John Bytheway:               00:00:01             Welcome to part two with Dr. Jenae Nelson, Genesis 12-17, and Abraham 1-2.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:08             Jenae, this has been fantastic, and I know there are so many, including me. I’ve had times in my life where I thought, you promised. Is this ever gonna happen? I bet both of you remember this talk. Continue in Patience April of 2010. 16 years ago now, doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. This is Elder Uchtdorf. He says, I remember when I was preparing to be trained as a fighter pilot. We spent a great deal of our preliminary military training in physical exercise. I’m still not exactly sure why endless running was considered such an essential preparatory part of becoming a pilot. Nevertheless, we ran and we ran and we ran some more. As I was running, I began to notice something that frankly troubled me. Time and again, I was being passed by men who smoked, drank, and did all manner of things that were contrary to the gospel, and in particular, the word of wisdom.

                                           00:01:07             I remember thinking, Wait a minute. Aren’t I supposed to be able to run and not be weary? But I was weary. I was weary, and I was overtaken by people who were definitely not following the word of wisdom. I confess it troubled me at the time. I asked myself, was the promise true or was it not? Then this, Jenae, I think is what you’re talking about. The answer didn’t come immediately. But eventually, I learned that God’s promises are not always filled as quickly as or in the way we might hope. They come according to his timing and in his ways. Years later, I could see clear evidence of the temporal blessings that come to those who obey the word of wisdom, in addition to the spiritual blessings that come immediately from obedience to any of God’s laws. Looking back, I know for sure that the promises of the Lord, if perhaps not always swift, are always certain. Eventually, years later, I don’t love that, but I know it’s true.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:02:16             That’s one of the interesting things about getting to this stage in life and seeing, you can see so many of these dramas unfold and how the timing was so perfect, even though at the time it was that wilderness trial. God was in it the whole time, and that’s the second thing that he says to Abraham, walk with me. So not only was it important for him to have an understanding that he needed to be perfect in terms of finish the work that he was called to do. Of Abraham, it says, Abraham was a prince in the heavens and by right came to the earth in this time to accomplish the things given him to do. Then Paul, of course, says, I have fought a good fight. I’ve finished my course. I have kept the faith. That’s enduring to the end, that’s being perfect, that’s being a finisher. And ultimately, Christ is the finisher. He, which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. In other words, he’ll perfect it, he’ll finish it. Christ is finishing the work in our life.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:16             I think of the fact that we know so much of what’s going to happen to Abraham. The people in the scriptures, they don’t know what’s going to happen, but we have the benefit of just, oh, hold on, you know, next chapter, it’s going to be great. But Abraham, he’s going to have to wait a long time for the blessing of your posterity is going to bless the whole earth because Israel is going to be first sent to Egypt for hundreds of years and enslaved. Then when they return to the promised land, they’re going to be scattered because they chose a king and how long are they scattered, John, before the gathering? I mean, a couple millennia. Even in the spirit world, Abraham and Sarah are probably thinking, wait, you promised. The Lord saying, yep, it’s gonna be a while. Even if you have to wait a couple millennia, I will keep my promise. Yeah.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:04:10             One of my favorite things to tell my students is that when I was 35 years old, I didn’t even have a bachelor’s degree. That shocks them a little bit like, whoa, because I had to go back in my mid 30s to finish my bachelor’s degree and then get my PhD. There is a line in my patriarchal blessing that talks about getting essentially a lot of education at a university. It’s really clear that it’s not like self-learning because there’s lots of different ways to get an education. It doesn’t have to be through a PhD, but it was very clear that I was going to have this experience in my life. I got married young and started having children right away, then health problems. My education was constantly put on hold. It just nagged me, that line in my patriarchal blessing nagged at me. Like, well, when is that going to happen?

                                           00:05:03             Because I don’t know how I’m going to be able to get all that education when I have kids, and then when they’re young, and then my kids needed a lot of help. At every step, I saw myself getting further away from this possibility, this promise in my patriarchal blessing. My blessing also talks about how many people will come into the church through me. The first person that I’ve ever seen baptize just happened in October. I’m 44 years old. I lived so much of my life with all these pieces of my patriarchal blessing that hadn’t been fulfilled, yet God’s timing was perfect. I ended up having fertility problems, and I had a hysterectomy at 29. Imagine if I had postponed having children, getting married. What if I did it in my order? What if I did it the way that I wanted it? You know, if I did the education first, there’s a chance I wouldn’t even have a family.

                                           00:05:58             But at the time, I didn’t see that. I didn’t understand God’s goodness. Now, when I get students in my office, I just tell them, trust God’s timing for you. You will find that he is so good that even this thing that feels hard right now is blessing you, and you will find out why that is. And it will all make sense someday, but right now, while you’re in the waiting, you just have to trust that God has a better plan than you have for yourself.

Hank Smith:                      00:06:30             He does. He says in Abraham 2:8, My name is Jehovah. I know the end from the beginning. Therefore, my hand shall be over thee. He’s saying, I know nothing has escaped from me. I know beginning to end, A to Z, you’re gonna have to trust me.

John Bytheway:               00:06:48             That phrase that you used, Jenae, it wasn’t happening according to my order. Reminded me of another one of my fallback verses. You know, Hank mentioned a couple of millennia, took me about that long to find someone who would marry me. Section 111 verse 11 says, Be as wise as serpents and yet without sin, but this is the part I love, and I will order all things for your good as fast as you are able to receive them. I’ve got the order down. I know when you’re able to receive. That is so interesting. At 29, you had had your children and then you could do this education part, but it wasn’t in your order. He ordered it for you.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:07:33             Yeah, and it worked out way better for so many reasons. I mean, going back to school at 35 was a huge blessing. I had a lot of life experience at that point. Being in a classroom with 20-year-olds was hard. At that time, I wasn’t quite old enough to be their mom. I am now. It was challenging, feeling like I did my life out of order. But then when you realize, no, this was exactly the order that God had for me, and there’s so many beautiful things that came out of my life because of it. I was raising teenagers while I was studying teenagers in grad school. I mean, how good is God? He was just like, let me give you a real education. You’re gonna be learning about teenagers at the same time as you’re raising them. I can’t imagine a better time for me personally.

