Day 347 Scarcity's Destruction, Abundance from God

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. When it comes to the Lord's plan: abundance or scarcity? Welcome to Day 347 on our 365-day journey through the Book of Mormon together.

Today, you're going to be reading Ether chapter 9, verses 6–28. You're going to see a continuation of I'm going to give you two verses today, but one of them we're going to focus on. The other one is for you to dive into and take a look at.

So our verse for today is Ether chapter 9, verse 12. And it says, "And there began to be a war between the sons of Achish and Achish, which lasted for the space of many years. Yea, unto the destruction of nearly all the people of the kingdom, yea, even all, save it were thirty souls, and they who fled with the house of Omer." Now this is one half of the kingdom or just two parts of the kingdom, call it one half, that Achish had taken over and Omer, if you remember earlier, had run away and so he was just kind of biding his time.

What we see here then is the end result of taking on the secret combinations, the oaths of the secret combinations. They are at their core scarcity-based oaths. What that means is that at the core there is a zero-outcome.

Zero-outcome means that if somebody wins somewhere, it automatically means someone else loses. And this outcome is one that’s based on, "Well, if I become king, it means that you don't become king. If I get more money, it means that you lose money.

And however much money I gained is money that you lost." And this zero-sum mentality trickles into our own everyday lives as well. You can hear it in ways where maybe siblings say, "Oh, you get to go do this! That means that I lost out!" You hear it inside of our own family structures.

And a zero-sum mentality is not the way the Lord works. I want you to spend some time in the verses 16, 17, around that area and see what happens when the Lord returns to the people. He comes amongst them after their repentance—not in a literal sense, right?—but His Spirit comes and returns prosperity to the land.

And we get a reminder inside of our readings that the Lord is a Lord of abundance. When we make our covenants with him, they are covenants that lead to an abundance around us. We don't have a scenario where if somebody goes through the temple, somebody else can't go through the temple.

We don't have a scenario where the Lord's Atonement covers somebody's sins, and because they cover those sins, they don't cover the sins of others. The Lord does not work in zero scenarios. The Lord works in abundance.

There is enough room. There are enough blessings for all of us. Everyone that wants to repent and take upon them the name of the Lord can receive the covenants, the blessings that the Lord has to shower upon us.

This is such a great example of seeing the two of them happen within a couple of verses. I hope that you and I can spend some time and see the areas in our lives where we're seeing the world as if it's a zero-sum, and realize that that is simply not the way the Lord works. The Lord is a Lord of abundance.

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.