3.201 He Hath Given Us Rest

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.

Every now and then a sacrament meeting just hits me, helps me recharge, sets me back up on the right path. And I want to share some of the sacrament meeting that I experienced yesterday with you guys as we launch into our new week of study. This is the largest leap that we've taken thus far in the Old Testament when it comes to readings.

We're going to entirely skip the book of 1 Chronicles and end up in about halfway through 2 Chronicles as we go into 2 Chronicles chapters 14 through 20, 26, and 30. Now, a lot of 1 Chronicles is basically just genealogy and kind of making sure that we track the lineage of those that are going to play an important role when it comes to the life of Jesus Christ, really in a lot of context there. And then we're going to get a lot of David and Solomon stories retold.

And then we get a few of these stories inside of our readings this week that show us kind of some additional people that aren't recorded in the Kings chapters that we went through in 1st and 2nd Kings. Now what does this have to do with the sacrament meeting that I got to witness yesterday? Let's talk about it a little bit.

First of all, here, our verse for today is going to come inside of 2 Chronicles 14, verse 7. We have a man named Asa who is going to reign in Judah. And he's going to do a lot of rebuilding.

He's going to, on the front end of his leadership, he's going to clean out a lot of the groves in high places. He's going to do a lot of rebuilding. And we're going to see a lot of that happening.

We get an interesting insight here in verse 7 that I think can help us with Savory Salt. It says this: Well, whether it's the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, take your pick. It always seems like there are warring peoples all around the borders of the land.

And here we have this cool phrase in here that feeds into the messages that we got yesterday in our sacrament meeting: This idea that we have sought God and he hath given us rest on every side. Yesterday was my daughter's mission farewell as well as another sister in our ward's mission homecoming. And interestingly enough, they're swapping places as the one finished up in the Salt Lake City South Mission serving as a service missionary, and my daughter begins this coming week in Salt Lake City South Mission serving as a service missionary.

Both of them also experiencing POTS as a physical. Where was God? Where was He in the challenges that she was facing?

Only to bear testimony that she had found God in the people that had helped her in her life, in the moments that she had found strength and help, in the ability of others to come into her life just at the right place at the right time. And she bore testimony of being able to see God in her life in those areas. And then she said something that stuck out to me.

I want to share it with you. She said, God hasn't removed the challenges that I'm facing, but He's absolutely been with me and prepared a way to be able to get through those challenges as I've gone forward. My friends, I love the message we get from Asa here and the message that was shared yesterday in our sacrament meeting.

That as we seek the Lord our God, as we look for Him in our lives, that He absolutely has the ability to give us rest even inside of our trials on every side. So much so that we too have the opportunity to build and prosper our own lives 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 and let's be Savory Salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.