3.064 Permission to be Mightier

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.

Have you ever been separated from a group because of your beliefs? If not, it is bound to happen at some point if you're following the commandments of the Lord. But our message today is permission for you to be mightier than they.

We're reading this week Genesis chapters 24 through 33. A lot of things happening in here. So please take the time to go and read these stories.

I try to give kind of some context into the verses for the day, but I feel like I'm leaving some of the story out, and it's true. I am, because the stories just keep rolling. And so we're going to do our best to try and get what we can inside of this.

Hopefully, the verses for the day and the messages cover the ideas that I'm trying to capture here, at least inside of our Savory Salt. The idea of being a little bit better every day. Our verse for today is going to be in Genesis chapter 26.

We have an interesting situation where due to drought, Isaac needs to take off and go try and find some new land. And as he does so, he comes across a group of people. They go back to the land where Abraham had dug wells and it'd been successful, and the Philistines had filled in the wells.

I don't know why, because water would be great in a desert, but they did. And then Isaac shows up here, and we have this interesting verse here that really kind of shows us the difference in the covenant-keeping group of people and those that were not part of the covenant from Abraham. It's verse 16 inside of Genesis chapter 26, and it says this: "And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us, for thou art much mightier than we." I think this is such an interesting verse.

You typically would just kind of skip over this verse and be like, oh, Isaac got told to go move somewhere else. But isn't it interesting who notices the mighty part? This is not Isaac saying, 'Hey, look at me.

Check out my righteousness here, everybody!' That's not how this is working. Isaac is just going about. They're digging wells.

He's got his people digging wells, and Abimelech sees this, and he's like, 'Man, these people, they're just outworking us. Like, they're just, they're mightier than us. Like, they have, they have more blessings than we have.' And we find out later in the chapter that they really do see things like that.

They see that Isaac is more blessed than they are. Now, here comes the part I want to be careful with, but also be bold with. And that is this, my friends, if we are living the commandments, if we're keeping our covenants we've made with Heavenly Father, there will be times, not might be, not possibly could be, there will be times where we stand out from the crowd.

It's about others realizing that when we're keeping the commandments of the Lord, we glow a little brighter. We're blessed a little more. We have things that just seem to fall in place in our lives, and that can be intimidating for others.

But don't let it get you down. If you're not invited to the party because of the way you live your life, if you're not invited to be at the dance with this specific group because of the way you live your life, it's okay. The Lord will bless you and continue to bless you in additional ways as you seek to live your life righteously.

So consider this your permission to be mightier than those who choose not to keep the covenants of the Lord. I hope that's in the context of humility and love, but also a call to action to be mighty with the power of the Lord. 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.