Hank Smith: 00:03 Hello, everyone. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. John and I are sharing a single story to go with each week’s lesson. John, we are in Alma 32 through 35, faith, the seed growing into a tree. When I was a new seminary teacher, a wonderful talk was published called Weed Your Brain, Grow Your Testimony by John Bytheway. Still one of my favorite talks of all time, and that’s not just because we’re friends now. I loved that talk. I heard it given live. I bought the CD. I still think you can get it at DeseretBook.com. It really is a life-changing talk, John. So what stories did you tell there?

John Bytheway: 00:42 Oh my goodness, there’s so many. But let me just tell you, I bought a house in South Provo. I couldn’t seem to find a wife. I thought maybe if I get a mortgage, I’ll be more attractive. And I wasn’t, but now I had a mortgage.

  00:53 But anyway, I moved to this house, and there’s this backyard and the weeds are about five feet tall. I went to Ernst Home Center. That’s going back.

Hank Smith: 01:03 Okay.

John Bytheway: 01:03 I bought some garden tools, and I thought, “This is going to take me a couple hours.” Took me a couple of weeks to get those weeds out-

Hank Smith: 01:11 Yeah. A couple hours.

John Bytheway: 01:12 … because they were deep and oh my goodness. And next door, my neighbors had a Norwegian Elkhound. Don’t know why I remember that. He would not stop barking all day long. I’m out there weeding. I’m tried everything. I’m trying to scare him. I’m trying to be nice to him. And finally, I bought some dog biscuits and I chucked one over the fence, and he was quiet for like three minutes, then, so ungrateful, came right back-

Hank Smith: 01:39 Back to-

John Bytheway: 01:39 … started barking his head off at me. I thought, “Do you ever get hoarse? Do you ever lose your voice?” Then I thought, “Hey,” and I crumpled up the dog biscuits into a fine powder and I chucked it over the fence, and that kept him busy for 20 minutes. He’s sniffing around looking for pieces, and it was a great moment in my life when I thought, “I am smarter than a dog.”

  02:00 But I finally got all those weeds out. And now, Hank, what’s going to happen? All those weeds are out. If I just do nothing, what’s going to happen?

Hank Smith: 02:10 Oh, absolutely. It won’t take long.

John Bytheway: 02:13 They’ll come right back again. And I’ll tell you, I feel like I learned more lessons thinking about these agricultural stories and parables in the scriptures than I would’ve just reading them over and over again.

  02:25 And so these lessons are going to sound really duh, really elementary, but let me give you some of them I learned from that.

  02:32 Number one, if you want good things in your garden or in your life, you have to put them there. After I had cleared that dirt, how come tomatoes and cucumbers didn’t come and put themselves in a line? They don’t. That’s number one. You want good things in your garden, in your heartland, we call it for this chapter, because your heart is compared to soil and you’re going to plant the word in your heart, you want the good stuff, you got to put it there.

  02:56 Number two, bad stuff will come out of nowhere, uninvited. Do a magic trick for your friends. Just clear some dirt and say in the spring, “Watch this. Dandelion. Boom,” and it’ll come. I don’t know how they know where there’s available dirt. They come out of nowhere. They are omnipresent. Hank, I did some research. Somebody brought dandelions over from Europe. They were imported.

Hank Smith: 03:21 Aw.

John Bytheway: 03:22 What were you thinking? Okay, there’s a special place in outer darkness reserved for these folks.

Hank Smith: 03:27 The dandelion bringer.

John Bytheway: 03:29 Yeah. I think it was for greens, to make salads or something. But you know how they grow that sphere with the seeds that-

Hank Smith: 03:37 Like with the little parachute people that yeah, that-

John Bytheway: 03:39 Yes. You’re trying to plant your grass. You see your kids, “Dad, look,” and you’re running from the other side, “No.” And they blow, and all those little parachutes of destruction go out all over your grass. You’re like-

Hank Smith: 03:53 Paratroopers.

John Bytheway: 03:53 …,”No.” Anyway, so the bad stuff will come out of nowhere, uninvited.

  04:00 And lastly, the life will be a constant war on weeds. It’s just the way it is. They keep coming. You want the good stuff. And this is what Alma teaches us, because he doesn’t just say, “Plant the word.” He says, “Now you have to give it time to grow roots.” And I call this fertilizer FDP in verse 41: faith, diligence, and patience. Did you put FDP on it?

  04:22 And then it will take root. Verse 42, “Because of your diligence, faith and patience,” now it’s DFP, “then you can feast until you are filled and hunger not. Neither shall you thirst.” There’s a lot of good agriculture metaphors for our hearts. And put the good stuff in there, and put FDP in it, and feast off the tree of life.

  04:46 But anyway, now you know, if you got a dog, dog biscuits. Crumple them up, chuck them over the fence.

Hank Smith: 04:51 Crumple them up, throw them over the fence.

John Bytheway: 04:52 Yeah. They’ll be busy for days, right?

Hank Smith: 04:56 That was fantastic. What’s the one you always tie to this? The parable of the sower. Jesus says, “The seed can’t grow in the weeds.”

John Bytheway: 05:04 Right. First it’s soil and then Alma’s seed and then Alma’s season, because you’ve got to prepare it so that it can grow roots. You’ll see the word roots all over in here. And then you get to enjoy the supper. So soil, seed, season, supper.

Hank Smith: 05:19 Yeah. I’ve always been scared of that weedy soil in the Savior’s parables. I’m too busy. I got too many other things going on. I can’t give time to my testimony.

John Bytheway: 05:31 And it’s good soil. It’s good enough, because weeds are growing in it. You’ve just got the wrong stuff in there. You know how there’s 613 commandments in the Old Testament? They used to count them. This is one of those.

  05:42 Deuteronomy 22:9. Listen for the spiritual lesson. “Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with diverse seeds, lest the fruit of thy seed, which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard be defiled.” It’s like, “Why would you plant good things and bad things in your heart at the same time?”

Hank Smith: 05:59 Yeah. The good stuff just can’t grow. It just can’t grow. You’ve got to weed your life. Often, John, I find out there’s an app taking too much of my time. I should be doing better things. So I delete the app. And how many times have I downloaded that app? I went and found the weed and replanted it in my garden, right?

John Bytheway: 06:20 And put FDP on it.

Hank Smith: 06:21 Yeah. I’m like, “Oh, I’m so sorry I got rid of you. I really think you should belong here.” Oh, how terrible.

  06:28 John, thank you for that. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. We are with Dr. S. Michael Wilcox this week. He waxes eloquent, as he does every time he is on our podcast. And then come back next week. We will have another FollowHIM Favorites.