2.225 Prepare Your Mind to be Faithful

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're reading this week Doctrine and Covenants section 88 as well as Alma chapters 48 through 52.

And I got to tell you, I was in DNC 88 doing my reading and my study and picking verses, and I realized there's a good chance I might never make it over to the Book of Mormon this week. And so then I went over to the Book of Mormon and started doing my readings inside of those chapters and I thought, ah, look at this. This is a perfect verse to stick right in the middle of our study of Doctrine and Covenants section 88.

So our verse for today is going to come from our Book of Mormon readings inside of Alma chapter 48. Now Alma 48 is interesting because we get that very, very famous verse, the one we shared last season in season one with Savory Salt, where we get a description of Captain Moroni that promises if we were just like that, the very powers of hell would be shaken. But before that verse, we actually see a verse here that shows where Moroni's focus was while Amalickiah was focused on something different.

That's what's going to be our verse for today. We're going to look at Alma 48:7. Now we know Amalickiah's rise to his kingship inside the Lamanites.

And we also know that Moroni had no other desire than to serve and protect his people's rights. So we have two contrasting figures that we see inside of these war chapters. And they're very prominent figures, both of them.

Alma 48:7 shows us two very different ways of leadership. It says this: Now it came to pass that while Amalickiah had thus been obtaining power by fraud and deceit, Moroni, on the other hand, had been preparing the minds of the people to be faithful unto the Lord their God. Now we could spend hours inside of this verse alone looking at the differences between Amalickiah's leadership and Moroni's leadership, but I just wanted to point out just a couple of things.

Did you notice inside of there that Amalickiah was focused on himself? He wanted power by fraud and deceit. He was worried about where he was and where his seat was and whether he was on top.

What is Moroni doing? Moroni is preparing the minds of the people to be faithful to the Lord their God. His focus is on others.

He knows that if the people collectively are focused on faithfulness to Jesus Christ, the Lord their God, that they will be protected and that they will come out victorious. So while Amalickiah is focused on personal gain, Moroni is focused on the collective faithfulness of the community. Sometimes we call this servant leadership.

Moroni is going forward and his focus is on what's better for you and for me and everybody that's in the crowd. I love this because we could go through all sorts of examples. I'm sure you have them in your life as well of seeing leaders that we have had in our lives, whether that's former bosses, whether it's coworkers, whether it's people you just observe from outside organizations.

I love this contrast. It's an opportunity for you and for me to consider what we do on a daily basis to prepare. I think it interesting that he uses the term "minds" there.

What can you and I do to prepare our minds? Now the reason I added this inside of the middle of our study of Doctrine and Covenants 88 is because 88 is going to bend our minds in many ways. It's going to challenge us to see some of the things that the Lord has in store for us, some things that are beyond our current understanding.

He talks about the different degrees of glory. He talks about kind of outer spaces. I love that one, and I love that we're going to place that one right in the middle of the week here in our study of Doctrine and Covenants, just in case we don't make it back to the Alma chapters.

I think we'll get one or two more, but there's so much inside of Doctrine and Covenants coming this week. That we might just not quite make it back to Alma. Either way, 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.