                                           00:08:19             Other people have different timetables. I have really close colleagues that raised young children while they were in grad school. While they were preparing for their careers, that just wasn’t what was gonna work for me. And God, in his infinite wisdom and love, understood that my path had to look differently. It had to be different from other people. That’s precisely why these trials are so hard when there’s a delay, when you’re not fitting the stereotype, when you aren’t participating in the rights of passage in the right order, those things actually cause a lot of psychological distress. That’s when there’s disorder in our life because we have these social and cultural differences in what’s expected and what’s happening in our life. We need to be gentle and careful with people who are breaking these molds and who aren’t following this prescribed pathway or timeline that we often see in the church. And a lot of young people, a lot of their suffering really follows from not fitting this mold in one way or another.

Hank Smith:                      00:09:22             Don’t you find it fascinating? In verse 15, he says, I took my family and the souls that we had won. I love that phrase. And we leave to go to the land of Canaan. Now, all three of us know how amazing Canaan is, but they don’t know that. That phrase that comes up that you pointed out, Jenae, eternity was our covering and our rock and our salvation. You’re going out there, you have no idea if this is going to work. It reminds me of the Saints going west from Nauvoo to Salt Lake. Eternity is our covering. What are you gonna do out there? How are you gonna get what you need? How do you know you’re not all gonna go out there and die? Eternity is our covering. It’s a beautiful phrase. God is my roof.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:10:11             He also says that he called on the Lord devoutly during that time. Consistently over and over, you see throughout his story, turning to the Lord. He doesn’t stop. Oftentimes when we’re in those wilderness type trials or when we’re going through something treacherous in our life or uncertain, we can choose to call on the Lord. We can choose where we turn, back to that idea of turning, are we turning away from God or are we continuing to call on the Lord devoutly? God will answer our prayers, maybe not the way that we want. He will answer them in that he will be our presence. He will be our support.

John Bytheway:               00:10:48             I love that quotation from Elder Renlund. I had never equated an eternal perspective with eternity was our covering. That’s really cool.

Hank Smith:                      00:10:57             I love having the perspective of the reader knowing the future. Right?

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:11:02             Yes. I know. We’re like, it’s gonna work out.

Hank Smith:                      00:11:05             Yeah, you’re gonna be fine. What’s the problem? And I wonder if the Lord looks at us the same way that we look at these scripture characters. He’s going, oh, just wait a couple verses. Things get better. And we think, I don’t have the book.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:11:20             Yeah. Just tell me how it’s all gonna work out. Yeah. But that doesn’t require faith. That’s the point. If we knew what was going to happen, it wouldn’t be that hard to trust. It wouldn’t be that hard to have faith. That’s why God knew that we needed a covenant because that’s another thing that the covenant gives us is it helps us establish trust. I wanna share a passage from this book by Jennifer Lane. This is what she says. As we get older, this simple concept of promises gets layered with our adult life experiences. We sign contracts for phones, apartments, cars, mortgages, and so on. We have obligations to make payments in exchange for goods and services. We do our part and we expect the other party to do their part. We make contracts, but we break contracts too. Others break contracts with us, too. We are penalized for breaking contracts, but that’s a part of life.

                                           00:12:15             This contractual model can and does easily color our sense of what covenant means, but in an ancient world, making a covenant wasn’t a matter of commerce. In ancient Israel, the term for covenant was berit. The concept behind berit is a relationship understood as a family relationship. Making a covenant in scripture can be best understood as forming a new relationship. I love that. And she goes on to talk about, when we get married, we create a new relationship. When we have children, we become a mother and a father. We’re creating new families, and she says that we don’t need a contract for that. She says, you know, it’s clear that we have new roles and new responsibilities, but she says that covenants in a like way create new family relationships. So if we think about our covenants as a family relationship, then she says that covenants can change who we are because they’ll change our relationship with those around us and their relationship to us.

                                           00:13:22             That’s really profound. I asked a lot of my friends leading up to this, why do we need covenants? Can’t God just bless us anyways? What is it about the covenant? It makes sense anciently because that’s kind of how they lived, but in our day and age, we just aren’t a people that can understand covenants the same way. It’s just not part of our daily living. We have insane return policies. We don’t keep anything. We’re transactional beings and we don’t understand what this type of relationship means, but I had some people say God doesn’t need covenants to bless us, that he causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. But what covenant does is what we just said. Covenant creates a new relationship. It’s saying that I’m allowing Christ to claim me. I’m claiming him. I am accepting this new identity as being his.

                                           00:14:19             I’m saying yes to this new identity. That’s what covenant allows us to do. And then within that covenant, we can receive, because it’s the authorized order, we can receive blessings, greater blessings, not that we didn’t get blessings before, but we can now receive greater blessings. We can receive greater happiness, peace, et cetera.

John Bytheway:               00:14:42             I love that in the past dozen years, we’ve been speaking of covenants much more as a relationship. I think I’m hearing that. Do you guys think so? But this idea of a two-way agreement, eh, that’s nice, but it can sound like a contract that I signed and put on the shelf. But thinking of a relationship and then loyalty and it’s to Christ is so much better way to put it. And when somebody says, I just can’t do this, you wanna say, yeah, you’re right. You can’t. But what if you’re in covenant with Christ? He can do it. If you’re bound to him with a covenant, it’s amazing what you can do with being bound to Christ in a covenant, and then it makes more sense than a contract.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:15:28             Right.

