Hank Smith: 00:00 Hello, welcome to followHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I’m the host of a podcast called followHIM. I have a wonderful co-host. His name is John, Bytheway. Hi John.

John Bytheway: 00:09 Hi Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:10 This is gonna be a good day. John, followHIM Favorites is a little tiny podcast. It’s a miniature podcast in which we just talk about our favorite piece of the lesson. The lesson this week, the entire lesson is on one section of the Doctrine and Covenants, section 63. So you get to choose your followHIM Favorite.

John Bytheway: 00:28 You know, the way the Lord begins this revelation I just thought was cool. Hearken, O ye people, and open your hearts and give ear from afar; and listen. So, there’s open your hearts. There’s give ear, there’s listen, there’s hearken. And I just, I remember Amulek in the Book of Mormon. Remember when he says, I heard, but I would not hear. And it was like, my ears were working, but I hadn’t really inside opened them. And I love this idea. The Lord’s saying, I know you can hear me now. I want you to open your ears. And with all of these things that we’re studying, we open it up and let it inside. That’s when it can really help us and bless us. So, if repetitive, open your ears, hearken, listen, open your hearts.

Hank Smith: 01:14 Yeah. I’ve never seen someone close their ears, have you? I don’t. Yeah. When the Lord says open your ears, he’s like, hey, they’re closed.

John Bytheway: 01:20 And I don’t know how that works. But remember Third Nephi 2, and the third time they did open their ears to hear it. So, I don’t know if they’re going like this or what was happening, but yeah…

Hank Smith: 01:28 You always say, what did you always say? Listen with your spiritual ears, right? Spiritual ears. That’s probably what it is. Open up those spiritual ears. Be open. I actually wanted to talk about something that the Lord says in section 63 about adultery. And he’s talking about lust and virtue. And he says beware and repent of any of these things I say unto you–He kind of, it’s a New Testament type reference here. Verse 16, as I have said before, he that looketh on a woman to lust after her, or if any shall commit adultery in their hearts, they have not the Spirit. And some of us might go, oh no, I don’t want to have a chastity lesson. Right? But the idea here is I think this is a positive thing where the Lord is saying don’t let this sin creep into your life in any way with immorality or pornography.

  02:18 Don’t let that get into your life anyway. And if it does, beware and repent speedily. Repent speedily. So, the Lord’s not saying, well, if you’ve done this, you’re done. Right? You’re done. You might as well pack it up and go home. He’s saying, no, beware and repent speedily. So, this is a hopeful section about virtue. And of course the Lord cares about how we treat our bodies and how we treat others and respect and not using people as objects. But still, even when he’s talking about these serious subjects, repent speedily. He’s offering that chance.

John Bytheway: 02:50 Oh, I love it. And I love that the word beware is the combo be aware.

Hank Smith: 02:58 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 02:59 And we gotta be aware. This is one of Satan’s tactics against us, but let’s be aware and then something creeps in. We repent speedily. We be aware again tomorrow. We be strong.

Hank Smith: 03:12 Very good. Very good. Well, we hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can find out wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you’ll join us soon.