A lot can be learned about who we really are by how we spend our time and other limited resources. Most of us would agree that the word of God is valuable, but do our decisions of how we spend our time, attention, and money attest to its value in our lives? If you had to carve out a pie chart on how you allocate your resources, would scripture take precedence over sports, screen time, or time spent in church buildings? Does that reflect the values you would like to have?

When was the last time you reflected on the difference scripture makes in your life or in the lives of others? The scriptures themselves are full of examples of how the word of God resulted in enormous differences in the lives of many people. This post would be very long if all such examples were listed.

We read in the Book of Mormon that "...the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them—therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God." (Alma 31:5)

One particularly poignant example of the power of preaching the word of God is provided by the account of Nephi and Lehi attempting to preach the gospel to the Lamanites. They were quickly imprisoned, but three hundred men imprisoned with them converted because of their interactions with Nephi and Lehi. In a short time, these three hundred managed to fan out across Lamanite territory, convincing the majority of them to believe "because of the greatness of the evidences which they had received." (Helaman 5:50) The new converts had such great faith that not only did they lay down their weapons and disavow the traditions of their fathers, they also gave back all the lands they had taken from the Nephites and went to preach the gospel to them! Thus we see that two missionaries and three hundred of their converts were able to accomplish what generations of war with the Lamanites never could.

You never know the compound effect you might have by sharing with others what God has taught you. If this isn't something you are doing in intentional and consistent ways, I highly encourage you to prayerfully consider how you might begin to do so.

Here are a few invitations to you:

AS INDIVIDUALS: Is there an additional time in your day you could trade something out for more time in the scriptures? Some examples might include making a rule to read something--no matter how brief--from the scriptures before you allow yourself to check social media, your email, or the news. You might find that you can mix scriptures into the shuffle you listen to during your commute.

AS FAMILIES: Do you study the scripture as a family each day? If not, why not give it a shot? You can start small, such as assigning one member of your family to share a single verse at dinner.

AS FRIENDS: It is easier than ever to gather a small set of friends together to study the scriptures regularly. This can be done in person, but you might find it more feasible through using an online meeting program. There need not be any program to this. You can just get together, open your scriptures, and start reading. You could talk about your personal reading. If you wanted to, you could rotate assignments to share a meaningful scripture. Note: these don't have to be (and probably shouldn't be) full sermons. The point is to get together as friends and share insights from the scriptures. If you take this route, I invite you to consider involving as many family members as possible.

TO THE WORLD: It is easier than ever to share lessons from the scriptures with the world. Anyone can start a YouTube channel for free and begin creating shorts, which are 3 minute or less videos that YouTube will push out to hundreds of people who don't know about you. Several people have been able to share their ideas with 500-1,000 new people per video using this method. (For example, check out these channels: Chris, Bryan, and Bret). If you don't like showing your face, you can even use software like Capcut to generate AI avatars like this.