Hank Smith: 00:05 Hello everyone. Welcome to FollowHIM Favorites. If you’ve been following us this year, you know that we take a single question from each week’s lesson. John, this week’s lesson is on the last handful of chapters in Isaiah. And we chose a question from Isaiah 58 where Isaiah says, “We need to call the Sabbath a delight.” And yet, for a lot of our listeners, especially our young listeners, the Sabbath isn’t so delightful. John, how do you help someone who’s a little bit younger say, “I want to make the Sabbath Day holy. I want it to be a delight, but it just seems to make me bored.” What do you do? How do you help someone see the Sabbath as more of a delight?

John Bytheway: 00:46 I love the way you asked the question. Make it a delight. And I think first you make a decision, “I’m going to make it this way. I’m going to make my Sabbath wonderful.” I think I learned so much from a talk, Hank, I was down at BYU in 1990 and President Nelson was Elder Nelson gave a talk called Reflection and Resolution. And my memory is in that talk, he quoted Ezekiel 20:20, which sounds like good vision, 20/20, that also sounds like a year we just had that wasn’t that great. But he said that in Ezekiel 20:20 says, “Hallow my Sabbaths and they will be a sign between me and thee that you may know that I am the Lord your God.” And the whole idea was it’s our sign to God that we’re thinking about him. And I begin to think, “What if God was watching me on the Sabbath, would he be able to tell that I was thinking about him? Had I made a decision to make the Sabbath different?”

John Bytheway: 01:40 And I used to think it’s a day of rest. And then I became a bishop for a while and I wasn’t very restful. And I thought I needed to change the way I thought of rest too. It was resting from worldly things and worldly stuff to think about and worldly shows or movies. It was about making God a bigger part of it, and reading something different, and finding somebody we could go serve and minister to and things like that. And that made it more of a challenge to me. I think if you really want to make it a delight, you can get on your knees and ask the Lord, “How could I make this more of a delight?” And I bet he’ll give you some answers. And it might be not only in how you spend your time, but who and what you think about during that time.

Hank Smith: 02:28 Yep, absolutely. If we can learn to see this as an opportunity to do things differently. I know that perhaps your family doesn’t play video games, or doesn’t watch TV, or doesn’t do something that they usually do on the other days of the week on Sunday. And you can focus on that and focus on what you’re missing, but it’s going to be more of a delight to you if you see it as an opportunity to do things differently. For example, I love to write emails to missionaries on the Sabbath because I just don’t have a lot of time during the week. And the pausing of that day gives me a chance to help those missionaries who love letters. They love hearing from people back home.

Hank Smith: 03:09 I also think as I’ve read the New Testament, I see Jesus healing a lot on the Sabbath. And I’ve thought if it heals a relationship, and if it heals a marriage, if it heals someone by administering, then that will become a delight to you. If you’re doing some healing on the Sabbath, I think the Savior would be delighted if we could do that. But I can see why it’s difficult. I have five children and, “Why can’t we do this? Why can’t we do this? Why can’t we do this?” I think Elder Holland said, “If you focus on what you can’t do, that’s a pretty pathetic view of the Sabbath. Let’s focus on what we can do and how we can make this different,” and be creative. It doesn’t mean you have to just sit around and say, “I’m bored. I’m bored.” It can be time to say, “Okay, this is a chance for me to be a little bit creative and find things that will be both delightful for me and for the Lord.”

John Bytheway: 04:04 Instead of saying, “What can’t I do? What can I do?” And that’s a totally different way to look at it and, “How can I set the day apart?” I love the idea of being set apart, not set aside. Somebody saying, “Aren’t I supposed to be set aside?” No, no, no. Supposed to be set apart, but setting the day apart and saying, “I’m going to make this a better day. I’m going to make this a delightful day.” And we, I think both of us don’t want to start giving lists of things to do because everybody’s different. We got people all over the country and all over the world. How can you make it a delight, and do some healing, some blessing, and make it joyful and delightful? Good way to start.

Hank Smith: 04:42 Absolutely. I think the one not to do, that I think the Lord would be okay with if we made a single item list, it would be, “Don’t judge others on how they practice the Sabbath.” You focus on you and what you can do to make it a delight. And then if other people, let them do it their way. Don’t worry too much about what other people are doing to make it a delight for them. You just don’t know what’s going on in their life.

Hank Smith: 05:08 John and I are hoping that you feel more motivated to say, “I want to keep this commandment,” because sometimes we feel like we’re sacrificing a lot. We’re sacrificing what we would normally do if we had the day to choose for ourselves. We’re like, “Oh, this is what I would normally do.” But remember, sacrifices often turn into investments that pay dividends. Sacrifices often turn, I remember President Hinckley saying that, “What seems to be a sacrifice, what you think is a sacrifice is actually an investment.” It’s going to pay you back for a long time in the future.

John Bytheway: 05:43 And Hank, we’ve both been to the Holy Land and when you see the Orthodox Jews coming to the Western wall to usher in the Sabbath, I watch them and I think, “We’re doing it wrong. We got to have more joy and more delight in the Sabbath.” And that sight alone motivates me to say, “I’m going to work on making the Sabbath a delight.”

Hank Smith: 06:02 That’s beautiful. All right. You know where to find us. We’ll be back next week with another FollowHIM Favorites. Come join us on our full podcast, it’s called “FollowHIM.” You can get it wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube. Come find us. And then join us next week, we’ll do another FollowHIM Favorites.