3.024 Make The Choice

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 this day whom you will serve.

I think it's time for some story time with Allen. Before we get to our verse for today, which is going to come from Moses chapter 4, in our readings this week, Genesis 3 and 4 and Moses 4 and 5, we're going to actually do story and thought piece first of sorts. Let's plant the seed, do the verse, and then wrap it up a little bit.

And I debated about the order of operations with this one. I wondered if this one should go before yesterday's choice conversation, but ultimately I actually decided on making it after the choice conversation with Cain and his countenance. Now let's reflect for just a second, a time in my teenage life.

I grew up in a rambunctious neighborhood. There were eight or nine of us all the same age. In fact, we were born, like I was born in January, another one was born in February, next one March, April, like we were literally 1980 was a great year for the neighborhood.

And we grew up together, and we were just this big clump that went everywhere. We made a lot of noise, did a lot of good things, and some things that were probably questionable, as my girls have laughed about. But I want to talk about a leader that we had, a Young Men's leader that we had.

He was our Young Men's president when I was, I think it was right when I was 12, 13, 14 range. And he gave us a lesson. In that lesson, we were in the church building, and we walked into the classroom, and there was one string taped from one side of the room to the other.

And he had each of us throughout the lesson stand up, and the only thing we were allowed to do is we had our hand around the string, and you could either go along the string one direction or along the string the other direction. There was no other option. It was go this way on the string or that way on the string.

Keep that in mind as we take a look at our verse here. And then let's see if we can come back to this string analogy. That my, John, if you ever listen to these, John, you've made an amazing impact in my life.

So John was my leader at the time. I love him. I've seen him through the years.

Incredible man, great family. Love you, John. Here's our verse for today and let's see what we can learn from it.

Our verse comes out of Moses chapter 4, and again I can't restate this enough, so I'm going to say it again. We are so grateful to our Heavenly Father for the Book of Moses because of the increased understanding that we can get out of these early creation, early Adam and Eve stories. And we get some verses in Moses chapter 4, especially this verse that is pivotal for all of us understanding the plan of salvation.

It's Moses chapter 4 verse 4. "This is the beginning of Satan, and he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will." The best ways that he could do that is to simply take us off of hearkening unto the voice of the Lord. He doesn't have to have us accomplish all the things he wants. He just has to have us not accomplish the goal of hearkening to the voice of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

Now let's go back to the string analogy that I had in my teenage years. The message from our Young Men's leader at this time, if I remember it correctly, was that ultimately, at the end of the day, we have two choices in life: to follow our Heavenly Father and to draw closer to Him through the merits and atonement of Jesus Christ, or to go further away from that. That the string analogy he was trying to teach us our decisions, and people are going to say—I'm going to go ahead and say—"But wait, but what about decisions like what school should I go to and what job should I have and should I get married?" There is a right and wrong, and the more Satan can convince us that our choices are endless and that we have millions of choices to make and that we have ultimate all these different paths we could take in our lives.

My friends, I hope that you can understand and I hope that I can understand that when we truly grasp that it's about choosing the Lord or choosing Satan, all other societal, all other paths we could possibly take seemingly disappear. You and I have one choice to make. Make the choice to follow our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

Make the choice to draw closer to Them, and you will be blessed for it. 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 savory salt. We will be here tomorrow, and we hope you are too.