Hank Smith:                      00:03                   Hey, welcome to followHIM Favorites. John and I share a single story to go with each week’s Come, Follow Me lesson. John, we’re in the book of Joshua this week and you’ve told me you have a story.

John Bytheway:               00:13                   Yeah, I think one of the most memorable verses of Joshua is Choose ye…

Hank Smith:                      00:18                   this day whom ye will serve. Yep.

John Bytheway:               00:20                   Right. And there’s also verses about hearkening and I just think there’s so many different things that are trying to get our attention today that are distracting. One of my favorite Elder Richard G. Scott quotations was, “Satan has a powerful tool to use against good people. It is distraction.”

Hank Smith:                      00:37                   Distraction. Yep.

John Bytheway:               00:37                   Choosing what to give our attention to. So I picked up this little book by David Jeremiah about living in the last days and this is what he wrote. “One of the worst train accidents in American history happened in the Fall of 2008 near Chatsworth, California. A Metrolink commuter train ran a red light on the tracks and collided head on with a freight train. Killing 25 people and injuring 135 others, what went wrong? When investigators probed the accident, they found that the engineer received seven text messages and had sent five himself during the fateful ride. It’s amazing to think that something as simple as a cell phone could be so distracting to a veteran engineer that it cost so many people their lives, including the engineer himself. But that is what distractions do. They can trip up the most competent and experienced people and wreak havoc in all manner of ways. Just so you know, I get distracted too. We have all got to just keep our eyes on the Savior. That has been such a theme we’ve been hearing to walk with me and to keep our eyes on Christ. Every day, remind yourself, am I distracted?

Hank Smith:                      01:54                   Right.

John Bytheway:               01:54                   Am I staying focused?

Hank Smith:                      01:56                   Sometimes I’ll ask my BYU students, how many of you have deleted an app? It took too much of your time. And almost all of them raise their hand. And I’ll say, How many of you re-downloaded that app? Almost all of them raise their hand. Funny that we cling to our distractions. We return to our distractions like a dog to its vomit, right? That’s what Peter would say.

John Bytheway:               02:15                   To use another scripture. And Hank, I think I’ve heard you say, Have you ever held your phone, fall asleep, and…

Hank Smith:                      02:22                   Drop it on your face.

John Bytheway:               02:23                   Right?

Hank Smith:                      02:24                   You know at that point, it’s a distraction.

John Bytheway:               02:25                   Raise your hand if you’ve dropped a phone onto your face. Where’d you get that wound? I dropped my iPhone.

Hank Smith:                      02:31                   Yeah, one girl came to me, she said, It was an iPad.

John Bytheway:               02:34                   Ooh, ouch.

Hank Smith:                      02:36                   At least it wasn’t a laptop. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get any of your podcasts. We’re with Dr. Camille Olson this week in the book of Joshua. She shows us things, John, I have never seen before. It’s fantastic. Then come back here next week. We’ll do another followHIM Favorites.