Hank Smith: 00:03 Hello everyone. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. John and I are doing a single story from each week’s lesson.

  00:09 John, this week’s lesson is 2 Nephi 31 through 33 and I have a story for you. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it, but I think it fits really well with 2 Nephi 31:21 where Nephi says, “This is the way.” So this story is no, it’s not about the Mandalorian, but Nephi says, “This is the way, and there is none other way.”

John Bytheway: 00:30 None other.

Hank Smith: 00:31 “There’s none other way, nor name given.”

  00:33 John, I don’t know if you’ve read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. For those of you who haven’t heard it, they are stories about a land called Narnia where there lives a lion. He’s basically the king of the land, I guess you could say. He represents Christ. So I want to tell you a story from one of those books.

  00:52 The book is called The Silver Chair, and there’s a girl, her name is Jill Pole. Jill ends up in Narnia, but away from her friends so she’s all alone. As she’s sitting and waiting and wondering what she should do and if her friends are going to find her, she is really thirsty and so she goes in search of water. She finds a stream so she’s very excited, right? She’s going to get a drink, but she stops dead in her tracks.

  01:20 And then Lewis writes this. “The sight of the water made her feel 10 times thirstier than before, but she didn’t rush forward to drink. She stood as if she had been turned into stone, for on the other side of the stream, there was a huge lion.”

  01:40 And we know it’s Aslan, but Jill doesn’t know it. “She says, ‘If I run the other way, he’s going to catch me. If I keep going forward, I’m going to walk right into his mouth.'” She just stood there still, but she was so thirsty. She kind of wanted to run away and then the lion speaks.

  01:59 I don’t know if you know, John, but in this world, animals could talk. Well, not our world, but in Narnia.

John Bytheway: 02:07 Right.

Hank Smith: 02:07 “The lion says, ‘Are you thirsty?’ And she said yes. And he said, ‘If you are thirsty, come and drink.’ She still just sat there, frightened. And the lion says, ‘Are you not thirsty?’ And Jill said, ‘I’m dying of thirst.’ And the lion says, ‘Well, drink then.’ And Jill says something like, ‘Well, do you mind going away while I drink?’ And the lion gave like a low growl. And she said, ‘Well, will you promise not to do anything to me if I drink?’ And the lion said, ‘I make no promise.’ And Jill said, ‘Well, I don’t dare come and drink.’ And the lion says, ‘Well, then you’re going to die of thirst.’ And Jill thought, ‘Oh dear, I suppose I must go and look for another stream.’ And then this great moment, the lion looks at her, calls her name, ‘Jill, there is no other stream.’ Jill decides to do what she was afraid of doing and comes to the lion and comes to the stream and drinks.”

  03:16 Lewis writes, “You didn’t need to drink much of it for it quenched your thirst at once.”

  03:23 Isn’t that a great story? There is none other way. We think to ourselves, “Oh, that way of Jesus sounds hard and scary and difficult. I don’t know if I want to repent or maybe I’ll go find another way,” right?

John Bytheway: 03:40 Yeah. And there is no other way. I love it. That’s what the verse is saying.

  03:45 And who did C.S. Lewis have in mind when he was writing about-

Hank Smith: 03:48 Yeah, you wonder, right? You wonder who he had in mind.

  03:52 Well, we hope you enjoyed the story. Come find us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts.

  03:58 This week we’re with Dr. Kerry Muhlestein, incredible mind. You’re going to love what he does. And then come back next week and join us for another followHIM Favorites.