3.047 I Sought ... to be a Greater Follower of Righteousness

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'll serve.

Question for you today. What role does desire play in our modern Church experience? We're reading this week Genesis chapters 12 through 17 as well as Abraham chapters 1 and 2.

And yes, we're getting into some big readings. So in the past couple of weeks, we've had some smaller chapters here and there. Now we need to kind of move a little bit if we're going to get through these.

And so I'm letting you know, I kind of let you know these all the time, but I'm just a quick reminder, I'm not going to be able to get to verses in every chapter of our readings. And this week, actually, we're going to get stuck inside of Abraham chapter two a little bit. And I say stuck in a good way, because there's some incredible sections in here that we're going to get to.

We have to have in context of the book of Genesis that we just don't have there. So I'm excited to dive into that with you as we get rolling this week. Let's take a look inside of Abraham chapter one.

It's been a while since we talked about Abraham. We typically started right off. If you remember the beginning of the season, we jumped straight into Abraham 3 because of the view that he has of pre-life and the premortal experience.

Now we need to back up and we get an interesting context here that we don't have in the book of Genesis when it comes to who Abraham is. And that's where our two verses are going to come from today and tomorrow in the first chapter of Abraham. Let's look at the first one today.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Our Verse for Today. Our verse for today is 1. I think this gives us a great insight into who he is.

Who Abraham is. In the Genesis version we kind of get the lineage experience, which is important. We want that genealogy and that lineage.

But we don't really get a context into Abraham, the person until you get the whole story and then look back on who he became. Let's see what it says in verse 2. Now there is so much in this verse.

If you're just listening to it, take time to open it up and actually read along. Look at how much Abraham desires and seeks and wants in his life. We get the verses.

We know Abraham's going to become the father of the Abrahamic covenant, right? This is the very covenant that the Lord's going to basically seal the earth together in families. And yet we never really see; we kind of see Abraham as the receiver of it.

I believe this verse shows us that Abraham was the desire of it; he wanted it in his life. And it got me thinking about kind of our modern experience, especially for young men in the Church. Young men, we just, we kind of like reach the age of priesthood, and it's like, 'All right, well, you're this age, here you go.' You know, let's do the interviews with the bishop and let's do it.

And I don't mean to discount that by any means at all. So I don't, I don't want to discount it. Instead, the experience I kind of reflected on, especially for me in my life, was when I turned 12, it was just like, I was like, 'Okay, it's time to become a deacon.' And when I turned 14, it was like, 'Okay, it's time to become a teacher.' And these checkpoints in my life just kind of happened.

This kind of gives me an awesome perspective of the desire that Abraham had behind it all. He wanted this; he sought it out in his life. And it helped me to think about, 'What do I want my experience in the gospel to be?

What do I desire my relationship with Jesus Christ to be?' And that's helped me. And I hope I can keep that perspective going forward to remember that Abraham didn't just become the father of all nations here, of many nations, I should say, because the Lord granted it to him. We see in this verse his desire to not just be a follower of righteousness, but to be a greater follower of righteousness.

He didn't want to just be someone who possessed great knowledge. He wanted to be someone who possessed a greater knowledge. Abraham is a wonderful example of taking the good and seeking and wanting to have more of the better.

And I hope that I can live that example and that you can too, rather than simply be a receiver of whatever the Lord tells us. Abraham clearly sought it out, wanted it, and went after it in his life. And I think we can do that in a relationship with the Lord as well.

That's all for today, my friends. You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith if you want to, and let's be Savory Salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.