Hank Smith: 00:03 Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I share a single story to go with each week’s Come, Follow Me lesson. John, we are in the book of Exodus this week, and I have a story for you. It’s a simple story, but it really has stayed with me. Do you remember in Exodus chapter 17, Moses has his hands up, and as long as he has his hands up, the Israelites win this-

John Bytheway: 00:24 Prevail.

Hank Smith: 00:24 … this battle. Yeah. Says his arms are very heavy and he’s, he can’t do it under his own strength. So two people, Aaron and Hur, H-U-R, come under his arms. Do you remember this? And they hold up his arms. It said it stayed up his hands. Listen to this story. This is told from President Eyring, but it was a long time ago when President Eyring was a singles ward bishop.

  00:51 This is what he says. He says, “You may have had the experience of being made stronger by the people you were called to serve.” That’s exactly what happens in this story. “When I was bishop of a young single adults ward, a young man came in for council. He was a freshman at a very good university.” So a week after they’d had their talk, he schedules another appointment. This young man comes in. He’s a new member of the church. He’s only 18 years old. John, sometimes we learn things from new members. The fact that they don’t know what, how things maybe are supposed to run or traditionally run, that they, they do something and you think, Why don’t we all do that? So he comes into his bishop’s office and says, “Bishop, could we pray before we talk? And could we kneel? And I would like to say the prayer.” Okay.

John Bytheway: 01:45 Okay.

Hank Smith: 01:46 He says, “His requests surprised me. But his prayer surprised me even more. It went like this. Heavenly Father, you know that Bishop Eyring gave me advice last week and it didn’t work. Please inspire him to know what I am to do now.”

John Bytheway: 02:02 Wow.

Hank Smith: 02:05 Right? He says, “You may smile at that, but I didn’t.” And then this is what he said he learned. He said, “This young man already knew what the Lord wanted him to do, but he honored the office of a bishop in the Lord’s Church and perhaps wanted me to have the chance to gain greater confidence to receive revelation in that calling and it worked. As soon as we stood up from the prayer, the revelation came to me. I told him what I felt the Lord would have him do. He was mature. He was only 18, but he was mature in spiritual years.”

  02:42 He said,” From that experience, I carried away the lesson that the faith of people we serve, sometimes more than our own faith brings us revelation in the Lord’s service.” He said, “If the boy had judged me as a failure, he never would have come back and ask again. But by choosing not to judge me, he received the confirmation he desired.” Ready for the end of this story, John?

John Bytheway: 03:07 Mm-hmm.

Hank Smith: 03:08 He says that this, this young man, this new member, eventually became a stake president. He carried with him the lesson we learned together. If you have faith that the Lord leads his church through revelation to those imperfect servants he calls, the Lord will open the windows of heaven to them as he will to you.

John Bytheway: 03:32 Wow. That’s great. And that’s a way to sustain.

Hank Smith: 03:35 That is a way to support a bishop when … I just love it. Well, he gave me advice last week and it didn’t work, so let’s try this again. Can you inspire him better this time? Yeah. Oh, that’s wonderful. 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 Elaine Dalton this week, and she is a joy. A lot of you will remember her from when she served as the Young Women’s General President, and she brings that same spirit that she brought in all those General Conference talks to our show. And then come back here next week. We’ll do another followHIM Favorites.