Hank Smith:                      00:15:29             I’m sure both of you remember this story, Accessing God’s Power Through Covenants, April of 2023. My grandparents, this is Elder Renlund speaking. I think it’s Lena Sofia and Matts Leander Renlund received God’s power through their baptismal covenant when they joined the church in 1912 in Finland. They were happy to be part of the first branch of the church in Finland. Leander died from tuberculosis five years later when Lena was pregnant with their 10th child. That child, my father, was born two months after Leander’s death. Lena eventually buried not just her husband, but also seven of her 10 children. As an impoverished widow, she struggled. For 20 years, she did not get a good night’s rest. During the day, she scrambled to provide food for her family. At night, she took care of dying family members. It’s hard to imagine how she coped. Lena persevered because she knew that her deceased husband and children could be hers through the eternities.

                                           00:16:34             The doctrine of temple blessings, including that of eternal families, brought her peace because she trusted in the sealing power. In 1938, Lena submitted records so that temple ordinances could be performed for her deceased family members. Some of the earliest submitted from Finland. After she died, temple ordinances were performed by others for her, Leander and her deceased children. By proxy, she was endowed. Lena and Leander were sealed to each other and their deceased children and my father were sealed to them. Like others, Lena died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off and was persuaded of them and embraced them. Lena lived as though she already made these covenants in her life. I mean, this is just the power of covenants. I like what you said there, Jenae. I don’t know what’s on the next page, but I know I’ve made covenants. God keeps his covenants.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:17:34             I love that. And there’s not just belief in those covenants, but there’s something indescribably real about those covenants. When I lost my grandma on my dad’s side. So I’ve been sealed to my dad and my stepmom. I have that sealing to my grandma that passed away. I was very sad. It was difficult for me, but I had this peace that I couldn’t describe. I could see her rejoicing in heaven. I could feel this very real bond to her that’s really hard to describe. When my mom’s mom died, my grandma Nina, this is the side of my family that I’m not sealed to. It was a different feeling. It felt unfinished. It felt like there was still work to do. I believe in a loving heavenly father that’s not going to keep me away from my family. He’s gonna provide those ordinances. It’s messy for me right now, but God is going to work that out. I completely believe that. I still believe that God will make it work, but with that unfinished work, it created a different experience for me. Hank, I know that you love the story in Genesis 13. I would love to hear you tell us about it.

Hank Smith:                      00:18:48             Yes, I love this story and I wish I could be more like Abraham here. I’m trying. They get to Canaan and he and his nephew, Lot are doing very well. They’re doing so well that the land that they’re in can’t hold all their cattle. Their herdman, the herdman of Abraham’s cattle and the herdman of Lot’s cattle start to fight and get contentious. Abram says to Lot, I don’t like this contention that’s happening between our two, all of our employees, I would say. Why don’t we do this. You choose a part of the land you want, and I’ll just take whatever you don’t want. Lot, of course, sees the better part, and he’s like, I’ll take the better part. And Abram says, Okay, I’ll take the other half. Abraham to me here is an example of a peacemaker. He says, I have enough. I have sufficient for my needs. How can we make peace here between these two, between these two groups? Reminds me of Edward Partridge, I have lost my affection for this world’s goods.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:20:02             I love what Douglas Clark says about Abraham on this front. He says, this principle of righteous loving kindness or charity would become the governing principle of Abraham’s life for which he is still remembered among his Jewish descendants as the embodiment of Hesed. For the decisive factor in Abraham’s personality was the unceasing urge to help others. Going back to the very beginning, I shared the story of those tokens, the tokens that helped identify the children. This one is the most important characteristic of being part of Abraham’s family, having this loving kindness, having this charity. And Christ himself said, By this shall men know you are my disciples if you have love one for another. It’s our compassion. It’s our desire to alleviate suffering that identifies us. It’s a token of our membership in the House of Israel. If we want to be recognized as part of the covenant, we need to be living like Abraham in the sense that we embrace this loving kindness.

                                           00:21:13             This story is a perfect example of how he did that. An interesting thing happens when money is involved in situations. As you know, money can bring out the worst in people. Money, property, land, business. They say don’t go into business with your family. This can create major tensions and problems. It’s precisely because we have put our trust or we created an idol out of these things and clearly Abraham is saying that he is done with idols and he is living that. He doesn’t have an interest in accumulating those things that he knows are not eternal. He’s in the business of collecting things of an eternal nature. He’s in the business of worshiping the true God.

John Bytheway:               00:21:56             My father-in-law, Michael Loveridge is an estate planning attorney. He actually used to give talks at Education Week. His title of his talk was How to Avoid Death, Taxes, Probate, and Family Civil War. The stories he tells about, oh, it’s awful what happens to some families when that time comes to divide up what their parents left behind. Some of those are heartbreaking to hear when they can’t be like Abraham here.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:22:29             Yeah, he was putting the gods of this world behind him. That’s interesting too, because as you guys know, the word for covenant means cutting, a covenant. We see the necessity of Abraham cutting ties from things of this world, cutting ties with the natural man, with these false idols. He cut those ties so that he could be opened up. We need to be cut open so that the word, the seed, the blessings can start to grow. They can flourish, but there’s a cutting that’s involved, which is sometimes painful. The beautiful thing is that God brings it all back together. We come to him with our broken hearts, with ourselves split open, and that’s the fertile grounds for which he can now do his work.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:17             I’m very impressed by generosity. The older I get. We want to hold onto our goods. I earned that. I want that. And then I’ll meet others who will say, oh, you know, it’s just money or it’s just stuff. It’s not a big deal. I wanna give. I wanna share. To me, that’s very impressive. Somehow overcoming selfishness. If I’m Abraham, I might say, okay, let’s get somebody to come value the property so we can split it evenly. Instead, it’s, I’ll take whatever you don’t want. Yeah, it’s very impressive.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:23:57             It’s interesting, Hank, because I was reflecting on how Abraham lived the laws of the endowment. It’s really easy to see how he lived the law of obedience, the law of sacrifice. So we can see all of these laws in his life play out, but what you just described as the law of consecration. That’s a crowning covenant precisely because what you’re saying, it requires that you only have one God, that you’re not relying on those other things for security, for safety. When you have that relationship with things where you’re no longer requiring them for safety and security, it’s easier to concentrate. But it also requires a loving kindness and a care for other people where you see it’s not just about letting go of your attachment to other gods or making idols out of those, but it’s also really knowing the identity of the other person that they are also a child of God and that they have needs and that you need to attend to them.

