2.174 There Were Fears in Your Hearts

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. We move into our readings this week with some awesome, awesome readings.

Do I say that every week? I don't know. Doctrine and Covenants sections 67 through 70 this week, as well as Alma chapters 16 through 19 is our reading for the week.

And you know, it's interesting, this timing, this Doctrine and Covenants section 67 is interesting. It's closely related to Doctrine and Covenants Section 1, as we get the publication here of the original Doctrine and Covenants, which was the Book of Commandments. And as I was reading through this one, it put me into an interesting time and situation in my life, as it described how initially many of these revelations were simply handwritten.

I live now, and still have kind of the same experience in one way with the early pioneers in terms of carrying sometimes just sheets of paper or sometimes just parts of scripture that were glued into our English scriptures. And so I can remember these times of handing people papers and sharing with them, these are the words of God. And so I can picture myself a little bit in the time period of what these early saints are experiencing.

There's going to be a lot of confusion in this and the Book of Commandments, there was hesitancy around their publication. Anyway, I'm getting too much into the history aspect. I want to get into our verse for today because its timing is heaven sent for me personally.

And I thought, well, if it's heaven sent for me, maybe it's heaven sent for one of you as well. Our verse for today is Doctrine and Covenants 67:3. And he's talking specifically to the elders that are debating about the Book of Commandments here.

He says, Ye endeavored to believe that ye should receive the blessing which was offered unto you. But behold, verily I say unto you, there were fears in your hearts, and verily this is the reason that ye did not receive. My friends, I think the Lord has many blessings in store for each one of us.

And perhaps one of the only things keeping us from experiencing those blessings is our own fears. Now that's a heavy one to take, but I got to tell you, it's something, as I mentioned, that is very, very timely in my own life, as I'm seeking direction from the Lord specifically for things in my life that I'm asking for specific direction and insight for. And I've been frustrated, if I just speak honestly, I've been frustrated seeking that.

And this verse almost shouted at me. And so if I just shared it because of me processing, and you guys are like, Oh, Allen's the only one that's got fear in his heart. So, you know, that's just Allen's issue.

Then that's okay. Thank you for joining me with it. But I found a talk that has helped me remember—which is one of those key things about the scriptures—what I can do to look for those blessings from the Lord.

And it's from 2014 from Elder Uchtdorf. It's a beautiful talk, actually. It's called "Receiving a Testimony of Light and Truth." You guys know how much I love light and truth.

There's segments of them. I'm going to kind of skip through them, but I'll let you. I've got the link here that you can read, but he says this: My dear friends, here's a fairly straightforward experiment with a guarantee from God found in a book of ancient scripture available to every man, woman, and child willing to put it to the test.

Here are the reminders: First, you must search the word of God. That means reading the scriptures and studying the words of the Lord. We're doing that, at least you and I, as we're going through Savory Salt.

That's our attempt, right? And then he says, Believe and be grateful for how merciful the Lord has been to His children from the time of Adam to our day by providing prophets, seers, and revelators to lead His church and help us find the way back to Him. Did you catch that?

Fearlessly strive to believe. You must ask your Heavenly Father. There is a fourth step given to us by the Savior.

If any man will do God's will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. In other words, he says, when you're trying to verify the truth of gospel principles, you must first live them. My friends, that's such a great checklist of one, two, three, and four.

It is simple, but such a great reminder and so timely to me in my life right now, as I seek the blessings of the Lord and perhaps have to face myself in the mirror and realize, maybe just maybe, there's some of the fears in my heart that's the reason that I'm not receiving the blessing. May that fear be transformed into faith as we act in accordance and do these four steps that Elder Uchtdorf has given us. That's my prayer for each one of us today.

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.