2.12 But...Do I Have to?

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth, a bold reminder that our lives are meant to carry his flavor, his truth, and his love to the world. Join me each day to explore one verse of scripture and one thought, striving to stay full of savor and truly live as savory salt. Hello, my friends, great to have you with me.

Today let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. You know yesterday we talked about obedience and the day before we talked about Nephi being highly favored of the Lord despite the afflictions he dealt with. I think today we're going to get another ingredient in the recipe of highly favored of the Lord.

That's going to come inside of our reading today of 1 Nephi chapter 3. Now, this is the super famous one. And last year I had to do 1 Nephi chapter 3, verse 7, right?

Because it's chapter 3, verse 7: "I will go and do." And so I'm grateful that I actually am doing this again this year because the verse right before it is so important. And I think it's some of the secret sauce for Nephi when it comes to being highly favored of the Lord. In fact, we even see that favored of the Lord is in the verse.

Let's take a look at 1 Nephi 3, verse 6. "Therefore, go, my son, and thou shalt be favored of the Lord, because thou hast not murmured." Oh my goodness, to all of you, and me included, as I hold the mirror up in my life, that have—if you've ever said, "Do I have to?" or, "Oh, but really this time," or whatever it is that you use for your life, this is such a great verse because we see inside the story that Nephi's brothers certainly don't go along not murmuring. Nephi is such a great example here when it comes to finding favor with the Lord because he doesn't murmur. Now, one of the things that I want you to consider inside of this is: all of them were obedient, right?

Laman and Lemuel of the world, they were obedient too, but they were obedient with some serious murmuring going on. They went and did this stuff, but they murmured along the way. Look at the difference in their story and how they turned out and how Nephi turned out when it comes to following the Lord.

Through this lens of not murmuring, it made me think of one of my favorite books. In fact, maybe I'll throw the link in here. It's not a spiritual book, by the way, but it's by Jon Acuff called "Soundtracks." And he talks about the soundtracks that we have in our lives.

These things that we just auto-say, like, "Ah, do I have to?" And I thought, you know, this is a great place to consider a soundtrack in your life. He talks about making a new soundtrack if you don't like the one that you have. So if you're on auto-murmur, so to speak, if your instant response to doing something is to complain or see the negative side of it, then perhaps write yourself a new soundtrack.

And that new soundtrack may be something like, I don't know, let's say, let's say scripture reading is difficult for you, or you look at scriptures and you're like, "Oh man, do I have to read my scriptures every day?" Maybe the soundtrack that you want is, "Reading scriptures brings light in my life." And so every time you have that feeling of, "Oh man," you switch over the soundtrack and you say, "Reading scriptures brings light in my life." That's something that I just say for me, because, I mean, I don't say it regularly, but reading scriptures does bring light in my life. So I want you to consider when it comes to murmuring or complaining, yes, there is obedience, but there also seems to be a different level of obedience when it comes without the murmuring attached. Let us all find favor with the Lord because thou hast not murmured.

That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your heart and rejoice. Cleave unto the covenants you have made and together we will be savory salt.