                                           00:25:02             And if you truly understand their identity, then you will have that compassion and that desire. We think of generosity sometimes as something that we have to muster up. I actually researched this. We wonder, why aren’t people more grateful? Why aren’t they more generous? What’s going on here? I think it’s very similar to happiness, that once the right conditions are in place, generosity just results from it. Same with happiness. We lived after the manner of happiness. You do certain things and then it brings happiness. But if you are in the search for happiness, you’re not going to find it that way. You’re going to have to live after the manner of happiness. But similarly, with generosity, this is something that is cultivated by living a certain way. It’s by not having those idols, not having those attachments to things, but it’s also the way you see your fellow human beings that if you see them as you see yourself, then you would do anything to alleviate suffering of that person.

                                           00:26:00             If you saw them the way that Heavenly Father saw them, or if you saw them as yourselves, it would just come naturally that you would want to help them. Our covenants help us do that. Every single covenant that we make in the temple is relational. It is meant to help us relate better to each other. It’s meant to help us get to that end that you’re talking about, Hank, where that generosity comes naturally. It’s not even a question of, am I going to give this or should I give them the better part? It just happens naturally because of the way that you view other people and the way you view yourself.

Hank Smith:                      00:26:36             John, you’ve heard me make this comparison before about the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea over in the Holy Land. There are two seas in Palestine. One is fresh and fish are in it. Splashes of green adorn its banks. Trees spread their branches over it and stretch out their thirsty roots to take in its life giving waters. Along its shores, children play as the children played when our Lord was there. He loved it. He could look across its silver surface when he spoke his parables, and on a rolling plane not far away, he fed thousands of people. The River Jordan makes this sea with sparkling water from the hills so it laughs in the sunshine and people build their houses near it and birds their nests. And every kind of life is happier because it is there. The river Jordan flows on south into another sea.

                                           00:27:24             Here, there’s no splash of fish, no fluttering leaf, no song of birds, no children’s laughter. Travelers choose another route, unless on urgent business, the air hangs heavy above its water and neither man nor beast or fowl will drink. What makes this mighty difference in these neighboring seas? Not the river Jordan. It empties the same good water into both. Not the soil in which they lie and not the country about. This is the difference. The Sea of Galilee receives, but does not keep the Jordan. For every drop that flows into it, another drop flows out. The giving and receiving go on in equal measure. The other sea is selfish, hoarding its income jealously. It will not be tempted into any generous impulse. Every drop it gets, it keeps. The Sea of Galilee gives and lives. The other sea gives nothing. It is named the Dead Sea. If you’ve ever been there, it’s one is gorgeous and beautiful, and the other is, I mean, you can float in it for a little while, which is kind of fun.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:28:34             I have compassion for people that are like the Dead Sea though too, Hank, because people that are like that, that are holding tightly onto their things oftentimes are doing that because they have this scarcity mindset that I’m not going to get more. This is all there is. They live in a world that isn’t generous to them in their minds. Because the world isn’t generous, because it’s cruel, it takes from you, you can think of the world or God that way. People think of God that way too. You can imagine that Abraham and Sarah could have thought about God as a God who takes. Similarly, every single person constructs a narrative about the world. They think that the world is either harsh and that everyone for their own or that the world is a loving, happy place. People are mostly good and that good things will come to you if you put it out there.

                                           00:29:30             And it turns out that people that believe that have less depression, anxiety, and other psychological problems, and you can see why. The people that are holding on are usually doing that because they’re afraid. They’re afraid that they’re not gonna get back. If we can use Abraham’s story in our lives as evidence that God is generous, God does give, think how much Abraham was multiplied. Greater than the sands and the sea and the stars in the heaven. That’s not just referring to his posterity, but the blessings. God is Is in the work of multiplying. And we live in a world that is harsh sometimes and that can feel like it takes from us and it can feel like if I give this, I’ll never get anything back in return. But when you understand how God works, you realize that we don’t have to be stuck in this transactional way of living the world. We can be in the business of transformation, in the business of giving, in the business of helping other people become their best selves and not just focus on what you get out of things. It requires us to make a shift in our mindset.

Hank Smith:                      00:30:33             Yeah. John, think about the people on our team and our podcast. Are these not the most generous people that we get to work with? Not only our guests, people like Jenae who come and give of their time and expertise. Then we have Shannon, our producer, we have Lisa Spice, we have David Perry, we have Kyle Nelson. I don’t want to go through the entire team here, but these are just people who give and give and give. And it’s so fun to work with them.

John Bytheway:               00:30:58             Yeah. It is a paradox, isn’t it? It’s kind of like Malachi. If you bring the tithes, I’ll open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing. It’s paradoxical, but the more you give, the more you receive. If you lose yourself, you find yourself.

Hank Smith:                      00:31:14             And I love what you said there, Jenae. It’s not usually someone is, does not wanna be generous. There’s a wound there. Something is happening. There’s a need not being met. Something is happening inside of them. I think it was President Kimball who said the Savior was able to see sin as the result of an unmet need on the part of the sinner.

