Day 328 Finding Hope in Christ Through Prayer and Repentance

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. How can we make sure that we are never without hope?

Welcome to day 328 on our 365-day journey through the Book of Mormon together. Today, we're going to be reading Mormon chapter 4, verses 11 through 23. You'll finish that chapter.

And Mormon chapter 5, verses 1 through 8. Mormon chapter 4 is a very difficult chapter as the blood and the carnage is spelled out by Mormon, and he describes how difficult it is to see the anger and the hatred and a complete loss of any influence in the spirit in his entire civilization. And he gets to the point where he actually removes his oath that he was never going to help them again, and he goes back to help his people.

And we get to our verse for today here in Mormon chapter 5, verse 2. He says, "Now this one's interesting." I've done this before, but I've mentioned that inside of my own gospel I make notes and ask myself questions and use footnotes and links and all sorts of things in there. I have a note here from November 1st of 2020, which was a difficult year for many of us.

If you think back on what was happening in a world pandemic, and we're trying to figure out everything that's happening in the world. I wrote down a couple of questions here after reading this verse. I wrote down, "How do you make sure you don't lose hope?

How do you help family members that might have lost hope? And how do you make sure to focus on our own need for repentance?" Now those questions every time I come to this verse are now inside of my app. And you know, it's interesting, verse 2 actually seems to have the answer to make sure that we don't go without hope.

As Mormon writes it here, he was without hope because he knew the judgments of the Lord were coming. But then the next part of the verse explains why the judgments of the Lord were coming. For they repented not of their iniquities, and they did struggle for their own lives without calling upon that being who created them.

Could hope really be so simply attached to prayer and repentance? I think sometimes we overcomplicate a lot of things in our lives. And Heavenly Father is trying to say, "Look, I want to help you." And all you got to do is reach out.

And I think that there's something inside of that message here from Mormon. He went forward and he saw his people and he knew that he couldn't help them any further because of. And I'm so grateful that two years prior to that, inside of the Youth Album, one of my favorite songs was written and introduced inside of the Youth Albums.

Now, if you've never listened to any of the music that is released inside of the Youth Albums, I would absolutely encourage you to do it. It's a regular part of the music in the lives of my girls and our family. And the lead song for the album, I guess maybe the theme song for the year for 2018 was "Peace in Christ".

And I'll put a link here so that you can just follow it over and hear the song for yourself if you've never listened to it. But the verse and the chorus inside of "Peace in Christ" is right in line here with making sure that we don't fall into the gap of not having hope in our lives. This is what it says in the chorus: It says, "He gives us hope when hope is gone.

He gives us strength when we can't go on. He gives us shelter in the storms of life. When there's no peace on earth, there is peace in Christ." I hope, there's that word.

I hope that you can find hope in Christ as you remember to call upon our Heavenly Father in prayer, the being that created you. And as you seek to regularly repent, I really do think that the hope in Christ and hope for a greater day and a brighter future comes through Jesus Christ. I'm grateful to Him as my Savior and I stand as a witness of Him and the hope that comes in Him.

If you're struggling, if you're trying to make this life on your own, turn to our Heavenly Father. He will give you hope. That I can promise.

That's all for today, my friends. Remember that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. Small and simple like prayer and repentance.

Keep it small, keep it simple, and always seek to be savory salt. I'll be here tomorrow and I hope you are too.