2.27 It's Not About You

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 the beginning of a new week of our readings.

And oh my goodness, I got to tell you, I am so excited for the week ahead with what we have in our readings. This week you're going to be reading Doctrine and Covenants, Sections 3, 4, and 5. And then on the Book of Mormon side of things, you're going to be reading 1 Nephi chapters 13 through 17.

Now buckle your safety belts. We are getting some amazing readings on both sides. I'm very, very excited about what we have to cover this week.

And I might add that this week we kind of have almost a little bit of a theme going on between the two of these. I don't know that it'll always line up that way between Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon, but let's see what kind of comes out of it as we look this week together. So we're going to be looking today inside of Doctrine and Covenants Section 3, at least that's where our verse is for today.

And Doctrine and Covenants Section 3 is quite interesting. We recorded here, we have scripture here that basically records the Lord's response to an epic failure. And I am so grateful that we have records like this.

I talked openly before about the need for us to see our failures as paths to success. So I'm grateful that we have these types of chapters and sections to look at because I love to see, I shouldn't say I love to see how others fail, but I love to see the successes. Let's see what our verse is for today and see if we can connect some of those dots a little bit.

We're going to be looking at Doctrine and Covenants Section 3, Verse 4. And inside of this, Joseph Smith has lost the 116 pages of the Book of Mormon. If you're not familiar with that story, you can do a little bit of research inside of that.

But he had 116 pages that was translated that he gave to Martin Harris. After begging the Lord over and over and over again, the Lord saying, no, I don't want you to give those away. And then finally the Lord saying, look, go do and see what happens.

And then those 116 pages were lost. And here's kind of the Lord's rebuff inside of Section 3. Verse 4 says this: For although a man may have many revelations and have power to do many mighty works, yet if he boasts in his own strength and sets at nought the counsels of God and follows after the dictates of his own will and carnal desires, he must fail and incur the vengeance of a just God upon him.

Now you might read that and be like, wow, you went with the aggressive verse today. And yet I think I love this one because it's such a great reminder. In fact, it's one of the reasons why I've kind of talked about this inside Savory Salt.

I'm doing Savory Salt to just hold the space. I just want to share my testimony and those that want to listen to that testimony and be fed and draw a little bit closer to the Lord, like let's do that together. What we hear inside of this one is there's no one too close to the Lord that doesn't have to be mindful of their own pride and their own strength.

And so it's a great reminder for all of us that regardless of the successes we're experiencing in life, we need to stay close to the Lord and seek, like, His counsels, the counsels of God, as it says here, rather than following the dictates of our own will. Quick story, if I could, that kind of feeds inside of this. It's a little bit of a professional example.

Forgive me, but hopefully you'll follow along. When I do coaching sessions with people, I'm typically working with them one-on-one. And inside those coaching sessions, one of the greatest things that I can bring to the coaching session is 100% presence.

I'm not just listening to what they're saying; I'm listening to what they're not saying. I'm reading tonality; I'm reading, if I see them, I'm reading body language. I'm hearing what they're saying, what they're not saying, everything in between as I try to stay 100% present with them.

And that presence is something that is palpable. And yet, interestingly enough, is in the moment of that presence, if I stop and go, wow, Allen, good job, dude. Like, you're really being present for this person.

If I stop and admire my own presence in the conversation, the funny thing with that is I lost all presence because now I flipped the mirror onto myself and I'm admiring the way that I present with somebody else. And I think what the Lord's saying here is, look, if you are so blessed to have the Spirit with you and you go forward, and whether it's revelations or you have power to do many mighty works or whatever it is, the moment you pause and go, wow, you know what? I'm pretty rocking at this.

I'm pretty amazing at this. The Lord's saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. The second you do that, you are disregarding the Lord's hand in your life in being able to be that light.

So my friends, as we go forward, go forward to do nothing else but build the kingdom of God. Go forward to do nothing else but be a light for Him in the world. And as you do so, the Lord will absolutely increase your light and power and knowledge as you go forward.

That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Cleave unto the covenants you have made and together we will be savory salt. For more information, visit us at www.savorysalt.org.