Day 141 Alma the Younger: Stealing Hearts, Causing Dissension

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. I hope you forgive my voice as I've come across a little bit of a bug that seems to make my voice go several octaves lower.

So forgive me for a few episodes as I get through this adjustment to my voice. Welcome to day 141 on our 365-day journey through the Book of Mormon. Today we dive into another well-known character of the Book of Mormon, Alma the Younger.

You're going to come across him today reading Mosiah chapter 27, verses 1 through 13. And our verse for today goes straight into a description of this younger Alma. This is Alma the son of Alma.

Let's take a look just a second. Verse 8 really kind of describes him as a smooth talker, idolatrous man, a man that is able to flatter the people and do all the things and say all the things that make everybody feel awesome and amazing and lead them away from the Church, of course. And then we get verse 9 here, and this is what it says.

And he became a great hinderment to the prosperity of the Church of God, stealing away the hearts of the people, causing much dissension among the people. There are some interesting phrases in this verse that stood out to me. He is stealing away the hearts of the people.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is, Allen, where is your heart? Is your heart centered on Jesus Christ? On the Lord himself, on living the Lord's commandments.

Is that where my heart is? Or is my heart based on personal experiences with others, perhaps in my neighborhood? Or am I basing my own testimony on things outside of where my heart lies?

That's the first thing that comes to mind. Next, it says here, causing much dissension amongst the people. Dissension is an interesting word.

I wanted to kind of spend some time diving into that. Dissension means that there's discord amongst the people to the point that they start breaking into factions. And that's interesting to me because if we're broken into factions, the Lord tells us to be one.

And if we're not one, we're not His. All he needs to do is get us into factions a little bit. All he needs to do is poke the bear over here and poke the bear over there.

And then those dissensions will take care of themselves. And the people will start to divide into factions. And as long as they're divided into factions, then seems to come this next thing.

And this is kind of the dagger to the whole plan: It gives a chance for the enemy of God to exercise His power over them. Isn't that fascinating, that terminology, giving a chance for the enemy of God to exercise His power over them? Don't give the enemy of God a chance.

And how do you do that? You say, well, let's work backwards in this verse. Avoid dissension.

Don't divide yourself into factions. Yeah, well, he said this over here and he said that over there. I believe him over there.

Seek the Lord and seek to unify your will with His will. Avoid those dissensions. Focus on where your heart is.

Alma stole away the hearts of the people. Keep your heart centered on our Savior Jesus Christ. Stay true to our Heavenly Father and His plan.

Pray to Him. I think it's through these interesting components here that Alma finds such great success when it comes to tearing down the Church. Because we're going to find out afterwards as Alma goes through his own repentance process that he pretty much works the other way.

He's going to ask people questions in the future about where their hearts are centered and he's going to encourage them to center on the Lord. He's going to ask them to look inside and to find unity inside of themselves and the Church and our Heavenly Father. It's interesting the dominoes that come into play here with Alma the Younger.

So today, my friends, don't give a chance to the enemy of God. Don't allow him to exercise His power over you. You have the ability to reject that.

You can unify yourself with the Lord. Come close to Him. Seek His protection, His insight, His inspiration.

He will grant it to you and you will find that you have the ability to overcome that power of the enemy of God. 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 with a little bit of some voice lightened up. And I hope you are too.