Hank Smith: 00:05 Hello everyone. Welcome to another followHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith, I’m here with the just practically perfect in every way, John Bytheway.

John Bytheway: 00:14 Will you stop that?

Hank Smith: 00:17 If you’ve been following followHIM Favorites, this year, we take a single question from each week’s lesson and talk about it. This week we are in the book of Daniel. And so John, I thought of a question right when I thought of Daniel. He has three friends in Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Or their Babylonian names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He has three really good friends and he’s a good friend to them. So my automatic question was, do friends matter? Do the people that I hang out with, do the people that I spend my time with, does it matter? What would you say to someone who is a little bit younger who says, “Come on, it doesn’t matter who I hang out with. So what if they don’t believe what I believe or they’re trying to get me to do bad things? They’re my friends.” What would you say?

John Bytheway: 01:03 Oh. Matters a lot. When I first got my driver’s license, my friends taught me this. We’d drive along, we were walking home from high school, we’d drive along the road, roll down the window, “Hey, you want a ride?” And they’d say, “Yeah.” And we’d say, “Call your mom, ha ha ha,” and drive off, right?

  01:21 I’ve always felt like the analogy of a driver and passengers is really good for friendship. If you get in somebody else’s car, you’re going where they’re going. And sometimes it’s like that with friends. You’re either an influencer or you just get influenced. And if you’re in the backseat, you don’t have a lot of say. And it’s really important to surround yourself with friends who are going where you’re going. That’s just so important. And I love the story that we all know of, “Men brought in a bed, a man who was taken with the palsy.” It’s in two or three of the gospels. I know it’s in Luke 5, and it doesn’t say much about the friends after that point, but here are friends who are determined to take this man to Christ. Literally take him to Christ. And when the room is so full of people, they can’t do it, they get this idea, “I know, let’s go up on the roof, make a hole in the roof and lower him through the ceiling.”

Hank Smith: 02:18 We are getting him in. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 02:20 You can imagine the friend at that point, “I think I feel better.” But they do that because they’re so determined to get him an audience with the Savior, which they do. And this amazing thing happens. Go read the whole thing in Luke 5. But you’re going where your friends are going, and so that’s why it is so important. Hank, do you remember Sister Susan Tanner?

Hank Smith: 02:40 I do.

John Bytheway: 02:41 She had this great talk about this survey of the young women in the church and, “What are some of the reasons you go to seminary? Friends. What are some of the reasons you don’t go? Friends. What do you think about during the day? Friends. Is there ever a time when you don’t go to Young Women’s? Why is that? No friends?” It was for every answer was about friends. And that’s why it’s so important. I’ll tell you a funny story. Years ago, the New Era magazine called me and they said, I was so flattered at first. They said they were doing an issue about friendship and they said, “We just have this article we want you to write and we just thought of you right off. And the title would be, Why Don’t I Have Any Friends? And you just came to mind. You were the first one.”

Hank Smith: 03:26 Thank you so much.

John Bytheway: 03:27 So they did publish it. I did write it, but they changed the title. I Have No Friends by John Bytheway. You can go read that sad story on your Gospel Library app if you want. But I think the reason friends are so important is you’re going where they’re going. And Daniel had good friends. And that’s what we learned from this chapter.

Hank Smith: 03:50 Yep. Years ago I did a talk on CD called I Love My Friends, and because I’d heard that phrase so much from my seminary students. “I like my family, but I love my friends.” And I thought, “I’m going to use that. Do you really love your friends? Because what do good friends do?” You’ve told me this before, John. A good friend is someone who will help you live the gospel. And I noticed in these chapters of Daniel that they do things as a group, that so often when they’re around each other it’s, “We are not going to do this. We are not going to do that.”

  04:20 For example, when they want them to break their word of wisdom, it says, “They decided they would not do it together.” And then when King Nebuchadnezzar is going to throw the three into the fiery furnace, they say, “Our God whom we serve will deliver us out of thy hand. But if not, we will not serve thy God.” There’s we’s and us’ and they’s and thee’s. There’s not a lot of I’s and him’s. They do things as a group. There’s a strength in that. It’s easier to live the gospel when you’ve got three or four people around you who are also living the gospel, who will sometimes even speak up for you. If you’re at a party and someone says, “Here’s some alcohol,” and your friend steps between you and the alcohol and says, “Oh, I’m so sorry. We don’t drink.”

John Bytheway: 05:01 We don’t do that.

Hank Smith: 05:03 Yep. It’s not, “I don’t do that.” What about you, friend I’ve known since second grade, do you drink? No, we don’t drink. I think it’s absolutely crucial to say, if you truly love your friends, do you help them live the gospel, and do your friends help you live the gospel? It is so critical. I remember once hearing President Hinckley say, remember President Hinckley, John? That hand going up and down? He’s speaking to seminary teachers. He said, “Most of all, tell them to choose good friends.” I thought he’d say, “Most of all, tell them to choose to go to the temple,” or, “Most of all, tell them to choose to read their scriptures.” But he didn’t. He said, “Most of all, tell them to choose good friends.” And I hope that message is coming through loud and clear on this little followHIM Favorites. That who you choose as your friends matters more than you can possibly imagine to your future.

John Bytheway: 05:53 I think that’s why we love the Book of Daniel, and I hope young people will too, because these are young people. These are young men that help each other. And I don’t want to take credit for a statement that I didn’t make, but I’ve repeated a lot. It was Elder Robert D. Hales who said, “A true friend makes it easier to live the gospel of Jesus Christ by being around him or her. A friend will never ask you to choose between their way and the Lord’s way.” And I just love that a true friend makes it easier to live the gospel, not harder. Makes it easier. Daniel and his friends, they had strength in numbers because they were good influence on each other. Love it.

Hank Smith: 06:31 And if you’re sitting here going, “Well, my friends don’t make it easier for me to live the gospel,” we’re not condemning them. We’re not saying, “Well, you can never speak to them again,” or, “You have to get rid of them entirely or they’re going to outer darkness.” That’s not what we’re saying at all. But if you’re in a situation where your friends make it harder for you to live the gospel, I would say you’ve got to get out of that situation and you’ve got to find a different group of friends who are going to make it easier for you to live the gospel. It’s an absolute must that you’ve got to decide that maybe they’re not bad people, but it’s not a good situation for you, and you’re going to have to change your situation in order to have a better future. The future that you want, the future that you deserve.

John Bytheway: 07:10 Love it. There’s a proverb, we talked about Proverbs. “He who walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed.” I heard somebody say once, I thought it was a fascinating statement, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” I mean, chew on that one for a while. The movies you watch, the music you listen to, the things that you do. And that’s why I like hanging out with you, Hank.

Hank Smith: 07:36 Yep. That’s why I like chatting with you. I always leave saying, “You know what, I’m going to live the gospel. John makes it easy to live the gospel.”

John Bytheway: 07:43 Right back at you.

Hank Smith: 07:44 Thank you for joining us on followHIM Favorites. We hope you’ll join us next week, but find us on our full podcast this week. We’re in the Book of Daniel with Dr. Lili Anderson. She does some great things with this chapter you’re not going to want to miss. And then come back here next week and join us for another followHIM Favorites.