2.296 All These Things...Shall Be For Thy Good

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. Do you ever get stuck in the what-if scenarios?

What if this? What if that? What if?

We have a little bit of a look inside of that inside of our readings this week as we're reading Doctrine and Covenants sections 121–123 as well as 3 Nephi chapters 15 and 16. We're going to stay inside of Doctrine and Covenants as these sections are so powerful, especially for those of us facing difficult times or tribulations, trials, struggles, adversity. We're going to shift from Doctrine and Covenants section 121, although 122 is part of the same revelation.

It's dated the same and it's during Joseph's experience in Liberty Jail. And we're going to get into my mission scripture. Now, if you know section 122, you might be wondering which one in those scriptures would you have chosen for your mission?

Well, let's take a look at them here. The Lord is talking to Joseph here, and he gets into a starting phrase that lasts for quite some time. So, just kind of understand, starting somewhere around verse five here, he starts with if thou art.

In other words, if you have to experience this and if you have to experience that, these are kind of, What if this happens? What if this happens? So, if thou art.

Verse 5 is not our verse, though. We're going to go to 122 verse 7. It's the tail end of all of these if thou arts.

Okay. It says this: And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very Now, if we go back to my mission days, I picked verses 5–7 as my mission scriptures. And my sister, one of my sisters, asked quite frankly; she was like, "I don't understand why you picked that." Those are some pretty good doom and gloom scriptures.

But, you know, that tail end there is so encouraging to me. The Lord is casting a vision here of the hardest of hard times, the most difficult situations, the worst scenarios we can possibly think of in our what-if world. And we turn to Him and we're like, "Lord, what if this happens to me?

And what if that happens to me? What if I just don't know what to do?" And He answers us. He says, "Know thou, my son?" And I would say to all of you daughters out there as well.

So maybe we go, "Know thou my children, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good." Now, I faced some difficult times on my mission. I know everybody has their own specific difficulties on their mission. So I won't say that my experiences in Mongolia were any harder than anybody else's experiences anywhere else in the world.

But they were tailor-made for me. They were my challenges that the Lord was trying to say, "Allen, you can do this." Just turn to me. Just let me take the My friends, I am grateful to the Lord that regardless of the challenges we face, there is no challenge so difficult that he can't help us and that we can't learn from it and become better for it.

I love this scripture. It is empowering to me, despite all the challenges that are listed in it, that at the end of the day, those challenges, if we will turn to the Lord, can absolutely be overcome. Absolutely be experiences that are for our good.

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. For more information, visit us at www.fema.org.