2.276 Blind in Their Minds

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. How could someone who's witnessed so many amazing miracles possibly fall away from the gospel? And what can we learn from that warning?

We've been reading this week Doctrine and Covenants Sections 109 and 110, some amazing blessings and incredible miraculous events happening for the Kirtland Saints. We're also reading this week, 3 Nephi chapters 1 through 5. And while I'd love to stay inside of Doctrine and Covenants for some time, I feel like 3 Nephi needs some attention.

We've had several weeks here where we've left to the end of the week with just a couple of verses from the Book of Mormon and so we're going to actually take the next three days and stay inside of the Book of Mormon. As we look at these verses here, our reading for today is going to be quite interesting. We come into a time on the backside of the preaching of Samuel the Lamanite, and we realize that in chapter one, Nephi, who's the son of Nephi now, right?

We've got a second one passed on. They see the signs, right? The night of Christ's birth comes; they see the signs.

They witness the things that Samuel testified. And then we go over to 3 Nephi 2 and we see what happens in the interim after these incredible signs are manifest. And I think there's something we all can learn from it. 3 Nephi 2, verse 1 is our verse for today.

It says this: "And it came to pass that thus passed away the ninety-fifth year also. And the people began to forget those signs and wonders." It says in verse 2, Now this continues in verse 2. We won't read it, but it continues in verse 2, letting us know that it says that Satan took those doubts, those disbeliefs that those people had, and he fed it.

He fed those disbeliefs all the way to the point that they saw that following Christ was a foolish and vain thing. These were the people that had seen the miracles. They had seen the signs and wonders.

They had heard Samuel testify of them, and these very people eventually became blind to it. What happened to them? Did you catch what happened in verse 1 for all of us?

First they saw these signs and wonders. They heard about them, they saw them, and then they kind of started to lose their awesomeness. It says they were less and less astonished at a sign or a wonder from heaven.

My friends, we used a couple of different examples to illustrate this. I'm going to use a new one today to continue to illustrate what happens in our lives. This is what normalcy, this is what comfortable does to us in our lives.

I didn't ask my daughter's permission, so I won't tell you which daughter I'm talking about here if you know my daughters. But I had a daughter that really struggled. She loved playing volleyball and she really struggled serving when she was learning how to play volleyball.

And she could not get the ball up over the net. And she'd go in the backyard and she would serve and she would serve and she would serve and she would serve. And I just kept telling her, stick with it.

It's going to come. And you know, those first couple of times that the ball went over, especially in games, those first couple of times the ball went over, it was astonishing for her. She got so excited.

I got excited. Mom got excited. Everyone gets excited, right?

We're all like, "Yes, the serve made it over!" But as she continued to play, what happened for all of us? Pretty soon the serve wasn't just astonishing that it went over, it became an expectation in our lives. Now we all expected the serve to go over because she was capable of doing that.

Now what does this have to do with the miracles that these people are seeing? I promise there's a connection here. Sometimes, my friends, the amazing, astonishing things in our lives that we experience over and over again, if we don't continue to hold them at a level of astonishment and realize the miracles for what they are, they will be less and less astonishing to us.

In fact, they may even get to the stage where we just expect it to happen in our lives. I think that's a lesson for all of us to hold onto. These people are the very people that witnessed the signs and wonders of the birth of Jesus Christ and turned and hardened their hearts because the astonishing signs became normal to them.

And ultimately what happened: the phrase in verse one is quite telling. Their hearts began to be hard. Okay.

It says, it says, they began to be hard in their hearts and blind in their minds. My friends, may you and I never allow ourselves to be hard in our hearts or blind in our minds when it comes to the signs and wonders that the Lord is trying to present to us in our lives. Truly see miracles.

Truly see them as astonishing for what they are, blessings from our Heavenly Father, and you will continue to see them and your faith continue to increase. We reject those or see them as normal, and we walk the line of possibly hardening our hearts and ultimately causing blindness to our minds. We got this though.

We're going to see the hand of the Lord in our lives. We're going to be astonished at those miracles. Yeah?

I love it. 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.