Hank Smith: 00:00 Hello, my friends. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I’m the host of a podcast called followHIM, and I am here with my co-host John Bytheway. Hello John.

John Bytheway: 00:11 Hi Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:13 Every week we do a smaller version of our podcast called followHIM Favorites, in which we just look at this week’s lesson, which is section 93, and we pick our favorite things. Now we have a guest with us. John, just real quick, introduce our guest.

John Bytheway: 00:30 Oh, Casey Griffiths is with us. He’s awesome. He is fun to listen to, fun to talk to. He has his own podcast on Book of Mormon Central. And he’s going to–he’s like an expert on this. He’s kind of an expert on education in the church. And so, this is a perfect section to have him for a guest.

Hank Smith: 00:52 All right, so let’s go. John, you go first–followHIM Favorites.

John Bytheway: 00:56 Oh man, there’s so many things here. In fact, one of the things I love to do, for those of you who are so old, you use paper scriptures. Look at page 182 and count the lines of footnotes, and that tells you how doctrinally rich it is. I have done that. I got bored at church one time. There was only one time that I was allowed, but I counted footnotes and I think section one wins it with 31 lines, but there’s 29 lines of footnotes here in section 93. But one of the things that I’ve just loved is how the Lord seems to call his servants by different names. If you look in verse 45: “Verily, I say unto my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., or in other words, I will call you friends, for you are my friends, and ye shall have an inheritance with me.”

  01:47 “I called you servants for the world’s sake, and ye are their servants for my sake- And now, verily I say unto Joseph Smith Jun.–“. And then he gets some more advice. But I love how he calls them his friends, and I think–what must the Lord think when he sees us going to the sacrament table every Sunday and making a covenant that we are willing to take his name upon us? And what a symbol of friendship that must be for him to say, I want to take the name of Christ upon me and try this week to keep his commandments so that I can have his spirit to be with me. So, I just love that I’m gonna call you friends and you’ll find in the scripture, sometimes my son, sometimes my servant. Well, here he says, I’m gonna call you my friends. I love that Hank and Casey. I love that part.

Hank Smith: 02:36 Yeah, yeah. It’s as if the Lord knows your heart, right? You both are my friends. And if you were to say something wrong or do something wrong, I would say that it’s not a big deal–I know their heart. I know that they’re good people. They’re good friends, and they have been there in the past, and they’ll be there in the future. So, I like that word. My followHIM favorite is gonna be right across the column if you have your paper scriptures. Doctrine and Covenants 12 to 20. In this, we learned that the Savior did not receive a fullness at, at the first, meaning all knowledge. He didn’t know everything, right? Who he was and why he was here at first, but received grace for grace. He–the same idea is line upon line.

  03:22 Then you go over to verse 20 and the Savior says to you and I-I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace. You know, sometimes we can get pretty frustrated that we’re not as good as we want to be. I don’t know about either of you but sometimes I think, why am I making that mistake again? Why am I doing that again? I should have learned by now. Right? And the Savior is saying, listen, I learned grace, for grace. I learned line upon line and I understand that you are too. So be patient with yourself. Be patient with others around you, because it’s a process of learning. And I just hope that you don’t think, oh, the Lord must hate me. Oh, the Lord must be disgusted with me. You know that I’m doing these and making these same mistakes over and over. No, he gets it. He understands what it means to grow grace for grace. What do you guys think?

John Bytheway: 04:14 Well, Hank, I love that you would say that, and I love that he invites us–if I can tie it back to the sacrament table again, that he invites us back every week as if to say, oh, I know, I know you’re gonna go grace for grace. I know you’re gonna mess up. And that’s why I’ve set this up so that you can keep coming back to this this table of communion, this table of sacrifice, and make that covenant again. Just keep coming back and we will–I’m gonna help you grow grace for grace. I love it.

Hank Smith: 04:45 Alright, our guest, Casey Griffiths, tell us your followHIM Favorite. Teach us. We’re ready.

Casey Griffiths: 04:50 There’s so much in this section that I love, but I’m gonna go to verse 36 and 37, which says, “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one.” And I just love that because the idea that the Lord is saying us intelligence is light and truth, it’s learning. And when you learn new things and when you’re excited to learn new things, that’s one of the things that keeps the evil one at bay. That’s one of those things that leads you to good places where you grow in glory and light and intelligence and become more like Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Because they’re avid learners, they love the universe that they’ve created and see it as profoundly beautiful. And I hope that you look out on the things that you learn, not just in school, but things that you learn when you’re outside, when you’re on a hike, when you’re riding your bike, when you’re walking down the street. I hope that you’re just a curious person that’s rediscovering and falling in love with this universe that God’s created for us. That to be intelligent is to be more like God and to love light. And truth is one of those things that keeps the bad thoughts that are sometimes discouraging and that bring you down and put you into dark places at bay. So be a curious person.

Hank Smith: 06:12 Yeah. On Sundays in our house, we sometimes watch a nature documentary, you know, about insects and animals and volcanoes and whatever. And I find my kids, if they’ll actually sit down and watch, they start to get interested. They start to say, why does that bird do that? That’s weird, right? Look how pretty that one is. Look at the feathers on that one and it becomes quite interesting.

Casey Griffiths: 06:34 Yesterday, my daughter who’s eight years old, kept coming up to me with rocks. Like, we’re in the middle of moving my other daughter out of college, and she kept walking up and saying, dad, I found this rock. This rock looks like a donut, or this rock is really some kind of crystal or something. And I kind of brushed her off. And then I sort of sat there and thought, when did I become the sort of person that isn’t excited by a cool rock? Like it seems like that’s intrinsically built into us. And it’s one of those things that makes us really happy when we’re kids, but sometimes goes away when we’re adults. I found this quote that I really loved that that goes like this. It says, the cure for boredom is curiosity, and there’s no cure for curiosity. I’ve said that to my kids so much now that they hate that quote. But that’s the basic idea. If you’re bored, go out and explore the world, find something, look at something, learn something new, and kind of embrace everything that’s around us. When the Lord says the glory of God is intelligence, intelligence is the ability to see and appreciate the truth in the world around you. The more you cultivate that the more exciting your life is gonna be.

Hank Smith: 07:42 Yeah, that’s exciting. And in our full podcast, if you want to go and listen to it, you’ll hear Dr. Griffiths talk about how doing your homework is a form of worship according to section 93. So, if you need a little more incentive to do your homework you, you need to come listen to our full podcast and hear what Dr. Griffiths has to say about Doctrine and Covenants 93 verse 53. That’s it for followHIM Favorites. We hope you’ll join us on the full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts, but if not, we hope to see you next week on followHIM Favorites.