Hank Smith: 00:02 Hello, my friends. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. If you’ve been following us this year, you know the drill. My name’s Hank Smith. I’m here with the incredible John Bytheway. We’re going to take a single question from this week’s lesson. John, we’re in Hebrews 10:35. What does it mean when Paul says, “Cast not away, therefore your confidence”? Great phrase, John, but I don’t know what it means. Do you?

John Bytheway: 00:27 Yeah. It sounds like he says, “Don’t give up. Don’t be discouraged. You’ve got some confidence. Don’t throw it away.” When I look at confidence, my greatest confidence, it’s born of faith like I’m confiding. The word confidence, it looks like, who do you confide in? I confide in God. I say my prayers. He’s taught me things in my patriarchal blessing, and don’t forget that stuff. You’re going to be all right. Don’t cast that away. Life has ups and downs. Don’t give up because the ups will come again in the middle of the downs. There will be ups later on.

Hank Smith: 01:01 Absolutely. Do you remember what Joseph Smith said after his first vision? There’s many people who attacked his experience. He could have said, “Well, maybe I’m not as confident in that as I once was.” Instead, he said, “I knew it. I knew that God knew it-“

John Bytheway: 01:17 God knew it.

Hank Smith: 01:18 … “And I could not deny it.” Elder Holland said once, “In moments of fear or doubt or troubling times, hold the ground you have already won.” “Don’t draw back,” as Paul says. That’s later on in that same chapter, and I’m reminded of what Peter says in 1 Peter, “Don’t return to your sins.” Once you’ve repented and kicked that out of your life, don’t go back to your sins. This is disgusting, but he says, “Like a dog to its vomit.”

John Bytheway: 01:45 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:48 But we have a couple of dogs at our house and sometimes you’ll hear that wonderful sound in the middle of the night.

John Bytheway: 01:53 Here’s the visual aid, kids. Come here. I’m going to open up 1 Peter for you.

Hank Smith: 01:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here she comes an hour later to go and take it all back.

John Bytheway: 02:02 Oh, man.

Hank Smith: 02:03 Once you’ve done something like that or had a great spiritual experience, don’t turn around and say, “Maybe I didn’t have that experience.” You did have that experience.

John Bytheway: 02:11 Yeah. Or even if you do mess up, I like the idea of a slope. I can’t remember who it was that spoke of a slope in general conference.

Hank Smith: 02:18 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 02:18 You’re making progress. You make a mistake. Don’t think you went all the way to rock bottom. You’re still sloping upward. Get back on the path. Cast not away therefore your confidence and keep on going.

Hank Smith: 02:30 Yep. It reminds me of when Satan comes to Jesus and says, “If you’re the Son of God. If you’re the Son of God.” He says it over and over in Matthew 4. “If you’re the son of God.” And Jesus seems to respond with, “Look, I already know who I am. We don’t have to go over this again. At the baptism, I heard who I was and you’re not going to get me to step away from something I have earned. The testimony that I have.”

John Bytheway: 02:54 Really good.

Hank Smith: 02:56 So hold on strong my friends. When you have these awesome spiritual experiences with God, have the integrity and say, “I know it. I know that God knows it, and I’m not going to deny it.” We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. We are in the book of Hebrews this week and we needed someone to help guide us through. So we’re with Dr. Phil Allred. We hope you’ll join us. You’re going to love how he takes apart each one of these chapters and then join us back here next week for another followHIM Favorites.