3.228 All in Good Time

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.

What do J.R.R. Tolkien, John Maxwell's father, and Ebenezer Scrooge have in common? That's worth digging into inside of this podcast episode as we dive into the final chapters of the Book of Job.

I hope that you've had an opportunity to do some research in some of the additional readings and videos that are placed inside of the Come Follow Me materials for Job. The Apostles have certainly been active this week, as of this recording anyway, with social media having some incredible testimonies of Jesus Christ as our Redeemer and our Restorer of all things good to those who seek to follow his commandments. As we wrap up this week, I couldn't help but kind of collect these pieces together from all sorts of different readings I had in my study through the week.

And then I landed on these three, and I thought, you know, I think they're close enough I could say that there's some commonality here. So let's get our verse for today and then see if we can attach Tolkien, Maxwell, and Scrooge all together into one little happy bundle. Our verse for today is Job chapter 42, verse 12.

We fast forward to the end of the story. Spoiler alert, it turns out actually quite well. Verse 12 says, So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.

For he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses. Now I don't know about you, but anytime we're talking about thousands in any sort of quantities, I feel like that's a lot. So I'm not going to try and translate into real dollar value what happened in Job's life.

Basically, the moral of the story here is that the Lord, through Job's faithfulness, is able to bless him with so much more than he even started with, despite having such tragedy and challenges throughout his life. Now, what does that mean for the three examples that I've listed at the beginning of this episode? Well, for those of you that have not listened for some time on Savory Salt, you probably don't know that I'm a huge fan of J.R.R.

Tolkien. Now, I hopefully didn't say 45 too critically because I'm right on that, I'm 46 right now as of this recording. So I don't mean to make it sound like old, but I do make it sound like it's kind of past the early-go stages that we typically see or associate with success.

Now we go to Ebenezer Scrooge. We get to the end of Ebenezer Scrooge's story. He's had quite a harrowing night with the visitation of three angelic beings.

And then we find out at the end of the story that Scrooge was better than his word. In fact, he was infinitely better inside of the reading there in that story. He too realized that it's never too late.

All things can come properly. And then I wrap up with John Maxwell's dad. John always talks about his dad.

He had talked about him before he passed quite often whenever he'd go to visit him in his different situations. His father lived into his 90s, and he always shared this story about his dad when I'd go and listen to John speak. He said every time he'd see his dad, he'd say, "Dad, how you doing?" And his dad would say, "You know, my best days are still in front of me." I love that perspective!

My friends, the Lord has his timeline. The blessings of following him will come to pass. Sometimes they come to pass immediately after we follow whatever commandment it is.

I can testify to that. That is 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.