2.279 As Fast as Ye are Able to Receive Them

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. I love the Doctrine and Covenants because of the help it provides us on the spiritual rollercoaster of life. Welcome to the beginning of our week here.

We're reading this week Doctrine and Covenants, sections 111 through 114, as well as 3 Nephi, chapters 6 through 10. We are the final week here before we get to the coming of Jesus Christ to the people of the Book of Mormon. But before we get to our Book of Mormon readings this week, let's dive into Doctrine and Covenants.

And I want to actually, this won't be our verse for today. In Come Follow Me, I love the beginning paragraph, kind of the intro paragraph for this week and I wanted to just set it as kind of a precursor and then let's get into our verse for today. It says this in Come Follow Me.

Have you ever had a spiritual experience that made you feel confident and secure in your faith in Christ, but then life's afflictions tried your faith and you found yourself struggling to recover the peace that you felt before? Something similar happened to the saints in Kirtland. Less than a year after the spiritual outpourings connected with the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, troubles arose.

A financial crisis, conflict in the Quorum of the Twelve, and other trials caused some saints to waver in their faith despite their earlier experiences. That's how we open the week with Doctrine and Covenants, sections 111 through 114. I love these sections and I love the counsel inside of them.

We will, as I keep mentioning, we will not be able to get to all of the verses in here. So I hope that your adventures through these sections provide for you the things that the Lord would have you study and learn. But perhaps we can touch on a few of them here together inside of Savory Salt.

Our verse for today comes in Doctrine and Covenants Section 111, and it's actually verse 11. It says this on the tail end of Section 111, verse 11: "Therefore, be ye as wise as serpents, and yet without sin; and I will order all things for your good, as fast as ye are able to receive them. Amen." Now we've talked about the Lord's ability to take our failures and our struggles and make sure that they turn for our good.

So that's not the new piece here. Although I do think the Lord's phrasing in this verse is quite telling as he says, "I will order all things for your good." That not just allowing our failures to be for our good, He will order them. He will make it so.

But the piece that stood out to me today is this concept here: as fast as ye are able to receive them. You know, it's got me reflecting a little bit. I wonder, I don't know, but I wonder if sometimes the delaying of the blessings from the Lord.

This phrase here is quite telling to me. As fast as ye are able to receive them. What if I'm holding back blessings from the Lord because of the way I'm living my life?

Perhaps it's as simple as desire that I have to have the Spirit in my life. Perhaps it's the way I'm talking to myself. Maybe I'm using negative phrases or negative self-talk and it's driving the Spirit away.

Maybe I have influences in my own home that don't allow for the Spirit to reside in my home. And these could be tiny and small things. And again, I'm not saying that we are all, you know, exceptionally sinful and therefore the Lord can't bless us.

I'm just wondering, as we're seeking for these blessings from the Lord, and we're seeking for all things to be for our good, I wonder what role that is. And it got me thinking in the New Testament, I'm sure this will become a verse in a couple of years from now as we dive into the New Testament. I won't read it, but the story of Jesus healing when the man brings, I believe it's his son, I think it's in Mark, where the Lord says, "Look, all things are possible if you would just believe." And the man responds and he says, "I believe; help thou mine unbelief." And that has always been an interesting sentence to me.

What would make you say, "I believe," and then immediately afterwards say, "help thou mine unbelief"? And I think that's perhaps a little bit of what's happening here. As we ask for blessings from the Lord, as we pray for them in our lives, we ought to also make sure that we're preparing to receive those blessings.

Then the Lord can, in his infinite wisdom, open the windows of heaven, as it says in the scriptures, and make all things for our good as fast as we're able to receive them. My friends, we play a role in how fast we can receive the blessings from the Lord. It's still absolutely in His time and according to His will, but we absolutely play a role in preparing for those blessings as well.

May you and I take some time to look into our lives this week and see where we may be slowing things up possibly when it comes to the blessings the Lord would pour into our lives individually. 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.