book of Mormon right now as we bounce around all these different stories happening. Welcome to day 130 on our 365-day journey through the Book of Mormon and welcome to another part of the adventures in Mosiah. Today's reading, you're going to finish Mosiah chapter 18 by reading chapter 18, verses 30 to 35.

And then we're going to shift gears again and come back into King Noah and Gideon and all of those characters inside of Mosiah chapter 19, verses 1 through 18. So we've got Limhi that we've had over a little bit of time. Now we're back to King Noah who has murdered Abinadi, and he and his priests are living the evil life, right?

And so now we get back into the story where Gideon gets angry enough and stirred up enough that he actually seeks to chase down the king. And so that's where our story is today. Let's look at our verse today and see a little bit about some insight to the leader that King Noah was with his people.

We're going to be reading from Mosiah 19, verse 11 today. And it says this: "Now it came to pass that the king commanded them that all the men should leave their wives and their children and flee before the Lamanites." Now, King Noah had seen Lamanites coming, and he tells everybody, Run for your lives! Run for your lives!

Right? And then it gets to a point where the women and the children seem to be slowing them down. And so in his style of leadership, King Noah says, "Don't worry about the women and the children, just run for your lives.

Just leave them all." It really shows, you know, King Noah—we get this image of King Noah throughout this story. And yet we kind of have this pinnacle piece here of King Noah's selfish nature. He is primarily number one worried about number one.

He is at the end of the day self, self, self. And he will do or say or act in accordance with anything that will keep his position top of mind for him. And I got thinking about that and how contrasting it is to our Savior, Jesus Christ, who ultimately, at the end of his life, gave his life for all of us.

And laid down his life so that we may live again. That led me to then think about the concept of servant leadership a little bit. I think King Noah, if he were to define servant leadership, he would say, "Yeah, I love servant leadership.

It's built on the servants around me who lead the programs that I want." King Noah's version of servant leadership is how many servants do I need to accomplish my leadership goals? And yet Jesus Christ's version of servant leadership is built entirely upon the service of others. His life was a beautiful vision of the concept of servant leadership.

How can I help others accomplish the things that they want to accomplish in their lives? How can I uplift others and serve them? And Jesus Christ was a perfect example of the servant leadership that I want to adopt in my life.

So this opposing pictures here that we get today is one that I want to make sure that when I consider servant leadership I personally don't want to be the King Noah-style servant leadership. One that is based on how many servants can I get to do the things that I want to accomplish. That is a number-one focused on number-one type of perspective.

That's absolutely about self. The servant leadership I want to keep framing in my life is that of Jesus Christ, who built his life upon the concept of serving others all the way to ultimately the role that he played in the Atonement and in giving his life to all of us so that we all could take our lives up again and live again with him and our Father in Heaven. That's the servant leadership that I want to incorporate in my life.

And that is the servant leader I want to follow. 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. I hope you are too.