Day 278 Know Good, Choose Life, Receive Restoration

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. You and I know, but do we choose to do?

That's the question for today. Welcome to day 278 on our 365-day journey through the Book of Mormon together. Today, you're going to be reading Helaman chapter 14, verses 21 through 31.

You will finish that chapter and begin Helaman chapter 15, with verses 1 through 5. Now, this is an interesting section in here, as Samuel describes very vividly some of the things that are going to happen in 3 Nephi here when we get into 3 Nephi. And we're going to see destructions, geographic changes—the map, the topography is going to change—as Christ comes and as he passes away.

And we're going to get a very detailed description of things that will happen. And our modern-day prophets have told us similar things about the weather and the geographic changes that may happen in our day as we go forward. And we are reminded by Samuel here to see these signs as evidence of the Lord and a reminder of his call to repentance.

In fact, I almost did 28 and 29 here, as these signs are sent to make sure that there is no excuse for people saying, 'But I didn't know.' And so that's not our verse for today, but it actually leads up to our verse for today because inside of knowing these things, there is still the one thing the Lord always must respect for us. And that is our choice. We always have the power to choose.

And we are reminded of that in our verse for today in Helaman chapter 14, verse 31. It says, 'He hath given unto you that you might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that you might choose life or death. And you can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you, or you can do evil and have that which is evil restored unto you.' Now, notice in here that we get to make the choice on good or evil, but we don't get to choose what is restored to us.

And this is kind of an interesting concept here. But when I work with people in the professional sense, there is a gap that came to mind here that I wanted to just teach you just shortly here. And it's called the performance gap.

And the performance gap is the gap that happens between what we know we should do and what we actually choose to do. And between those two things, there's typically a gap. Meaning, many of us know the good types of food we should be eating, and yet many of us don't choose to eat those good foods on a regular basis, or we know the bad foods that we should stay away from, and yet we choose to partake of the bad foods anyway.

Okay, and that performance gap is really an interesting place for people. What I love inside of this is the reminder for us that we know good and evil. Okay, we have that knowledge, especially those of us that have been baptized and given the gift of the Holy Ghost.

We have that prompting with us if we will listen to it. So we know good from evil, but then do we choose to exercise the good? We can choose to have it in our lives, and then at the end of the day, that can be restored to us.

I think it's an interesting way to remember for us that every seed we have sown in our lives will be harvested at some point later in our lives. And that may even come into the Millennium. President Oaks has talked about this several times over the years throughout several of his conference talks.

But at the end of the day, I don't know what final judgment looks like or what that final day looks like. But what I do hear inside of this verse is as we go about choosing good, good will be restored to us. And as we go about making choices that, as are labeled here, are evil choices, evil will be restored to us as well.

My friends, in these last days, in these latter days, whatever you want to call them, may we always and every day choose to sow seeds of good. That we may at some point in the future also have good restored unto us. 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.