3.004 A Great Resource to Build Confidence

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as savory salt.

Hello, my friends, it's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve. Warning, warning, I've got a personal favorite coming ahead for you today.

But first off, can we just say shout out to Hope for doing her first ever public episode of anything and recording. She did such a great job yesterday. As I have talked to my daughters, including my daughter that's just returned from her mission, several of them have expressed desire to jump on to Savory Salt and share a few of their thoughts as well and encourage others to continue on their Savory Salt journeys.

So those will sprinkle in here and there as they have things that they want to record and share with you. So she did such a great job yesterday, and I'm excited to dive in today as we get ready to wrapping up this kind of buffer zone of sorts before we officially dive into the Old Testament here. This week I wanted to provide you with one of my personal favorite talks, and I don't mean this in any light throwaway way at all.

This talk, "Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence," has been a defining talk in my life since my mission. I believe it dated 1999. It is not a general conference talk.

It does come from President Holland. And I wanted it to be placed here as we get ready to dive into the Old Testament because he uses, President Holland uses, Moses' experiences recorded in Moses chapter 1. And so I thought maybe if I give you this resource here as we get ready to roll into Moses chapter 1 and Abraham chapter 3, that it would be a good resource for you.

So follow the resources today, click on the links, it'll take you right to the talk, and spend some time in there. It is phenomenal. Now as we get into there, some of you might be saying, "Wait, Old Testament, what is Moses chapter 1 and Abraham chapter 3?" For those of you that follow along on Savory Salt, but don't find yourselves as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, no worries, no fear.

We're still diving into the Old Testament, but in a quick explanation, we are going to be using the books of Moses and Abraham as well. And so just a quick explanation of where those come from. Joseph Smith, after he had translated the Book of Mormon, took time to begin translation of the Bible as well.

We know that there are many translations of the Bible, and one of our Articles of Faith talks about our belief in the Bible as the Word of God, as far as it's translated correctly. And so that's where Moses is going to come from. And I got to tell you right now, if the general Christian world read and understood Moses chapter one, there would be so much less.

Welcome to our talk by President Holland here for our message for today. He shares inside of it Moses chapter 1 and explains a lot. I'm going to let you read into it.

But then he gives kind of the premise of his talk, which is from actually from Hebrews chapter 10, verses about 35 through 39. And part of it says this, it says, he says, "Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward." And he reads a couple other segments out of Hebrews, and then he says this in his talk: "In LDS talk, that is to say, 'Sure it's tough before you join the church, while you're trying to join, and after you have joined. That is the way it has always been,' Paul said, 'but don't draw back,' he warned. 'Don't panic and retreat.

Don't lose your confidence. Don't forget how you once felt. Don't distrust the experience you had.

The tenacity is what saved Moses when the adversary confronted him, and it is what will save you.'" My friends, the message that I have today and the message that President Holland has is this: Whether you've been in Savory Salt now for a couple of days or a couple of years, you have had spiritual experiences. You have felt the hand of the Lord in your life. Keep those spiritual experiences and don't draw back from them.

Build the confidence in the Lord one spiritual experience at a time. I'm so excited to dive into this with you as we look at this and Moses next week and really see the power of the Lord's hand in our lives that we too can "Cast not away therefore our confidence." Great resource to help us build our confidence in the Lord going forward. That's all for today, my friends.

You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be Saviour's salt. We'll be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.