Day 178 Stay in It: Pondering Challenging Truths

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. My friends, when you hear of miraculous things or things that maybe even challenge your testimony, what's your tendency? Do you believe it?

Do you hesitate? Do you doubt it? Do you ponder on it?

I think today's going to give you a little bit of insight as to what King Lamoni did. Welcome to day 178 on our 365-day journey through the Book of Mormon together. Today you're going to read Alma 18, verses 1 through 18, about half of that chapter.

And inside of it, you're going to have this experience, going to continue with Ammon and the cutting off of the arms and the meeting with King Lamoni. And Lamoni is going to be told about this experience, and he really doesn't quite know what to believe. He starts to guess that Ammon is some great spirit, the Great Spirit that his father taught him about.

And he really doesn't know what to do about the situation. And then Ammon appears in the meeting room that the king is sitting in, and this interaction occurs. Here's our verse for the day.

It's Alma 18:14, and it says, 'Therefore Ammon turned himself unto the king, and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do for thee, O king? And the king answered him not for the space of an hour, according to their time. For he knew not what he should say unto him.' We have this little asterisk here, 'according to their time.' So we don't know really what their space of time measurement was.

But in our time measurement, an hour is quite a lengthy amount of time. And that's the little piece I want to pull out of today. Here the king is wrestling, maybe even like Enos said, maybe he's even wrestling with the Spirit here just a little bit.

But the thing that I love about it is he's not sure what to say to Ammon. He's not sure how to respond to Ammon, but he doesn't react. He doesn't lash out.

He doesn't run away. He stays in it. I think there are times when we're studying the scriptures or learning about Church history or diving into a doctrinal topic and we come across something that maybe shakes us a little bit or maybe gives us some pause.

And I think a tendency a lot of times is to find everything about it that's wrong or find more evidence that makes you fall into that. And yet, interestingly enough, I think Lamoni teaches a principle here: to just stay in it. Allow the Spirit to speak to your heart.

Lamoni is being prepared to hear the message of Ammon. And that's going to come further on in this chapter. But he's also preparing himself to hear the message without knowing that.

He's willing to stay in this thought process, in this almost meditation, thinking into what he should do with Ammon and what he should say to Ammon. And I think there's a great lesson that we could pull out of there. So in those times where you're diving in and you just don't know the answer to something, or those times that you hear something or read something that just makes you pause, then go ahead and pause.

But don't ignore it. Don't walk away from it. Pause and see what the Spirit would teach you.

Lean into it. Even if it takes an hour or two, it's going to be worth learning from the promptings of the Spirit. 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.