Hank Smith:  00:00 Hello everyone. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I am the host of a podcast called followHIM. This is not the full podcast. We hope you will listen to the full podcast. This is followHIM Favorites, which is a short little clip–not even a clip, it’s just us doing a shorter podcast for those of you with shorter attention spans. So, I’m here with my co-host, John Bytheway. Hi John.

John Bytheway: 00:24 Hi Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:25 And I’m here with a historian, Dr. Brent Rogers. Welcome, Brent.

Dr. Brent Rogers: 00:29 Hello, welcome. Thank you.

Hank Smith: 00:31 Alright so John, the lesson this week is on Doctrine and Covenants sections 109 and 110. Hit your followHIM favorite.

John Bytheway: 00:39 Well, 109 is the Dedicatory Prayer, which is a beautiful and long one. 110, when the Savior actually appears in the temple and he’s in the Kirtland temple. And he says verse four: “I am the first and the last; I am he who liveth”. And I mean, I think that’s obvious, but I think that he’s alive. But look, he’s lived and he’s here. He’s appearing. He hasn’t done his work and disappeared. I’m he who liveth, I’m he who was slain. I am your advocate with the father. And Brent, you and and Hank know that Elder Holland wrote a book recently called A Witness for His Names, all of the different names of Christ that he uses, his own nicknames that he gives himself. I didn’t get very far. I got to the letter A advocate is my favorite. I love the idea that he’s an advocate.

  01:32 And if you look it up, like on dictionary.com, it’s like an attorney for the defense. He’s the one that comes to your side and is your advocate with the father. It’s a beautiful phrase. And of all the nicknames he could have chosen, Elder Holland does a whole book about Him. He chose, I am your Advocate. And I just love that we can think of him that way. As someone who comes to our side in our defense and says, this one was willing to take upon them my name and tried to serve me. I just think that’s beautiful. So that is my favorite, that I have an advocate and he is the Savior.

Hank Smith: 02:09 Yeah. And what kind of person is he? Look at the next verse. I’m your advocate with the father. Your sins are forgiven.

John Bytheway: 02:14 Are forgiven you. Lift up your heads and rejoice just that is oh, so positive.

Hank Smith: 02:19 You have a forgiving advocate. My followHIM favorite is actually gonna be just the two sections side by side. If you put section 109, which is an incredible prayer by Section 110, which is an incredible answer. So, I just thought when I look at these two, that if you want to have incredible, beautiful answers to prayer, you better say some incredible, beautiful prayers. Oftentimes we want a million dollar answer to a 5 cent prayer. And, usually we get 5 cent answers to 5 cent prayers. So, I would encourage everybody go and read section 109 as it is written as a prayer and think to yourself, how could I improve my prayers? I promise you there is, if you read the 80 verses of section 109, you will find something in which you can improve your prayers. Because we all want those incredible experiences with the Lord, incredible answers to prayer. But oftentimes we don’t want to put in the work and the effort that comes with, you know, saying the prayers that get those type of answers. So, I’m gonna, I think, from reading section 109, I’m gonna change my prayers. Alright Dr. Rogers, what’s your followHIM favorite?

Dr. Brent Rogers: 03:39 I’d say that in section 109, there’s a couple of verses that I wanted to highlight, and the first is verse 21. And it says: “And when thy people transgress, any of them, they may speedily repent and return unto thee, and find favor in thy sight, and be restored to the blessings which that thou hast ordained to be poured upon those who shall reverence thee in thy house.” And, the key words there that I want to focus on is speedily repent. This section talks about repentance in a few places and this being a gospel of repentance. And, when it says, when thy people transgress, it doesn’t say if it says when thy people transgress and because we’re, we’re all humans. We’re all gonna make some mistakes and varying levels of, you know, just varying degrees of mistakes.

  04:39 But what can we do? We can speedily repent and we can turn back towards Christ, and I think that is beautiful. And it says in 53, inasmuch as they repent you know, that basically the message there is there is gonna be mercy. And the word mercy shows up in this passage a lot of times. It starts in verse one. It says, “O Lord God of Israel, who keepest covenant and showest mercy unto thy servants”. We have a God of mercy. We transgress, we can repent and we can turn back to Christ and he will have mercy on us. Mercy wins the day. And as, you know, as John mentioned in Section 110, one of the first things he says to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery when He appears in the Kirtland temple, is your sins are forgiven. That’s how we know who our Lord and Savior is. He’s our advocate and He is going to forgive us. And our our Father in Heaven is gonna show mercy on us. And so, repent and mercy wins the day. Those would be my favorites.

Hank Smith: 06:00 That’s awesome. That’s beautiful. I love in section 110, verse 10, the Lord says, this is just the beginning. It’s just the beginning. Yeah. Of the blessings I have.

John Bytheway: 06:08 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 06:09 Now we hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. But if not, we hope you join us next week for our followHIM Favorites.