3.151 What Will You Be?

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 seen yourself in any of these Judges chapters? We are completing our reading of the Book of Judges. These heroes that come in, the children of Israel that seem to not really want to be saved if I'm being honest.

And that's taking me into the direction of our reading for the day. It's been a while since we went this route. I'm going to use directly a conference talk rather than directly out of the book of Judges for our scripture for today.

And I hope that this is just the beginning of search for you as I share this. As we wrap up the book of Judges here, I can't keep but continually reflecting on the idea that it just doesn't seem like the children of Israel want to... They certainly have witnessed incredible miracles and have had all sorts of different heroes and heroines chosen by the Lord to help them.

But it just seems like the children of Israel aren't really wanting to do these things. If I could use a common analogy that I heard a lot as a teenager, it's like pushing a wet noodle, right? Like that's not really an effective way of herding cats.

How many different ways can I say it? And so I've wondered where I am in these stories. And I want to pose the same question to you.

Where are you in these stories? Are you all in? Are you perhaps the hero or heroine that the Lord would call upon to help Israel?

Are you maybe in the group that as soon as the authority turns their blind eye, you immediately go and do something against that authority's will and wish? Are you somewhere in the middle? I think I fall certainly somewhere in the middle on my best days.

Maybe I'm on the hero side and on my worst days, maybe I'm doing those things that I shouldn't be doing. And so as I've reflected in that, I just spent time in conference talks, kind of looking around and I landed on one that just resonated for me inside of "Our Heartfelt All," which is the name of the talk by, at the time it was Elder Uchtdorf in 2022. The Bible is a idea of the widow and her two mites that she donates, right?

And talks about the power of how the Lord measures our giving. And then further in the talk, he gets into this concept of sacrifice and consecration. And that's where I wanted to land on here for our thought.

He separates the two of them in a way that I thought, you know, as much as consecration is referenced here with the children of Israel, I thought this one stood out to me. Here's a couple of thoughts from Elder Uchtdorf in his talk. He says, "The Bible says that the Lord is the Lord of all things.

Consecration is different from sacrifice in at least one important way. When we consecrate something, we don't leave it to be consumed upon the altar. Rather, we put it to use in the Lord's service.

We dedicate it to Him and His holy purposes. We receive the talents that the Lord has given us and strive to increase them to become even more helpful in building the Lord's kingdom." My friends, that stood out to me as we look at this idea of consecration that the children of Israel are repeatedly asked by the Lord to go through. It's not just sacrificing.

It's not just putting away your will to the will of something else or to someone else. Consecration is about taking what we've been blessed with and amplifying it to the service of the Lord. I'm grateful for my opportunity to try and consecrate my life better for the Lord.

I hope that on those days that I kind of appear a little bit of negative children of Israel, that on my other days I can reassert myself to put myself in the seat of being that hero or that heroine and try to be all that I can to consecrate my services to 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.