Hank Smith: 00:05 Hello, my friends. Welcome to FollowHIM Favorites. We are taking a single question from this week’s Come Follow Me lesson and talking about it. John, this week’s lesson, we’re in the beginning, chapters of second Kings, and there’s a story in here about a man named Naaman who expects something huge and gets something quite mundane, something quite boring. Here’s my question for you. What do you do when you have big expectations for spiritual experiences for God, for life, you have these big expectations and the answers are really quite what you might call just typical, kind of not what you expected. What do you do when those expectations aren’t met?

John Bytheway: 00:47 Gosh, that’s a good question. I think that it was Elder Maxwell that said, “God, doesn’t send lightning and thunder when a still small voice will do.” type of a thing. And I think sometimes our expectations are that our experiences will be like the scriptures. And I like what somebody said once. I think it was Elder McConkie way back in the day that said, “Some things that happened to these ancients were so miraculous they got written up in the scriptures.”

Hank Smith: 01:13 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 01:14 Which is telling us they weren’t typical, they were extreme. They were huge. But for many of us, boy just staying on the covenant path is a great thing and a great accomplishment. And be an example to those around you is a great thing. And it might sound mundane or simple, or those are the answers I always hear. But Heavenly Father needs people who quietly just move forward and live the gospel. And in retrospect, that is a great thing and Naaman was asked, “Go wash in the Jordan.” And what was his response? Hank, the Jordan. That’s just…

Hank Smith: 01:50 Yeah, it says Naaman was roth. Here he said, “Behold, I thought that he would come out and call on the name of the Lord and strike his hand and recover the leper.” He has this idea in his head of what this is supposed to go like, and it doesn’t go like that. But it’s nice that he has a good friend who says, “Hey, listen, if he would’ve asked you to do some great thing, you would’ve done it. Why not do this simple thing, then why not give it a try?”

John Bytheway: 02:17 You’re expecting something big and you feel the spirit that says, “Be nicer to your family.”

Hank Smith: 02:23 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 02:23 Oh, but I’ve heard that before. I don’t want to hear that. And I like what you said, Hank about a friend. It’s so great to have a friend that would be willing to say something like Naaman said, “Well, if he’d asked you a big thing, you would’ve done it. He just asked you a small thing, be nice to your family.”

Hank Smith: 02:40 Why don’t you maybe give that a try? Why don’t you give that small thing a try? John, this discussion is reminding me of when all my friends were getting big mission calls. I had a friend get called to Brazil and another friend get called to Hungary and I’m like, ” Wow, where am I going to go?” And I got called to California. That was my second King’s 5:11 moment. Namaan was wroth and said, “But I thought, that it would be bigger and more important.” And I had the spirit say to me, “Does it matter? How about you go serve that mission call the one that you’ve been given.” And it ended up being a fantastic mission, which I loved and it taught me many things and enabled me to teach the gospel in English, which I… at the time I wouldn’t have known, but that’s what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life would be teaching the gospel in English.

John Bytheway: 03:30 In English. Yeah. And I think that a lot of our listeners may have had a modified mission. I wrote a chapter in when it doesn’t make sense called Modified Missions. Because, “Well, I was called here, but how come I didn’t go there?” And I love what Elder Bednar and I talked about there. The call to serve is the amazing, wonderful big thing. The assigned to labor is a different thing. And some got switched around. Some never got where they were going, but you being in a place where you were called to serve is amazing. What a unique thing that is in this world.

Hank Smith: 04:07 Yeah. John, I was thinking about, when we kneel down to say prayers, “Lord, what would thou have me do?” And he said, “I would have you go to church, I would have you read your scriptures, I would have you pray-“

John Bytheway: 04:21 You say your prayers.

Hank Smith: 04:22 I would have you do these things. And we might say, “No, I want to do some great thing. I want to do something big.” And I think we can end up like Naaman and being upset that we’re being called to do something small and simple, but yet it works. It works. Naaman, it works. You get your prayers answered by doing the very thing that you are angry for getting that answer. Maybe don’t be surprised, John, if you get those simple answers.

John Bytheway: 04:54 Yeah. And I think the famous UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden would bring these greatest high school players in the country who came to and got to play for John Wooden at UCLA and get the first lesson he would give them. If I remember right, was how to put on your socks.

Hank Smith: 05:12 He would say, “This is how high the basketball standard is.” And he would measure it. And this is how, and these are people who play basketball, their whole lives.

John Bytheway: 05:21 Yeah. And because if you get a blister, you can’t play. You’re not any good. He would start with these very basic, simple things. And I just think, it sounds simple, harder to do, but just stay on the covenant path and just find ways to hear him every day. And don’t worry about the great things. They may come in life, but for right now, stay on the covenant path, learn to hear him. You’re what was his three identities? You are a child of God, a child of the covenant and the disciple of Christ.

Hank Smith: 05:54 That’s who you are.

John Bytheway: 05:55 Those are great things.

Hank Smith: 05:57 Yeah. And you think about the Savior himself, John, he wasn’t a big traveler. He didn’t travel across the world that we know of. Never probably traveled more than a couple hundred miles away from home. And yet we want mission calls that are thousands of miles away from home, which Jesus himself served to basically at home mission. And you read what Naaman says here after he does these small and simple things he says, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel.” I think if you put in the time doing the small little things that the prophet is asking of you, you can come to that same testimony.

John Bytheway: 06:35 Good point.

Hank Smith: 06:36 Hey, we want you to join us on our full podcast. It’s called FollowHIM. This week we’re interviewing Dr. Krystal Pierce and you are going to love her. She is delightful and brilliant. Come on over, look up FollowHIM wherever you get your podcast. And then come back next week right here, because we’re going to do another FollowHIM Favorite.