John Bytheway:               00:31:37             That story reminds me of a story told by Elder Robert C. Gay. He said, sitting on the podium that day as I marched down the aisle in my Harvard graduation robe was Mother Teresa. She rose and delivered one of the most memorable speeches ever given at Harvard, a profound call to service and repentance. She expressed the hope that we graduates in going into the world would go with Jesus, would work for Jesus, and would serve him in the distressing guise of the poor. She also shared the following story of a couple she had met just a few days before leaving Calcutta for Harvard. A young man and a young woman came to our house with a big amount of money. I asked them, where did you get this money? Because I knew that they gave their money to feed the poor. They gave me the most strange answer.

                                           00:32:27             Before our wedding, we decided not to buy wedding clothes, not to have a wedding feast, but to give you the money to feed the poor. Then I asked them one more question. But why? Why did you do that? That is a scandal in India not to have a wedding feast and special clothes. And they gave me this most beautiful answer. Out of love for each other, we wanted to give each other something special, and that special something was that big sacrifice, the wonderful something. Here was one of the world’s genuine saints reminding us graduates that everyone, not just some fortunate few in the audience that day, but even those in the poorest regions of the world with little to their names, have something to give. If nothing more than sacrifice and pure love for others, Mother Teresa taught us that sacrificing something as simple as new clothing or a meal or a cultural right of passage could change a life. I knew then, as I hope you know now, that everyone has something to give. God asks that we act courageously in giving of ourselves and sharing the gifts and blessings he has given us. Take the talents and skills you have developed and go out and be a positive force for and on behalf of our Savior.

Hank Smith:                      00:33:45             And that is the law of consecration. It’s part of the covenants Jenae’s been talking about.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:33:51             Yeah. I love that. So we’ve talked a lot about identity and purpose as things that come out of the covenant. What you just touched on, John, with that story, is what we teach people about purpose. It’s another thing that I research. And that is that oftentimes we find our purpose at the intersection of where our gifts and talents meet the needs of the world. Our job is to find out what is that work that we’re called to do. Sometimes that requires some reflection and some identifying what those gifts and talents are that we have. Some people have really clear, easy to identify gifts and talents. If you’re a musician, those types of things tend to be a little bit easier to identify, but meekness, friendliness, those types of things, those characteristics and gifts, those can be used in small ways, but they can make a big difference.

Hank Smith:                      00:34:40             I don’t know how many free, totally absolutely free firesides John Bytheway has given in this church. It’s gotta be in the thousands.

John Bytheway:               00:34:51             You get what you pay for.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:34:53             You’re using your gifts, John.

Hank Smith:                      00:34:55             Yep. Using your gifts. And you’ve blessed the church. I wonder how many people out there listening have heard a John Bytheway talk.

John Bytheway:               00:35:04             They had a good rest. They’re in a comfortable pew.

Hank Smith:                      00:35:08             Yeah. Church sleep. Jenae, we’re getting close to the end of our scripture block here. What’s next?

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:35:15             Yeah, I think there’s a section in Genesis 13 that we should talk about really quick. We talked about where we turn and how Abraham’s fathers were turned towards these idols, these false gods, and that he was turning to the right God. And so we get this story in verse 12 about the direction the tent is faced. John, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about this?

John Bytheway:               00:35:46             I’m glad you asked. When King Benjamin is getting ready to give his address, it says in Mosiah 2:6, they pitch their tents roundabout the temple, every man having his tent with the door thereof towards the temple, which is a nice little metaphor. And kind of I have in my margin, Genesis 13:12. It says, Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent toward Sodom. But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly. And I remember Elder Rasband making a comment about the King Benjamin story and asking, where is our tent door pitched? Is it pitched toward the temples? Good question. My tent door, what’s it facing? What’s my life facing? What’s my family trying to face and keep its eyes on?

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:36:43             Yeah, I like that because we’ve talked about how, what we rely on, who we listen to, and now where we’re facing. These are all indicators of who we’re serving. I like that a lot.

Hank Smith:                      00:36:56             If you look in chapter 14, verse 12, wasn’t long before Lot dwelt in Sodom. He ended up there. He faced there first and ended up there. That usually what happens, right? We face a certain direction and slowly over time, we end up there.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:37:13             You drift that way. When you change direction, even just a little bit, as Uchtdorf talks about, those little tiny degrees can actually get you way off the course in the long run. That story reminds me of, I think it was Holland that was talking about the jersey that you wear. My son ran for American Fork High School. Their cross country team is one of the best in the nation. They’ve got several national titles. Their coach would always say to them, wearing the jersey doesn’t make you a national champion. You have to actually do the work. But there was something about putting on that jersey, knowing that you were now part of a team that was nationally recognized and that had this record. It made them think differently about themselves. They’re like, I am a caveman. That’s a big deal around here. If you’re a runner, there is something about being on this team, this winning team that gave these young men and young women a different perspective.

                                           00:38:17             And so I think about how when we are joining the Lord’s team and when we are, when we’re putting on our garments, when we’re wearing the Lord’s jersey, we’re saying something about our identity. We’re saying something about the team that we belong to. But not only is it important for us to put on that jersey or to make that commitment to be facing the right direction, but then it also requires that you are doing the work. Those runners are expected to run like national champions. They’re expected to show up to practice and they work really hard. Their coach can turn just about anybody into a national champion runner because he’s such a good coach, but this is the way that Christ is. He’s such a good coach that he can bring us to that level. And there’s nothing magical about the jersey, but it’s that partnership with the coach.

                                           00:39:08             It’s the coaching that you get, the mentoring that you get. When you choose to be on God’s team, when you join his family, you make those new covenant relationships. You are now saying, I’m taking Christ on as my coach and my partner, and I’m choosing to walk with him. That’s the youth theme this year, which I think is really beautiful. You’re choosing him as your coach. Who doesn’t want a national championship as a coach?

