Hank Smith: 00:03 Hello, welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I share a single story to go with each week’s lesson. John, we are in section 58 and 59. The saints get to Missouri, and the Lord says something to them that I want to read to you. I want to tell you a story about how I learned this lesson that’s in this verse. It’s section 58 verse three. The Lord is saying, I know that you think this is going to work out perfectly, but hold on. You cannot behold with your natural eyes, your human eyes, the design of your God concerning what’s coming up and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation. The Lord basically is saying, look, you can’t see what I see.

John Bytheway: 00:45 I’ve got the big picture.

Hank Smith: 00:47 When things get hard, it’s okay. I learned this lesson, John, with a new technology. You might remember it. It was called TiVo. Do you remember TiVo?

John Bytheway: 00:56 Yeah. It was like a VCR, but it was digital.

Hank Smith: 01:00 You could record live television and you could rewind it right there. Before you could put a cassette tape in and you could record a show and then later go watch it. But this was, it’s recording as it’s happening, and then right in the middle of the show, sure, I can pause the show, pick it up later. This was huge, John. I don’t think the young people out there understand the trials we went through before.

John Bytheway: 01:23 Yeah, we went through the VHS years.

Hank Smith: 01:27 We suffered through commercials. Do you remember commercials?

John Bytheway: 01:31 Oh, kids see those now on YouTube and they’re like, dad, what happened? The TV broke, no that’s called a commercial.

Hank Smith: 01:38 Commercials, if you remember John, they always came at the wrong moment in the show. The part where it’s just a cliffhanger. The guy’s got the knife. He’s coming after the other guy. Then we all knew you had two and a half minutes to go make popcorn, go to the bathroom. We all knew it. John, did you ever call it when you were watching a show as it was getting up to this moment, you’re like, commercial, commercial. I guarantee it. Commercial, and it would. It would go to commercial.

John Bytheway: 02:03 I watch really old shows. If you are watching, sometimes you see a white circle go, boop, flip onto the film. It’s a mark for the film to stick a commercial in. So if you watch Andy and Barney and Mayberry, you know, boop, when a commercial’s coming.

Hank Smith: 02:19 I don’t even think the youth today understand how hard it was to watch one episode a week.

John Bytheway: 02:24 You have to wait.

Hank Smith: 02:25 Yeah, you had to wait until next week. My students, they watch entire season. One day,

John Bytheway: 02:31 They binge watch.

Hank Smith: 02:32 What would we have given? TiVo comes out. I can’t afford TiVo when it comes out, but my buddy Lynn Bowler, he could afford TiVo. He said, do you want to come over and watch Utah Jazz basketball with me? That’s also been much tribulation, by the way. I said, yeah. He says, what we’ll do is I’ll put it on TiVo. We can start the game late. We can fast forward through all the commercials. Amazing. We’re watching the Jazz game, John. This was a playoff game. If the Jazz lost, they would be done for the season. We were fast forwarding through the commercials and watching fast forwarding through the commercials. The second half starts, this was not looking good, John. The Jazz were going down. They were down by double digits. They’re down by 15 or 16 points. The crowd for the other team is so happy. They’re high fiving each other.

  03:24 I’m starting to weep. I just can’t do this. Can’t have the Jazz break my heart. Again. We get to this point where it goes to a commercial. Lynn pauses the game, runs out of the room. He is going to go do something. I don’t know what it was. He had a quick errand. He needed to run. I don’t know. His wife, Hailey says, oh, we can fast forward through the commercials, get it ready. When he gets back, we can start it again. But instead of hitting fast forward through the commercials, she hit the live TV button. You got to see the game where it actually was. Well, right when she hits the live TV button, the game had ended. Not two seconds before. There’s the Jazz. They are jumping up and down because there’s the final score. The Jazz had won by three points. She’s No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

  04:11 She hurried and went back to where it was. She said, you didn’t see that? Yes, I did. She said, well, don’t tell Lynn. She and my wife left. They know the end. I’m sitting there. Lynn comes back and he said, Hey, where’d Hailey and Sara go? I said, oh, I think they’re going to go do something else. He said, oh, they think it’s over. Sort of, something like that. He started the game again, and there the Jazz were down by 16. The other team is, fans are cheering so loud. The other team is so excited to be up by that much. He looks over at me, Lynn, and he says, so who do you think’s going to win? And I remember thinking something like, yeah, I got a pretty good feeling. I got a pretty good feeling. And he said, you really think so? I said, yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. Some people have told me, John, you should have bet him. I can’t do that. He was my friend, plus he was my bishop. Can you imagine when he’s like, are you honest in your dealings with your ?

  05:14 But John, when the game was on, I remember being so calm. I think the Jazz went down even further. I just was calm as a summer’s day. He’s looking at me going, you’re, you seem okay. Before I was yelling at the TV and crying. I said, I just feel good about this. I feel fine about it. And John, it happened exactly as I had prophesied. The Jazz slowly came back, hit a bunch of threes in a row. Pretty soon the game is over. Just as I had foreseen, they won by three. I remember watching the opposing teams fans cheering towards the end of the game. I almost felt badly for them. Oh, this is all going to turn around on you. You’re not going to feel good in here in a few minutes. I ended up telling Lynn, we laughed about it. I went home and I talked to Sara and I said, I think the Lord just taught me using TiVo how he sees us. Because you don’t get a lot of panic from him. You don’t get him yelling at us in our lives saying, what are you doing? What are you thinking? Maybe John, because he knows the end. You cannot see what I see. You cannot behold for the present time the design of your God. When we go to the Lord and say, Lord, I don’t think this is going to work out. We get back from him. Be still know that I am God. We can trust. He’s seen the end.

John Bytheway: 06:35 Great analogy when we think about in the midst of tribulation before the second coming, but we know how this is all going to turn out. We can watch things unfold in a calmer way.

Hank Smith: 06:47 Trust that he sees the end. The Lord has the earth on TiVo.

John Bytheway: 06:51 Maybe we can even look up and go, are you seeing this?

Hank Smith: 06:54 Are you fast forwarding through this part? I wish I was. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. We are with Sister Whitney Johnson this week. She is phenomenal. She brings in some expertise that John and I just don’t have. You’re going to love what she does with these sections. Then come back next week, we’ll do another followHIM Favorites.