Hank Smith: 00:04 Hello my friends. Welcome to another FollowHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I’m here with the incredible John Bytheway. Welcome, John.

John Bytheway: 00:11 Thank you, Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:12 You know the drill. Today, we take on one question from this week’s Come Follow Me lesson and the question we’re looking at today comes from Acts 7. There’s a moment where Stephen says to the people who are about to kill him, he says, “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, you do always resist the Holy Ghost.” And the Come Follow Me manual has this question. What do you think it means to resist the Holy Ghost?

John Bytheway: 00:39 Oh, it’s such a good question. I put in my margin, 1 Thessalonians 5:19 where Paul says, “Quench not the Spirit.” You’ve got this Spirit and you dump cold water on it. You resist the Holy Ghost.

  00:54 And one of my favorite little analogies I heard way back when Elder Bruce R. McConkie said, “We come into these congregations. Sometimes, the speaker brings a jug of living water that has in it many gallons, and he pours it out on the congregation and all the members brought was a single cup, and that’s all they took away.”

  01:13 And then he said this. “Or maybe they put their hands over the cup and they didn’t get anything to speak of.” I thought, why would you put your hand over the cup? To me, that’s an example of resisting the Holy Ghost. This could make me uncomfortable because I know I need to do better in this area, so I’m going to resist that. Is that what you think that means, Hank?

Hank Smith: 01:32 I think you’re right on there, John. It reminds me of Amulek in Alma 10:6. He says, “I did harden my heart. I was called many times and I would not hear.” Like you said, I put my hand right over the cup.

  01:45 It might be easy for someone today to just zone out on their phone. That would be a way to resist the Holy Ghost, right? I’m not paying attention. I go to church and I’m on my phone for two hours and I go home thinking, “Well, that didn’t give me much.” Well, actually, you are the one resisting the Holy Ghost.

John Bytheway: 02:04 I’ll bet many times as a seminary teacher, you’ve had a really nice moment is coming or feeling, and somebody wants to spoil it.

Hank Smith: 02:12 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 02:12 And you think, “Don’t do that.” That’s just a great moment. And sometimes I wonder if that could mean the same thing. So, good counsel, don’t resist it. This is a best friend you could possibly have is the Holy Ghost.

Hank Smith: 02:27 Right here in chapter seven, they resist the Holy Ghost. They had crucified the Savior. They now kill Stephen. You don’t want to resist the Spirit over and over and over, and you might get to a place where you’re doing things you never thought you’d do.

John Bytheway: 02:41 You would never do. The Holy Ghost would try to warn you against so, boy. And the moment the Spirit acts, it was President Monson’s strength. He’d get a prompting and he would just do it. I need to be more like that.

Hank Smith: 02:52 He would act. He wouldn’t resist.

  02:54 We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called Follow Him. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. We’re with Dr. Casey Griffiths this week. You’ll love what he has to say about these chapters, and then join us back here for another FollowHIM Favorites.