2.157 Express It and Confess It

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, it's great to have you with me.

Today let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. Today, my friends, let's express it and confess it. We have been reading Doctrine and Covenants Sections 58 and 59 this week as well as Alma Chapters 2 through 5.

We're going to get to Alma Chapters 2 through 5 over the next couple of days. But one more thought inside of our reading here with Doctrine and Covenants, and it's going to come from Sections 58 and 59. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 59, Verse 21.

And it says this: "And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things and obey not his commandments." Now, I don't know about you, but I don't make it a practice, at least I try not to make it a practice, of offending God. It's on my list of things to try and actually express my gratitude and thanks. And we talked about gratitude before and yet it's interesting what happens when gratitude becomes confessed or expressed.

And so I wanted to provide for you, I created a tool for clients in the past that was a very, very simple tool. It's just that I put it together to create the structure for it, but I want to give it to you today to decide if you want this type of structure in your own life. I called it a gratitude journal, nothing original there, but the idea every day was to just count down into gratitude in a way that expressed it or confessed it.

And here's how it worked. It was a three, two, one gratitude journal. Two people I'm grateful for and one way I want to express that gratitude.

You know, it's interesting, the studies that have been done on gratitude show us the benefits, even non-spiritual studies show us the benefits of being grateful, and here's an opportunity for us to show and confess our gratitude to our Heavenly Father. I think so many times we get caught into the things in our prayers that we need from Heavenly Father, that we kind of do the quick checklist of gratitude things on the front end of our prayers and then go into the stuff that we really want to ask for. And this 3-2-1 opportunity is a chance to pause at three things you're grateful for for the day.

And you could do this on the front end or the back end of your day. Two people that you're grateful for. And then comes the number one, and that is how you're going to express or confess that gratitude.

Taking an opportunity to express to the Lord things that we truly are grateful for is showing Him that we see His hand in all things. And one of the things I loved about sharing this gratitude journal with my clients. They would come back to me and tell me, "The more I do this journal, the more I see in my life to be grateful for." Isn't that an amazing blessing?

I think what we're learning in Verse 21 here is the more we seek to see the hand of the Lord in our lives and the more we share our gratitude to the Lord for His hand in our lives, while obeying His commandments, the more we're going to see His hand manifest in our lives. It really is an "if": "If I look for it, I'm going to see it." And the more I see it, the more I'm going to look for it. And the more I look for it, the more I'm going to see it.

I love that the Lord reminds us that this is not just as I read some conference talks on this, this is not just a suggestion from the Lord. It really is at the level of a commandment here that we show gratitude to Him for His hand in our lives while doing all we can to obey His commandments. My friends, gratitude is a path to see more of the hand of the Lord in your life.

May you and I take an opportunity to express it and confess it more often to our Heavenly Father is my prayer this day. 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.