Hank Smith: 00:05 Hello, everyone. Welcome to this week’s followHIM Favorites. If you’ve been following this year, you know that John and I take a single question from this week’s lesson to use as our followHIM Favorite. This week, we are in the Book of Judges. The question this week is about Samson and how important it is to date well, to marry well, to surround yourself with good influences. Does it matter who my friends are and who I date and who I marry? How much does it matter? I think the story of Samson can answer that dramatically. Don’t you, John?

John Bytheway: 00:42 It’s a tough one to talk to kids about, taking a hard look and saying, “Do I need to change my friends?” I love that word that you use, Hank, the influences. And you know the example I like to use with teenagers is driving. Because they’re all very excited about getting their driver’s license and stuff. If you’re in somebody else’s car, you’re going where they’re going. Are you an influencer or are you influenced? And President M. Russell Ballard said once, “We must influence more than we are influenced.” Really requires a bit of honesty to say, “What are my friends doing to me?”. Are they taking me where I want? Are we all helping each other get where we want?” If my friend’s driving the car, it’s okay, because we both want to go to a good place or not. So, it’s a great question. Do I influence or am I influenced?

Hank Smith: 01:28 Excellent. Yeah. There’s only, that I know of, three people in scripture who had their birth announced by an angel. Two of them are well-known, John the Baptist and Jesus. The third is Samson. It’s Samson. And nobody could pick him out, right? When I asked, no one could pick him out. Why, what happens? I think Samson’s major downfall comes early in his life when he says “I want to marry someone who is not of my faith”. And his parents try to say, “Is there someone of our faith you could marry?” and he decides, “No, I’m not going to do that.” And then things kind of just keep spiraling there with the people that, because of this marriage, the people he’s surrounded by, bring about his downfall.

Hank Smith: 02:13 So, it does matter who you are surrounded by, who you date, and who you marry. We would love to say, “Oh no, it doesn’t matter. Life will be the same, no matter what.” And by the way, when you do switch friends or switch when you decide to end a relationship, we’re not saying those people are evil. You don’t have to go through your friend group and go, Telestial, Telestial, outer darkness, Telestial, you don’t have to do that. You can just say, look, this situation is not good for me. This circumstance, it just does not work. So I hope the Lord will take care of you. I hope good things for you, but I cannot stay here. Do you remember in the Book of Mormon? There’s this point where King Noah can do the right thing. Do you remember this? King Noah can do the right thing and let Abinadi go. And he was about to do it.

John Bytheway: 03:00 And he gets influenced…

Hank Smith: 03:02 His priests. His friends. They push him to do the wrong thing. How crucial it is, John, to surround yourself by people who are going to hold you up instead of trying to pull you down.

John Bytheway: 03:13 It’s a righteous desire. If you would like more influences, good influences in your life, pray for them. I just think it’s a good thing to pray for. Heavenly Father, I need friends and I need friends who will strengthen what I believe or influence me in good ways. And I will try to influence them in good ways. And when I look at my own life and my children, it’s one of the things I’m most grateful for is when I see they’ve got good friends, because they seem to go in good paths when they have good friends.

Hank Smith: 03:44 So we hope everybody listening, takes this seriously. Again, you don’t have to be judgmental. So often we make this about, ‘well, you’re judging my friend’. ‘You’re judging my boyfriend’. ‘You’re judging my girlfriend’. That’s not what this is about. This is you saying, what is the best situation for me in which I can live the gospel? Didn’t you say, John, you love what Elder Hales …

John Bytheway: 04:03 Oh yeah.

Hank Smith: 04:04 Used to say about a friend.

John Bytheway: 04:06 Yeah. Elder Robert D Hales. So this is going back. He was actually, I love this because he was a fighter pilot. Because I love airplanes. And the talk that he gave was called Return with Honor, because that was the motto for his squadron, I guess. But in that talk, he just gave the best definition of a friend. I think I’ve ever heard. “A friend is someone who makes it easier to live the gospel of Jesus Christ”. And I think he went on ‘a friend will never ask you to choose between his way and God’s way’, it was some really great advice. A friend makes it easier. Hank, you’re a friend because you never ask me to do things that would take me in bad paths. So we’re friends because you make it easier for me to live the gospel by being around you. And that’s a great definition for friendship.

Hank Smith: 04:52 Excellent. Absolutely excellent. So take a look, everyone listening, take a serious look, John and I are going to do it too. We’re going to take a serious look at, at the influences in our lives. How influencing are we? How influenced are we? And see if we need to make a change there because we don’t want to end up on the road to tragedy like Sampson does. It’s a very sad story where if he just makes some changes early on, it could end up wonderfully. So it can be a wonderful lesson for us. If we want to end up in good places, we got to make some good decisions early on. John, I had a good talk with one of my sons the other day and I was getting a little bit nervous about some of the video games he was playing. It felt like they were getting a little edgy.

Hank Smith: 05:33 He and I had a good chat about it. I kind of left it at that. And I got a text from him later and he said, “Hey Dad, I think I’m going to delete all the scary and weird games. They just don’t bring a good feeling into my life. I’m going to start playing more cheerful games that bring a brighter feeling into my life”. He says “It might be hard, but I really think that’s what I need to do. I’ve prayed about it. It’s what needs to be done”. Just a great little moment as a dad where you’re going, that’s wise right there. And as a parent, I wanted to come down and say, ‘this is ending, this is over, you’re not going to do this anymore’, but I felt like let’s trust the Lord. The Lord will talk to him, right? The Lord will guide him. So just to shout out to my boy for making a good decision on his influences

John Bytheway: 06:17 And Hank, I love what you said just then just, we’re going to look at our influences, because it’s not just people. It could be. You heard President Nelson talk about social media. Is social media a friend? Is the internet a friend? Are the movies I choose a friend? Are they making it easier for me to live the gospel? And so looking at all the influences, not just people, that’s a great way to put it.

Hank Smith: 06:39 Awesome. Well, we hope you’ll join us next week for followHIM Favorites. Come join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. We are interviewing Dr. Dana Pike and we’re going through the Book of Judges this week. I think you’ll love it. Come on over and join us. And make sure to join us next week for another followHIM Favorites.