2.233 Enlightened by the Spirit

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. Where are your favorite places to be enlightened? I've enjoyed reading Doctrine and Covenants Sections 89 through 92 this week with you, as well as Alma Chapters 53 through 56.

We're going to continue inside of our readings this week by moving into Doctrine and Covenants Section 91. I think it's a really good. This is a really fascinating section, actually, even though it's just six verses.

The reason for that is this kind of seems to ebb and flow inside of Church history, but we kind of have these hot topic moments where we go in and say, 'Ooh, let's look into apocryphal writings and see what we can learn inside of there.' And Joseph Smith had the same question. And that's what Section 91 is all about: is him asking the Lord and saying, 'Hey, should we spend some time in the Apocrypha?' And basically, the Lord telling Joseph, 'No, you don't need to translate there.' But he does give us an interesting bit of information here when it comes to using the Spirit and understanding from it. So I'm not going to say, 'Hey, you should not read the Apocrypha by any means,' because we learn from the Lord here that there's great truth inside of there.

And we also learn from the Lord that there's also great falsehoods inside of there. And so, how do we tell the difference? And that's what I wanted to dive into today.

It's a very short verse. So, really spend time in the entire section. But this is the verse I picked for today.

It's Verse 5 inside of Section 91. It says, 'And whoso is enlightened by the Spirit shall obtain benefit therefrom.' Now I asked at the beginning of this podcast episode where you find enlightenment, and for many people, they find it through — we can use the term — influencers, podcasters, YouTubers, whatever term you want to use: social marketing experts, gurus, there's coaches. I mean, take your pick on the name of all of the words that we use to describe these people, and yet, interestingly enough, as I have kind of gone through the...

Initially, I went broad, and I wanted to read everybody's opinion on all the growth things, and I needed to know everybody's pieces. I needed to know this over here and that over there, and what about this author and what about this podcaster? Oh, man, I got so caught up!

I needed to listen to all these episodes, and if I wasn't listening over here, I was missing out over there, until I realized something, and it kind of occurred to me inside of this section here. Just as the Lord said, 'Look, there are things that are...' The Lord is saying, 'Look, use the Spirit to obtain benefit from your sources.' And the more I've looked into it, the more I find that my greatest sources of truth and light are from the Lord through scripture and His prophets and the words that they've spoken. That is a great personal development path, actually.

Now, I work inside of the development world in terms of helping teams and leaders and businesses develop and grow. And many of them use Stephen Covey as an example as a resource. And yet, interestingly enough, if you kind of read "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," like you'll realize inside of it, those are gospel principles that have been...

I'm finding more and more that I enjoy, probably because of Savory Salt here, I enjoy reading the scriptures more and more. It doesn't mean that I have stopped reading other books by any means, but I love reading the words of the Lord and the counsel from His prophets. And it's doing much to help me in my own life.

And I know it will do more for you as well. That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Cleave to the covenants you have made, and together we will be savory salt.