Hank Smith:                      00:39:34             Where does your tent face? A great devotional lesson for this week. For any seminary teacher, right, any mom or dad, go get a tent, pitch it in the living room and talk about which way does our tent face?

John Bytheway:               00:39:45              Could be a very intense discussion.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:39:52             Last time I was on here, I talked about a tent too. That’s funny. That tent that blew over in the wind. Genesis 15, Abraham has an encounter with the Lord again. He’s still Abram at this point. And this is, I think what the Lord says to him is really beautiful and instructive for us. He says, fear not, Abraham. I am thy shield. So again, eternity is his covering and thy exceeding great reward. Going back to this idea that there are certain promises that are associated with the Abrahamic covenant, there’s outcomes, there’s certain things that Abraham is expecting to see. And even Abraham says, what wilt thou give me seeing I go childless? He’s bringing this up, you know, I don’t have children. He’s saying, I haven’t got the outcome yet, the outcome that I want and the timing that I want. But right before that, I don’t know if he was paying very good attention because the Lord said that he, as in the Lord, is his reward.

                                           00:40:54             He says, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. In the gospel, when we think about obedience being tied with blessings, we often think about very specific blessings that we think we should be getting. And this is where we get into problems because we think, okay, if I’m not getting those blessings, then we’re back to that cycle of perfectionism because maybe I’m not good enough or I’m not worthy enough for those blessings. Or then the opposite of that is that, or maybe God isn’t good, maybe God doesn’t love me. So we either blame ourselves or we blame God. Either way, the problem is that we’re expecting the blessings of the covenant to be a certain thing or to come on a certain timetable. God is saying, I am your reward. Can you just see that, Abraham? I know that you want a child, you’re going to get a child. I’m, you’re going to get all the promises, but if you don’t understand that I’m your shield, I’m your reward, I’m going to protect you, I am going to be your provision. The point of covenant is that we get Christ as our reward.

Hank Smith:                      00:42:03             My faith is not in outcomes. My faith is in Christ.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:42:08             That’s hard though, Hank, because hope is tied to outcomes. There’s a gap here in how people are supposed to actually practically apply this that don’t have faith in outcomes, but also have faith in outcomes. That can be confusing for people. I hear this a lot from missionaries tell me, my mission president said that if we were exactly obedient, we would get blessings. There were some missionaries that were breaking all the rules and they were baptizing 20 people a week and then I was keeping all the rules and I didn’t have any baptisms and I just felt like I was the worst. How do you reconcile this? Not only do we have these wilderness trials where you’re not seeing the blessings that God has promised you, but what about when you’re obedient and we’re told that if you’re obedient, you’ll get blessings, but it feels like you’re not getting them.

                                           00:43:03             Similar to that wilderness trial, but it can cause a lot of heartache for us. My son’s patriarchal blessing says that you’ll get certain blessings, and it repeatedly says, if you obey the principles of the gospel with exactness, we talked about how some of the blessings in his patriarchal blessing are not going to happen because of the way that his mission changed, which was out of his control. He’s like, maybe it’s because I didn’t obey with exactness. And I said, okay, let’s back this up a little bit. Similarly to like, let’s unpack what perfect means and what God maybe meant by that. Obeying the principles of the gospel with exactness. So what are the principles of the gospel? Faith, repentance, baptism, receive the Holy Ghost endure to the end. I said, so to me, that sounds like repentance. You’re gonna mess up, but you can choose to repent quickly. Like that’s something that is in your power. You might have weaknesses or traditions of your fathers that keep you from being able to be exactly obedient. Nobody did it but Jesus. Jesus is the only one that had exact obedience, but we can keep repenting. And that’s the same idea of don’t give up, right? That we can continue going on because of repentance.

Hank Smith:                      00:44:23             I really like that. And I think perhaps that’s why the Lord made the first principle faith in him, because it sounds like if that’s the first principle, we’re gonna need it a lot. It’s not gonna look like it’s working out. You’re gonna have faith in me. Chapter 15:6, and he believed.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:44:44             I love that. And it’s not that we’re saying that obedience doesn’t matter. It’s the first law of heaven. It’s the first covenant we make in the temple. It’s important to remember that obedience is necessary and Abraham quickly obeys when the Lord commands him to leave. He’s consistently obeying and doing what the Lord asks him to do, and that obedience is an act of faith. Once we’ve demonstrated faith, then he can bless us, but it’s not like we are earning those blessings through our obedience. It’s just that we’re demonstrating faith in him. We’re demonstrating faith that he is the great reward. That requires listening to him and following him and choosing him as our God.

Hank Smith:                      00:45:23             When I am obedient, I’m connected to him and therefore I have the reward.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:45:28             That’s right. Still 15:6, and it came to pass that Abraham looked forth and saw the days of the Son of Man. So he’s seeing the life of Christ, and was glad and his soul found rest and he believed in the Lord and the Lord counted it to him for righteousness. There’s this principle here that Abraham is looking to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ for rest, and he’s receiving that rest. President Nelson talked to us about rest and how we can experience rest, because that’s another plight that we have in this life, is, especially in the latter days, is just feeling busy, feeling like there’s a lot to do, feeling overwhelmed, but if we can center our lives on Christ, if we can look to his life, we can find rest. Sometimes that means also paring down and that we’re just focusing on the most important things, using Christ’s life as an example as to what we should prioritize.

