Hank Smith: 00:02 Hello everyone. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I are sharing a single story to go with each week’s lesson. John, I have a story for you. Section 11, verses 12 and 13, talk about the Holy Ghost. It’s a great description of the Holy Ghost. It’ll lead you to do good, to be honest, to be humble, to not judge people unfairly. And then it says in verse 13 that the Spirit can enlighten your mind.

  00:30 I like to think of that as give you ideas, give you a prompting. Something comes to mind. All right, so I have a story for you. I have a wonderful, wonderful wife who has always tried to live the gospel. I can’t say the same for her husband when he was younger, but I can say that for her. There was this one point where a boy that she really liked… Now John, I have to tell you, this is before me. And I got to tell you, I do not like this boy. Not because of anything he’s done, but because my wife liked him. So she really liked him. And we’ll call him… John, pick a name.

John Bytheway: 01:10 Bill.

Hank Smith: 01:11 Bill. Really? Bill, that’s what you-

John Bytheway: 01:13 No, let’s come up with another one. Brandon.

Hank Smith: 01:15 Brandon. All right. I loved Bill. All right, so Brandon, she was trying to flirt with hoping that he would ask her out. And he did, asked her out. She was so excited. She was a little bit younger. She’s, I think, a junior in high school and he was a senior, or maybe she was a sophomore and he was a junior. Anyway, he was older than her and she was very excited. She got ready. My wife is someone like your wife John. She doesn’t have to get ready, she looks great any second of any day. But she really wanted every hair in place. She wanted this to be a great night. This boy Brandon shows up to get her and she’s very excited. And this was going to be like a triple date or even maybe more than that. Maybe there was eight people. She gets in the car, Brandon is driving and she’s there in the passenger seat. It’s a big vehicle, like a Suburban. And she sees in the back that there are, I think it was six more people, three more couples. And they were all older than her.

  02:18 She’s a junior. There’re seniors. She was nervous as any high school kid is trying to fit in, trying to make sure she says all the right things and does all the right things. And I think she asked Brandon at one point, “What movie are we going to go see?” And he responded with a movie that my wife was not going to go see. It wasn’t that she was trying to teach anyone, it was just her standard. I’ve made this choice. She said, “I knew I wasn’t going to go see it, but I was surprised at how nervous I got to tell him.” So she said, “Hey, I don’t think I can see that movie.” Well, he didn’t quite hear her. And so he said, “What was that?” And he turned the music off in the car. Now John, I don’t know if you’ve ever been with a group of teenagers and they’re talking, they’re having fun with the music playing. And then you turn the music off, everyone goes quiet.

John Bytheway: 03:15 They all stop.

Hank Smith: 03:15 And they’re all listening. He said, “What was that?” And she said, “I don’t think I can see that movie.” Now, John, what is this young man supposed to do? Something like, “I am so sorry I put you in that situation. I…” Something.

John Bytheway: 03:37 Brandon, Brandon, Brandon.

Hank Smith: 03:39 He doesn’t say anything. He just gets quiet and it’s pretty awkward.

John Bytheway: 03:43 Ugh.

Hank Smith: 03:44 And she said, from the back, one of these boys was back there, you know these kind who are like, “I got muscles. I don’t need the gospel.” He says, “So what do you want to do, Miss Righteous?” And she thought… That’s not what I was going for. Miss Righteous. She said at that moment, a picture came into her head of a church cultural hall. It was a flash of memory that when she had met Brandon months ago, they had talked about how they both liked indoor soccer. She said, “Well, I know my family has keys to the church. What if we went and played indoor soccer?” Her date said, “Let’s do it. That sounds so great.” And the other kids in car said, “Yeah, that sounds really fun. Let’s go do that.” And they went and played indoor soccer. Sadly for Brandon, they never went out again. So sorry Brandon, I bet… It was a moment where she felt the Spirit enlightened her mind, gave her a little flash of, “Here’s what you can do.”

John Bytheway: 04:54 Yeah, and I love that the word light is in enlightened and it’s like the light bulb going on above your head. Boop, here comes the idea.

Hank Smith: 05:03 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 05:04 Just in time.

Hank Smith: 05:05 Yeah, just in time. It’s often the Lord’s timing, isn’t it?

John Bytheway: 05:08 You can say.

Hank Smith: 05:09 Oh, that was so helpful.

John Bytheway: 05:11 Yeah. Thank you.

Hank Smith: 05:13 So to my wife, Sara. You’re amazing. You’ve always been amazing.

John Bytheway: 05:18 Good job.

Hank Smith: 05:19 Yeah. Good job, Sara. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. We’re in sections 10 and 11 with Sister Chelsea Chipman. She is quite a teacher. You’re going to love what she shows us in these sections. But then come back here next week, we’ll share another, followHIM Favorites.