Day 150 Repentance: Alma's Selfless Transformation

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 150.

This seems like a significant place to just pause and look back over the last 150 days and reflect on what's happened in your life. What has happened besides the 40% of the Book of Mormon that we're through now? Congratulations there.

In what way has. I feel like I'm becoming more like my Savior as I read these scriptures and as I focus on him a little bit more in my daily life. And I certainly hope that you're experiencing those successes as well.

Today, we're actually going to dive in and see someone else's life that's changed quite significantly from his repentance process. That's going to come inside of Alma chapter 2, verses 17 to 38 today. And in Alma chapter 2, we get our first really significant Alma battle.

Now, the book of Alma is going to be full of wars and contentions between the Lamanites and the Nephites and all sorts of other 'ites'. But this one is going to be significant. Almost 20,000 lives lost in this battle.

Let's take a look and see what it means for us in our lives. We're going to read today, verse 30. It's going to be right in the heat of the battle.

So Alma has led the Nephites into battle against this man Amlici and his followers. There's quite a significant amount of those followers. And then the Lamanites are going to get involved here.

It is just going to turn into a very chaotic scene. And yet we have really cool insight here in verse 30. Let's take a look at it and see what we can learn.

And it came to pass that Alma, being a man of God, being exercised with much faith, cried, saying: O Lord, have mercy and spare my life, that I may be an instrument in thy hands to save and preserve this people. Now, it's only been a couple episodes ago that we defined priestcraft. And I don't know if you remember the definition there, but the tail end of the definition of priestcraft was that it was about building yourself up and not concerned with the building up.

And Alma, this Alma the Younger, certainly used to be that guy. He was trying to destroy the Church. He was trying to build himself up and trying to build his livelihood based on the success that he could get, right?

And he was not concerned at all with the preservation of Zion. And look at the full 180 that Alma has done here. Not only is he leading his troops to battle, but he's also at a stage here at the end of this prayer that he says, he will not be able to.

He wants to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to save and preserve his people. He has changed from the selfish Alma the Younger that we know in the classic story to the selfless leader who is focused on the success and the safety of his people. And he's going to have to do it by the sword.

This has got me thinking about the changes that truly come when we repent. This is not just changing our actions or the things that we've done in the past. This is changing our hearts to the point that we become a new person.

And I think Alma the Younger is a beautiful example of that. He's gone from being the selfish, all-about-me type of guy to the willing to lead his troops to battle to save and preserve his people and the cause of Zion and the cause of Christ. That's exciting and empowering in my life as I seek to be a little bit more like Alma, which will help me be a little bit more like Christ.

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.