2.200 To Continue In...Daily

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 have been reading this week inside of Doctrine and Covenants sections 77-80 and our Book of Mormon readings this week in Alma chapters 29 through 33. I've got to tell you, Alma chapter 29 through 33, my goodness, I went looking last season at just how many episodes we spent on that.

I think it was like 10 or 11 episodes. I love these chapters. And so to give it just three days just seems so sad to me.

But we've got to keep moving and we've got to keep having these thoughts. And so as we're reading, we're going to be inside of Alma today and tomorrow. We'll finish out the week inside of here.

And really, there's a little bit of today that's going to continue into tomorrow. But I want to share from Alma chapter 31. I'm here today for our verse for today, and Alma, like the all-star missionary cast.

I mean, if you look inside of here who Alma is going to gather to go preach to the Zoramites, it's quite astounding. He is putting together the A-team for sure. And he's going to head to the Zoramites, and the interesting thing with them is that they've had testimonies and they've had the gospel preached to them.

And then we find out in verses 9 and 10 something interesting about what they chose to do with their lives. In verse 9, we see that they fell into errors, okay, because they didn't keep the commandments. So we see that in verse 9, and then verse 10 comes into play, and I think something interesting settled with me that I wanted to share in verse 10 here.

So this is they, they're not keeping the commandments. This is the Zoramites that Alma's getting ready to go preach to. And then it says in verse 10 this: "Neither would they observe the performances of the church, to continue in prayer and supplication to God daily, that they might not enter into temptation." Now this is interesting because we do see that the Zoramites have created kind of this side religion of sorts.

They have their own practices. They climb up on a tower and they say a specific prayer and then they never think about God again. And verse 10 was really interesting to me because I thought, what does performances mean?

What are the performances of the church? And if you look at the footnote there, it's referring to the ordinances of the church. So the Zoramites, not only have they stopped keeping the commandments, but they don't observe the ordinances of the church.

Okay. We do that. We take the sacrament weekly, right?

But they're not doing that. They're also not doing the daily things like prayer and supplication to God. So they left out the little things, and those little things here, notice this little piece at the end: "that they might not enter into temptation." The little things are the things that are supposed to help them not enter into temptation.

And I think this is so personal growth 101, but it's so foundationally huge. Like you don't find personal growth without finding people telling you to focus on personal growth. The little things are again Alma telling us the Zoramites didn't focus on the little things.

What are the little things for us? We would kind of answer them and say, you know, like the primary answers, right? Daily prayer to our Heavenly Father, daily scripture study, like we're doing here in Savory Salt.

These are the little things. And we, we have a tendency, all of us, me too, we have a, we have a tendency to skip. I really wrestled with the verses this week to kind of settle on with Alma and this one really helped me out.

It helped me realize that as I do focus on my daily relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, then my life, the big picture, can be built into a mansion. But I've got to focus on the nails and the screws and the staples in my life. As I do that, I can then, maybe I can put up one wall and then maybe that one wall could get some sheetrock on it.

And maybe I add some paint to it. Then I can get another wall up. Maybe I get a window over here.

But those pieces are going to come because we focus on the little things. I love that Alma's reminding us, and we're going to find that out as we go into Alma 32. We're going to see Alma say, "Look, it's about the seed, folks." It's not about the big tree.

It's about the seed. That's what we're going to talk about a little bit more tomorrow. But I love the reminder from Alma here as we see through the lens the example of the Zoramites of what not to do.

Don't let the little things fall to the side. Don't let the ordinances, the daily prayer and supplication to God, don't let those fall aside because those are the things that hold our mansions together and make them beautiful. 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.fema.org.