3.081 Patriarchal Blessings

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. We've got to start this episode with a bit of a success story.

My friends, thank you for jumping in and listening to Savory Salt. Wherever you are in the world, and I can't say wherever you are in the world, I think about you, I pray for you, I hope that you can feel the love of our Heavenly Father. As you dive into the scriptures on a daily basis, and I hope that Savory Salt is one of those places that helps you feel the Spirit as you dive in here with these episodes.

I wanted to start with a fun little beginning here just to kind of let you know the growth of Savory Salt over these couple of seasons here as we've been going now for just, what, two years and almost two and a half years as we get close to it here. Savory Salt hit a new country this week that we've never been in. I like to track country by country where we've been.

We've now been on all of the continents of the earth, at least the habitable ones. We haven't been to Antarctica, but we've been everywhere else. And this week we hit listeners inside of Israel.

And I thought that is super cool. We've been from Israel. We've been across the Middle East in places like the United Arab Emirates.

We've been over in Asia with China, Japan, Malaysia, all sorts of places. We've been in Africa, Europe, South America, North America. My friends, I sat down and I was like, where have we been?

And I counted up, I think it's 41 or 42 countries that Savory Salt is listed. I appreciate you being inside of Savory Salt. I want to make sure that we get our verse for today, but just wanted to share my gratitude for growing here and listening and participating in Savory Salt.

It lightens my heart, gives me joy to know that there are others out there trying to be a little bit better every day like I'm trying to be. Our verse for today comes inside of our reading this week of Genesis chapters 42 to 50. We're going to get to the tail end here in Genesis chapter 49 as Jacob is blessing his sons.

He adopts, in effect, the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, and then blesses his sons. And we get to Genesis 49, verse 28, and it says this: "All these are the twelve tribes of Israel. And this is it, that their father spake unto them, and blessed them every one according to his blessing he blessed them." My friends, here is the establishment of the twelve tribes of Israel.

This is where the rest of the Old Testament and really the rest of the gospel of Jesus Christ is going to be based off of. When we're talking about the gathering of Israel, we are talking about the gathering of the twelve tribes. Here is where it starts.

And it starts, if you note, with a blessing from a father—in effect, a literal patriarchal blessing. Now, Father's blessings are not the same as patriarchal blessings per se in the church, but it got me thinking about the power of patriarchal blessings in our lives. We do and can often ask for Father's blessings and should ask for those, and it falls in line with the priesthood blessings that President Oaks talked about in the conference talk we shared yesterday.

Another one that came to mind was a conference talk by President Monson, actually just six months before President Oaks' talk. It's called "Your Patriarchal Blessing, a Liahona of Light." And inside of it, he shares a section of a letter from the First Presidency of 1958. And it says this about patriarchal blessings: "Patriarchal blessings, wrote the First Presidency in a letter to stake presidents, contemplate an inspired declaration of the lineage of the recipient, and, when so moved upon by the Spirit, an inspired and prophetic statement of the life mission of the recipient, together with such blessings, cautions, and admonitions as the patriarch may be prompted to give for the accomplishment of such life mission." All promised blessings are conditioned upon faithfulness to the gospel of our Lord, whose servant the patriarch is.

My friends, I am so grateful for my patriarchal blessing. If you haven't had the opportunity to get a patriarchal blessing in your life, I would encourage you to pray about that in your life. See if it is time for you to get your patriarchal blessing.

Seek that direction from the Lord, fast and pray about it, and even go into that opportunity fasting and praying. If you've got your patriarchal blessing, when's the last time you read it? Seek that direction from the Lord.

See what stands out to you right now in your life, because I have found that different parts of the blessing come at different times in my life with a greater understanding of those things. My friends, I am grateful to the Lord for the opportunity to have the priesthood in our lives, to offer us these blessings, both priesthood and patriarchal blessings. I'm grateful to see here the establishment of the twelve tribes of Israel and grateful to be part of the gathering of Israel in these latter days.

May we all do our part to lift where we can to gather Israel. What an amazing opportunity for us today. 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.