Hank Smith:                      00:46:26             This story hits so close to home for many who can’t have children, who want children, but are, for some reason or another, are unable to have children reading this where Abraham’s kind of begging almost. You have given no seed, will you? The Lord tells him, take a look at the stars. Take a look at the stars. Try to number those stars. That’s gonna be your posterity, and he believed. Still wondering how in the world it’s gonna happen.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:47:01             I like that God is pointing Abraham to nature for a pattern of going back to that generosity, God’s goodness. Look, my creations are vast. That can give you an understanding of what I want to do for you. If we think about God as being someone that’s generous, he’s a creator, he multiplies, versus, you know, a God who takes, a God who punishes a completely different paradigm. I’m glad that you brought up that, Hank, and I did wanna talk a little bit about Sarah and mothers in Israel, because we talk a lot about Abraham, but right by Abraham’s side was Sarah. She also received a new name and she was also part of the covenant. We don’t get Sarah’s words. We don’t get to get into her mind and what she’s going through, but I think about how difficult it might have been for her, especially in giving Abraham Hagar and Hagar is the one who produces seed first and the emotion that she must have been going through, but yet we find that she’s faithful.

                                           00:48:03             I love this quote from Jeffrey R. Holland, another good one from him. He said, This is speaking to women. Yours is the grand tradition of Eve, the mother of all human family, the one who understood that she and Adam had to fall in order that men and women might be, and that there would be joy. Yours is the grand tradition of Sarah and Rebekah and Rachel, without whom there could not have been those magnificent patriarchal promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which bless us all. Yours is the grand tradition of the mothers of the 2000 stripling warriors. Yours is the grand tradition of Mary, chosen and forordained from before this world was to conceive, carry, and bear the son of God himself. We thank all of you, including our own mothers, and tell you there is nothing more important in the world than participating so directly in the work and glory of God, in bringing to pass the immortality and earthly life of his daughters and sons so that immortality and eternal life can come to those celestial realms on high.

                                           00:49:11             It’s not just Abraham that got that promise, it was Sarah. God had a promise to keep, not just Abraham, but also to Sarah. It was so important that that promise be fulfilled through Isaac. We get kind of a glimpse of the way that the Lord must have felt about Sarah. He loved her. He wanted them to rely on him and to be able to trust him that that would happen, and that trust building required them to not have that promise for a while, which seems paradoxical or counterproductive, but that’s exactly what increased their faith. So that when God finally comes to him in Genesis 17, when God finally comes to him and says, all right, now it’s time. You’re going to conceive. This is when he gets that promise. He’s 99 years old.

Hank Smith:                      00:50:16             The Lord seems to play out some of these people’s lives like a really good movie, like the last possible moment where you think, It’s all lost. There is no hope. It’s all gone. Then he says, okay, it’s almost like raising Lazarus from the dead. I’m gonna push this longer than anybody thinks possible. I’m gonna push your faith to the end and then a little bit more, which I don’t love that idea.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:50:44             It was actually at the last followHIM gathering that, I believe it was Annabelle Sorensen. There was a video where she said that hope is something that you need when times are the darkest, when things are the most bleak. We often think about hope as being maybe toxic positivity or that people have hope when things are going well or when things are happy, but it’s really difficult to have hope in those messy times. When things are not coming together when God’s promises seem delayed, when things aren’t making sense, that’s actually when we need hope the most, but it’s also when it can be the hardest. I think this is actually from Uchtdorf. He says this. We learn to cultivate hope the same way we learn to walk one step at a time. As we study the scriptures, speak with our Heavenly Father daily and commit to keep the commandments of God, like the word of wisdom, paying a tithing, we attain a hope.

                                           00:51:47             We grow in our ability to abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost as we more perfectly live the gospel. There may be times when we must make a courageous decision to hope when everything around us contradicts this hope. Like Father Abraham, we will against hope, believe in hope, or as one writer expressed, in the depth of winter, we find within us an invincible summer. That’s from his talk on infinite hope. But I like that hope is something that he’s saying, it’s basically just putting one foot in front of the other. Some days hope just looks like I got out of bed. Some days it, that’s as much as you can do. That was hope. Sometimes hope is saying, I’m not gonna listen to those self-sabotaging voices anymore. I’m going to believe that I’m loved. I’m gonna believe that I have value even if it doesn’t feel that way right now. I’m just gonna take a step of faith and that faith can produce hope.

John Bytheway:               00:52:45             I just love that not only did God give Abram a new name, but how do you say it? Sarai, a new name. And it, to me, it speaks of the importance of marriage and family that this covenant is impossible without Abram, Abraham, and Sarah. I like that. And I wonder how many times God has done the same thing, but we don’t know about it with others, but at least here we know about it with Abraham and Sarah, new names, new beginning, new start.

Hank Smith:                      00:53:17             And what Jenae taught us about, perhaps that’s why Isaac is going to be the covenant son over Ishmael is because of the Lord valuing Sarah in this instance. He does value Hagar. He’s going to take care of her, but when it comes to Abraham, it’s going to be Sarah. It’s going to be the two of them together. Jenae, you’ve talked to us a lot about hope today and hope in difficult times when it does not seem that the promises we’ve been given are going to be fulfilled or can be fulfilled. Those wilderness trials. You have had many yourself. You’ve had dark times yourself. Sometimes I think people listening, John, assume that our guests when they come on the show aren’t experiencing dark times, but many of them are. They, they come on the show in the middle of really hard things. They don’t know how it’s gonna work out.

                                           00:54:11             They’re still here with us teaching. Jenae, if you could maybe wrap us up here by speaking to those who are maybe in their car thinking it’s ever gonna happen for me. Or maybe there’s some in a dark room praying that the Lord will come through for them, and we’ve already seen. The Lord seems to push us way past our comfort zones. What would you say to those listeners who are in moments where you also have been?

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            00:54:43             Wow, that’s a big question. Sometimes we think that the Lord’s mercies are only for the righteous, for those who are doing their best, those who are maybe living the holiest, most righteous life. The darkest times in my life were when I was not living the gospel of Jesus Christ at all, when I didn’t believe in God at all. And God rescued me from that. And it wasn’t from anything that I did or deserved. He pulled me out of that. His mercy was there for me. His love was there for me. Now, as an older person, living with some of the consequences of my childhood, some of the imprints, some of those survival skills that we talked about that no longer serve me, I find myself in need, again, of rescuing, of being delivered. I think what we see in Abraham is a God who is responsive, a God that’s proactive, a God that doesn’t make the best out of bad situations, but that is actually using those trials to form his children.

