3.233 I Shall Not Want

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.

Elder Patrick Kearon has recently knocked it out of the park. As of this recording, he recently spoke to students at a BYU devotional. I'm going to make sure that you have the link on the speeches.byu website for you to be able to track this down and take an opportunity to listen to his counsel here.

It's amazing. It ties in perfectly with Psalm 23, which we're going to take a look at today. At least it attaches perfectly through my lens as we look at it.

What a powerful message for peace and rest even now. My friends, this is a time in the world where things are unpredictable. Let's call it that.

Whether it's storms, whether it's earthquakes, whether it's wars, challenges, all the way down to personal life tragedies. It just seems like there's a lot of heaviness in the world today. I think several of the Psalms can help us have a little bit more comfort in our lives.

But the message today between Psalm 23 and that of Elder Kearon, I hope, uplifts and takes you on your path of savory salt. Let's go with the verse for today. First, we're going to look at Psalm 23, verse 1.

Psalm 23 is typically kind of known in the pop culture world for the, you know, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death and so on. That kind of is a common Christian use. But I love verse 1 because it kicks everything off before we're walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

Verse 1 says, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." Now the reason I picked that is if you look in the footnote there under 'want,' you notice a couple of scriptures, but you also notice the topical guide there uses the word 'contentment.' And I would encourage you to dive into contentment. That's not necessarily a word that we use often scripturally speaking. It's not exactly one that you think of like, 'oh, that's Alma chapter five,' you know, 'the chapter on contentment,' or, you know, whatever it may be.

And yet it's a very powerful concept when we break down this idea that "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want" implies that the Lord can help us be content here and now rather than content in the future. And that takes us to Elder Kearon's message that he gave at BYU, "Peace and Rest Even Now." I want to share just one of his thoughts inside of that. He says, 'If I have a wish for you, it is that you find peace in your actual life.

Not the life you think you would have if you were able to finish your to-do list, have three extra hours in a day, and finally achieve your goals. My wish is that you and I might slow down and turn more easily and comfortingly to Christ and bask in His promised peace.' Thank you for watching. We will be here tomorrow, and we hope you are too.