3.067 Hast Thou Power with God

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. Have you had your wrestle with God moment in life or perhaps many of them?

And if you have, how did you change after that experience with the Lord? That's what I want to look at inside of our episode today as we wrap up our readings in Genesis chapters 24 through 33. And I got to tell you, we left a lot on the table this week inside of the readings.

Man, I wanted to talk about family relationships more. I wanted to talk about forgiveness more, although we did cover that a little bit inside of the Jacob and Esau story. I wanted to talk more about God and his covenants.

There's just a lot inside of this, a lot happening. Let's take a look at this moment that is really a pivotal defining moment in Old Testament times. And it matters then, and it matters today, because we have the beginning of the 12 tribes of Israel.

And we even have the beginning of Israel. If this moment doesn't happen, we don't really have much to talk about with the 12 tribes, do we? The moment I'm talking about here is found in Genesis chapter 32.

And I warned you yesterday that I was going to fast forward, go to the Jacob and Esau reconciliation moment, and then come back into one more thought to wrap up the week here. Jacob has, over the last 20 years inside the story, grown his family quite rapidly, right? In a lot of different ways.

And as he heads back to his original homeland, we have his moment, his wrestle inside the scriptures here. I hope that you've thought about many connections that the wording here has between this experience and the experience inside of Enos in the Book of Mormon. And I remember talking about that idea of the wrestle with God and Enos in season one as well.

It seems like there's this moment here where Jacob and the Lord are really going to test each other. And we're going to see what's going to come on the backside of it. The Bible says that the Lord will give it.

And here is part of that result. Our verse for today is Genesis 32, verse 28. And it says this: "And he said" (this is the Lord speaking to Jacob), "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel.

For as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Thank Holy Bible. Besides the name change, but I want to focus on the name change here. We've seen now evidence through Abraham, even his wife Sarah, Jacob.

Now we see that as the Lord is building these covenants with Abraham, especially through this Abrahamic covenant as we now refer to it today, that a name change becomes a significant moment here. And I wanted to drill into that because I think for us, whether it really goes down into the idea of name change and what that is in our lives and what it means as we make covenants with the Lord, which is going to take you down the realm of learning about the temple and those types of things, what I really want to focus on is the change that comes in our lives or should come in our lives the more we bring the Lord into our lives. My friends, the Lord is inviting us to be a part of his plan of salvation, to partake in it, to be a part of the results of the Atonement in our lives.

All of those things could be and should be life-changing moments for us. I hope that I am changing. I hope I'm changing for the better, first and foremost, but I hope that I'm changing in the ways that the Lord is guiding me.

I hope that my heart is changing. I hope that my behaviors are changing. The Lord changes names here as he makes covenants with these people in the Old Testament, but he also has the ability to change us.

He can change our relationships for the better. He can change the outcomes in our lives for the better. What?

Can you imagine he had wanting Jesus to? If someone that had never seen you in the last like 15 years walked up to you and had a five or a ten minute conversation with you, would they say, 'Ah, Allen, man, you haven't changed a bit!' And how terrifying that would be. Have I not changed in the last 15 years?

My friends, I hope that the Lord is changing me. I hope that I'm turning my heart to him more. I hope that I'm repenting more.

And that through that repentance process, I'm becoming a better, purer individual. And I hope that I am accepting Jesus Christ in my life more and allowing him to guide me and direct me. That, I believe, is what happens here as Jacob takes on this new name of Israel and the house of Israel gets established and changes literally the history of these people forever going forward.

These are monumental opportunities for us to partake of in our lives as the Lord changes us. 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