                                           00:56:03             And if we can see that his mercy is there, we are so afraid of making mistakes and we make them all the time, which is ironic, but we’re so afraid that our sins will disqualify us or that we’ll somehow miss the boat or that we’ll have to be living out a plan B because we didn’t marry the right person or do this at the right time or whatever it is. I just think we have to understand and keep in mind that God is bigger than all of these things. He sees the whole picture. When he tells Abraham to look at the stars in the sky, I don’t think he’s just doing math with Abraham. I think what he’s trying to do and how Abraham is able to have this perspective is he’s trying to get Abraham to look up. I think he’s trying to get Abraham to think celestial.

                                           00:56:55             The way that President Nelson taught us, he’s trying to say, look, if I can put the stars in the sky, if I can number all of them, then I can take care of your life. I can handle this. I have a plan for you. Once you stop trusting in all these things, even the promises of God can become an idol for us if we are missing the point that God is the reward. God is the reward. Christ is the reason that we have covenants. We’re not just following a bunch of rules so that we can earn a bunch of rewards. We are trying to live in a way that we can become like our Savior Jesus Christ, and he models that in the covenant. When times are really, really dark, God would say to us, and I think God does say to us out of these pages in the Bible to us, look up at the sky. When it’s dark out, you can see the stars.

                                           00:58:06             Sometimes when it’s the darkest, that’s when we can see the light from the stars the best. Understand that there’s a pattern, there’s an order, and God is in charge of all of it. To people who feel like maybe their homes are falling apart, their relationships, who maybe struggle to understand their identity or their purpose, I would say to you that in Christ, you always have a home. In Christ, you always have belonging. In Christ, you always have a purpose. That’s kind of what God is trying to tell us over and over and over again in the Old Testament through the covenant is, you know, we don’t make very good covenant partners. President Holland said we’re all he has to work with, but the fact that he’s willing to enter into that relationship with us should tell us something about his love. We will always be indebted.

                                           00:59:02             We will always be unprofitable servants. He still enters that relationship with us. Imagine starting a business with somebody and just knowing they’re gonna be the worst business partner ever and still doing it and saying, it’s gonna be fine and we’re gonna make a profit because I’m just that good. I am going to cover you. I’m going to literally cover you. That’s what the Atonement is for. You don’t have to rely on your work alone. Our response to that type of love, to that hesed, to that covenant commitment that Christ is willing to enter that relationship with us should be a desire to obey. So we’re, yes, we’re not gonna be flawless in the terms of perfect, never making mistakes in that way, but we should want to obey. We should want to live like him. We should want to emulate him and follow him. That should be what spurs us on to keeping our covenants. Not just checking off these boxes so that I can receive these blessings, but that this will actually make me a better person. And in the process, I might help other people too.

Hank Smith:                      01:00:10             Thank you, Jenae. I saw that connection chapter 15:5. You said, he told him to look up, look at the stars. And then you love that, you pointed out that phrase, Abraham too, eternity was our covering. It’s almost like those two are linked. Those two moments. That he figured it out. The stars, eternity was my covering. And it will be for each of us as well.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            01:00:35             Yeah. We didn’t talk about this, but when the Lord passes through those pieces on the altar, Abraham’s altar and his sacrifice and he comes through those pieces, that would just be my final testimony that Christ comes in the pieces. The reason why we sometimes have to get broken up is so that he can enter in. We come with a broken heart and a contrite spirit. The Lord will pass through those broken pieces in our life and he will come. Abraham teaches us this process. We’ve learned today about all of the things that he went through and how he was able to persevere because of his faith and his hope and his love. Ultimately, the point of all of it was for him to understand who God was and to be able to enjoy the presence of the Lord. And that’s something that he wants. He wants us to be able to enjoy the blessings that he had, and one of them is the presence of the Lord. That’s really powerful to me.

Hank Smith:                      01:01:34             And he believed. Man, I think that’s a major takeaway for me today, right from Jenae. She believes.

John Bytheway:               01:01:41             She believes. It’s like, Abraham, do you still see those stars? Okay. Then the promise is still coming. Every night you see the stars? No. Those are the ones I told you about. The promises are still coming.

Hank Smith:                      01:01:54             They’re still there. And Jenae, you’re a testament to faith. You’re a testament one, that you said the Lord came and grabbed you, right, and got you and said, you’re coming with me. And then you’ve stuck with him ever since.

Dr. Jenae Nelson:            01:02:07             Thank you. I feel when you know you’ve been rescued and when you know that there are people that are still in harm’s way, you just wanna go and help as many people as you can. You want to introduce people to your rescuer. You want to introduce people to your deliverer and your savior because you know what it can do for you. You know that completely changes your life. When I say that this is the God I serve, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I’m saying, this is the type of God I serve, this type of God that rescues, that delivers. He invites me into his work and I want to bring other people back home.

Hank Smith:                      01:02:43             Jenae, what a testimony. We have been so blessed having you here, and I feel uplifted and edified, and I feel like I can continue to trust. I will keep trusting. And we hope and pray the Lord will continue to pour out blessings upon you and your family. With that, we want to thank Dr. Jenae Nelson for joining us again. We want to thank Shannon Sorensen, our executive producer, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen, and every episode for the last five years, we’ve remembered our founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We’ve got more to go through in the book of Genesis on followHIM.

                                           01:03:23             Thank you for joining us on today’s episode. Do you or someone you know speak Spanish, Portuguese, or French? You can now watch and listen to our podcast in those languages. Links are in the description below. Today’s show notes and transcript are on our website, followhim.co. That’s followhim.co. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika, Sydney Smith, and Annabelle Sorensen.