2.115 He Received the Word With Gladness, But...

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 do remember the parable of the sower and the seeds, right?

Welcome back, my friends. We've been reading this week Doctrine and Covenants sections 37 through 40, as well as Mosiah chapters 3 through 7. And today we're going to finish up some thoughts inside of our Doctrine and Covenants readings.

And then tomorrow, we'll dive into the Book of Mormon. Excited for that one. But today, first, we must dive into the second half of James' predicament.

He has been given incredible blessings and commandments that he is to follow in Doctrine and Covenants section 39. And then we find out in section 40. Let's look at the verse here and see if we can piece together something that happened in his life and make sure that we see those opportunities to not happen in our lives.

Our verse for today is Doctrine and Covenants, section 40, verse 2. And this is the Lord talking about what happened to James after the revelation. "And he received the word with gladness, but straightway Satan tempted him. The fear of persecution and the cares of the world caused him to reject the word." Okay, so we find out here that James hears it and he is excited about it.

He receives it with gladness and then we have the but. And that's the difficult side of things. What happens?

You remember the parable of the sower and the seeds? He casts the seeds out and all of those seeds land in different types of ground. One of those grounds is thorny ground.

What happens there with those seeds is they are choked out by the thorns. What do we see happens here in James' life and how can we learn from it for ourselves? "Straightway Satan tempted him." My friends, I can remember times on my mission when I had talked to people that had decided. All of that you find in our next podcast.

And one of those reasons is because I'm aware, you're aware, many of us are aware that Satan wants to work against the work of the Lord. "Straightway Satan tempted him." I think that's interesting: "straightway Satan tempted him." He's not going to waste his time. He's going to immediately dive into temptations. So for you and for me, what does that mean for us?

How can we resist those temptations? And then we see the fear of persecution. I know there's been times in my life where I've been embarrassed to say something about the gospel, or I've been embarrassed to admit that I'm a member of the Church.

And I've thought about that several times over my life and been like, what is it, Allen? Like, what were you so embarrassed about? Because now I don't know if I'll have those situations again, but I certainly can remember them.

And the learning experience that I had as I tried to go back and figure out, wait a second, I want to stand proud of who I am, not embarrassed by it. And then we get the third one here. "The cares of the world caused him to reject the word." Interesting note, if you read in the additional resources about James, he was asked to go to Ohio to do his missionary work. This verse is a great verse for us to do a little self-reflection.

You know I like to do the checkup from the neck up. You know I like to do the mirror activity. And verse two is one of those verses that you and I can take some time to look in the mirror and make sure that we are not being tempted by Satan.

Make sure that we are not afraid of persecution that may come as members of the Church. And certainly to make sure that our cares of the world are checked. We care about the word of the Lord rather than what the world has to offer us.

I hope that you and I can be empowered by learning from James' example here. That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Cleave to the covenants you have made and together we will be savory salt.