2.14 Be Willing to Struggle to Find Answers

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. Welcome to our second day of the week this week as we focus on Joseph Smith—History 1, verses 1 through 26.

I don't know if I mentioned this yesterday, so I thought I would mention kind of the pacing that I broke this down into. With it being 26 verses and having the Book of Mormon readings as well in savory salt, I thought for me, just the way that I was looking at things, I kind of broke Joseph Smith—History into about five verses a day. So yesterday would have been kind of verses one through five, today six through ten, tomorrow 11 through 15 and so on and so forth.

And so that meant that then I was going to look inside of a verse in those verses. And so today our verse is going to come from Joseph Smith—History 1:8 is what we're going to look at as you notice it between verses 6 through 10. Again, this is Joseph Smith recounting his experience as a young boy leading up to the First Vision, which we're going to get to by the end of the week.

And in verse 8, he describes his time like this: He says, "During this time of great excitement, my mind was called up to serious reflection and great uneasiness. But though my feelings were deep and often poignant, still I kept myself aloof from all these parties, though I attended their several meetings as often as occasion would permit. In process of time, my mind became somewhat partial to the Methodist sect," Absolutely, I could use the term serious reflection and great uneasiness to describe the way that I'm feeling about a topic.

And so I love what Joseph teaches us here in verse 8. Did you see what he did? He was reflecting even though he was uneasy, right?

He stayed on topic here. He didn't attach himself. He stayed aloof from the parties, but he did keep investigating the subject.

I don't understand. If there's an area of the gospel or if there's a topic in the gospel that I don't fully understand, I don't have to just throw it away and cast it away. I can stay in a state of serious reflection, even if it is great uneasiness.

Joseph stayed in it to the point that it drove him into reflection to try some of the different religious sects. And then it drove him to ultimately, as we'll get into a little bit later this week, into the Bible. And he reflected at what he was learning inside the Bible.

And then ultimately, he turned to God to find an answer. And I love that process that we can use in our lives to wrestle in times where we're seriously reflecting on finding an answer in our lives. I know that as we turn to the Scriptures and as we turn to the Lord, we too can find answers in our lives the same way that Joseph Smith found an answer to the question that he was struggling with in his life.

That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your heart and rejoice. Cleave into the covenants you have made and together we will be savory salt. This has been a presentation of the Center for