2.242 Repentance

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, truth, light, intelligence. I hope you are enjoying our reading inside of Doctrine and Covenants section 93 this week. There is some deep doctrine inside of there, and some that I've even thought about just, you know, letting you investigate and study on your own.

We're also reading Alma chapters 57 through 61, and we've been bouncing back and forth this week between those. We're going to do one more thought inside of Doctrine and Covenants 93 before we finish out the week inside of the Book of Mormon. This one comes a little bit of a curveball, and it's at the tail end of Doctrine and Covenants 93, where we actually shift gears from the Lord providing this incredible doctrine about intelligence and truth and light and this call to action for all of us as parents to make sure that we raise our children in that truth and light.

There's certainly some amazing reading inside of there that I would encourage you to take your time to dive into. But we get to a part here that I think is really interesting. And to me, it's just a kind of a small, I don't know if "testimony builder" is the right phrase, honestly, but it's just kind of a small, interesting piece for those that would speak against Joseph Smith and the early leaders of the Church.

I see these verses inside of Doctrine and Covenants 93, and I say to myself, why would they include these if they were trying to build a church the way that many people accused them of aggrandizing themselves and placing Joseph Smith at a savior level or anything like that, saying that we worship him and those types of things? These verses just make me go, "Hmm." Doctrine and Covenants section 93, verse 48 is our verse for today. And actually, it's a continuation from verse 47.

You know, that's been interesting; we've had a lot of those lately where there are some run-on sentences, verse for verse. But 48 says this: First, I guess, in 47, it's important to understand that Joseph Smith Jr. is called to repentance by the Lord. Okay, he's rebuked.

He's rebuked before the Lord. And then 48 says, "Your family must needs repent and forsake some things and give more earnest heed unto your sayings or be removed out of their place." Isn't it interesting that these verses would be included inside of here? If you were making up a church to make sure that you were the top of it, would you include phrases where the Lord's calling you to repentance and telling you that you're making mistakes and that you should forsake some things?

I love these verses, not for the sake of just hearing Joseph called out. I love these verses because I see that the Lord is going to encourage all of us to repent and, as it says in 48, forsake some things. That repentance is not a guilt trip.

That call to repentance is not something that's meant to make us feel bad. It's the Lord living the same doctrine with His prophets as He would with anybody else. And it helps us see that the Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So here inside of 47 and 48, I actually see an encouraging thought for us to repent. Repent, and that, based on our current prophet's counsel, is a daily process for you and I. I hope that as we seek repentance in our own lives, that we may have an increase of the Spirit in our lives, an increase of direction, and find the truth and the light and the intelligence that the Lord promises in Doctrine and Covenants 93.

That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Believe into the covenants you have made, and together we will be savory salt.