2.221 They Grew Rich in Their Own Eyes

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 is great to have you with me.

Today let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. Whose eyes matter the most for you? That's what we're going to look at inside of our episode today.

We've been reading this week Doctrine and Covenants sections 85 through 87 as well as Alma chapters 43 through 47. We're going to stay inside of our Book of Mormon side of things this episode here, and it's been great to go back to last season and look at the verses that I selected throughout these chapters. There's so much to learn here and there's so much happening here as Alma passes the records over to Helaman, as Amalickiah and other dissenters leave the Nephites and go to the Lamanites.

He ultimately is going to become king in the end of our readings for this week. Of the Lamanites, I should say. King of the Lamanites.

Because of that, we're going to talk about that tomorrow. But there's so much happening inside of here, and our verse for today is going to come in Alma chapter 45. Because we see here, Helaman gets the records passed to him from Alma.

Alma prophesies to him about what's going to happen to the Nephites. And then Helaman goes out with his brothers and tries to do some more preaching. And it mentions inside this chapter, it's kind of interesting, that because of all the wars that are going on, they realize they need to do more preaching.

And that was an interesting kind of just societal, I don't know, observation for me, I guess I would say, where they realized that because of the chaos around them and the nature of anger and frustration and war, that perhaps some time focusing on sharing the word of God would help lift the people. And then we get to the very tail end of Alma chapter 45 and inside of it here we see the reaction of some of the people, not all of them, in verse 24. So our verse for today is Alma 45:24 and it says, But they grew proud, being lifted up in their hearts because of their exceedingly great riches.

Therefore they grew rich in their own eyes, and would not give heed to their words, to walk uprightly before God. Now did you catch that interesting phrase in there? They grew rich in their own eyes.

That one stood out to me for some reason and I've spent some time kind of pondering on that one. I don't know that I fully settled on it, but here's what I've got so far. We see that the people got to a stage where they didn't really feel like they needed to rely on anybody else but themselves.

And as soon as they got to that stage, they realized that they were just fine, or at least through their lens, they were fine in life. They have everything they need, their riches are exceedingly great as it says, and they're proud of it. And so they start to kind of, I don't know, metaphorically beat their chests a little bit.

For me, at least, is that it's not about the pursuit of popularity or celebrity. For me, there's really, I hope, if I can really, really whittle this down, I hope for me, the most important eyes that I can be perceived through would be the eyes of my Heavenly Father. How does he see me?

I think sometimes he says, good job, Allen. And I think other times he says, Thank you for watching. But it's an opportunity for me to realize that the riches before me aren't riches through my own eyes.

The things that I sometimes think are priorities in my life aren't really the priorities. And sometimes it takes a loving Heavenly Father to come back and say, hey, Allen, let's get your priorities realigned a little bit. What we see here in Alma 45 is going to drastically affect the records in 46 and 47 and beyond.

Because this group of people that rejects Helaman, they don't just become those that left. They become the agitators for the wars in the rest of the war chapters going forward. My friends, if you and I can learn something from these war chapters, perhaps one of them is that we see our lives through the lens of a loving Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ.

That that perhaps may keep us in a state of humility as we grow and learn, rather than one focused on our exceedingly great riches that surround us. That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your hearts and rejoice.

Cleave into the covenants you have made, and together we will be savory salt. For more information, visit us at www.fema.org.