followHIM - 1 Samuel 8–10; 13; 15–16 Part 1 • Dr. Geoff Wright • June 8-14 • Come, Follow Me

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Could God see a king in the most unlikely of people and what happens when a humble leader lets pride take hold? Join Hank and John as they welcome Dr. Geoff Wright to explore 1 Samuel and Israel’s shift from judges to monarchy and the tragic rise and fall of King Saul.SHOW NOTES/TRANSCRIPTSEnglish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastOT224ENFrench: https://tinyurl.com/podcastOT224FRGerman: https://tinyurl.com/podcastOT224DEPortuguese: https://tinyurl.com/podcastOT224PTSpanish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastOT224ESYOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/FsALi4-JBiYFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookBook of Mormon: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastBMBook WEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletter SOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE0:00 - Part 1 - Dr. Geoff Wright2:06 Israel's move from judges to kings2:40 Teaser5:05 Bio7:40 Come, Follow Me Manual9:09 Anticipatory set–Rosa Parks, Malala, J.K. Rowling10:50 Pretest questions: Seeing potential in the overlooked13:35 Historical context 15:29 President Kimball and patriarch James Womack17:15 Coaches and mentors20:30 “Only pass to one guy”22:51 Martin Harris and God’s work goes forth25:00 Wanting a king to fit in29:06 Lunchboxes, big feet, and Dickies pants31:08 Parenting and the PowerPoint pitch35:47 Tying your identity to the Lord38:29 God sends Saul39:00 Greg: The Student who left a gang44:17 Choosing kings vs. letting God prevail47:21 Saul losing his humility49:57 Staying “little in our own sight”52:07 Building skis55:06 Heat, pressure, repentance and drift trikes57:23 Saul hides “among the stuff”58:41 The neighbor who became a best friend1:03:16 The Spirit changes (and hold onto it)1:14:49  End of Part 1 - Professor Geoff WrightThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsAmelia Kabwika: Portuguese TranscriptsHeather Barlow: Communications DirectorSydney Smith: Social Media, Graphic Design "Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Coming up in this episode on Follow Him. While we were living there that first month, a guy moved into the house next to us. He had just got out of prison. And he was on his front porch, smoking. I looked over and I thought, all right, this is my new neighbor. So I said, hello, how's it going? A little gruff.

We're about the same age. Little did I know that he would become one of my best friends. Hello, my friends. welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with my co-host, whose name is John, by the way, a choice young man and a goodly. And there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he. John, I'm reading 1st Samuel 9. I went, I know exactly what to call you this week. I was born of goodlier parents. They were goodlier. They were the goodliest.

I'd like to be a fly in the wall in the King James translation room when they... They said, let's go with Goodlier. Let's go with Goodlier. Goodlier. Well, we're going to see how many times we can say it today. John, we are privileged to be joined by my friend, Dr. Jeff Wright. Dr. Wright, if I can call you Jeff, call me Jeff. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for taking time for us. It's a privilege to be here. Hank, we've been friends for a long time. John, by the way, I've known on cassette tapes for a long time. If listeners know what a cassette tape is. Right. Yeah, you might have to stop the show and, you know, look it up if you were born after 2001. John, by the way, cassette, that's an item that has blessed many lives, John.

All the dating insights he gave us, yeah. Dating 911. I remember that talk. Yeah, dating 911. John, we're talking about Saul today. Israel makes a decision to move away from the Lord. and toward kings. What do you think of when you think of this transition?

I think of the same stories as the book Mormon. It's just kind of, ooh, kings, ooh, surely this thing leads to bondage. Sometimes there's good kings like King Benjamin, but it's kind of rare. I kind of have that, ooh, this won't end well type of feeling. There's this heartbreaking moment I'm sure Jeff will talk about, which is the Lord says, they haven't rejected you, Samuel. They have rejected me. They don't want me to be their king.

Jeff, as you've been preparing, what do you want to do today? What are you hoping to walk us through? I remember, Hank, when you asked me, we were at a missionary homecoming. You were sitting behind me, and it was a kid that I had coached on the football team. I remember sitting there and just being so impressed with this young man.

He came up to me, and he said, hey, Jeff, would you consider being on the podcast? And my initial response, I think to you was, no. Like, I teach engineering and technology. I don't study the scriptures like you. Like, I was intimidated. You know, like John introed being born of goodly parents. I really was born of goodly parents.

I was raised in a home where the gospel was taught. We had family in evening, and my dad was a great teacher. You'd act out the stories in the book Mormon with little army men. And when he wasn't around, my mom made sure that we were reading scriptures. I was raised with my agency, but also I was raised in a culture where I knew that I had a loving Heavenly Father. And over these 49 years, my faith roots have gone deep. And I know, and I can testify that I have a loving Heavenly Father that we all do. And he's aware of us. I was excited by the challenge to study the Old Testament. I really should say, thank you, Hank, for inviting me to

dig into these chapters. You know what I find interesting about the Old Testament, that I didn't observe before. These first books in the Old Testament are complete stories. It's rare, like later in the Old Testament, you don't have stories of people that flow through their entire life. So I really enjoyed reading it because it was a story. After you get past the story, you start looking for gospel connections. And you really see the voice of Christ in these chapters.

I can honestly say I know more about the Old Testament, but more importantly, I can see the connection to our life and how God is central to it. I love having these moments in my life where I can feel him wrapping his arms or touching my mind, touching my heart with his spirit. I work over in the JSB at VYU, and the name Dennis Wright is an important name there still. Dr. Wright out there, the other Dr. Wright, if you're listening, just know we and the JSB, we still adore you, sir. John, I know Jeff. I've known him for 16 years, but I don't know if our listeners, besides those engineering students at BYU, are going to know who Jeff is. So what do we know?

You're going to hear a phrase in here. You have never heard on a bio in almost five years of follow him. Are you ready? Jeffrey A. Wright is an associate professor of technology and engineering studies. He's been at BYU since 2006, so two decades. His areas of teaching and media, communications, instructional design, digital prototyping, coding, and innovation. His research involves STEM education. Now, that means, I think, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, innovation and entrepreneurship, coding, and wait for it, Hank, underwater robotics. That's so great. How cool is that? This is our first underwater robotics professor that we've had here. Dr. Wright's originally from Vancouver, British Columbia. He's married to

to his wife Leah, they have three children, Isaac, Lucy, and Kate. As you just mentioned, his father, Dennis Wright, was part of that Saints at War project with Robert Freeman. We've had him on here before, and that's important to me. I remember sending all my dad's stuff over to the archive that Dennis and Robert created. But also in our talking before we started recording, Jeff, you talked a lot about coaching. Tell us all the different sports you have coached. When we were first married, Leah and I, we moved to California. I was teaching computer science part-time and coaching volleyball as the head varsity volleyball

coach. And Chino, if you know where Chino is, not too far from Anaheim, also coached basketball and track. Since then, I've always stayed coaching basketball and some football. Recently, I was the Maple Mountain High School volleyball coach when volleyball was sanctioned here in Utah. We're state champions. We're defending state champions two times in a row. It's awesome to work with youth. However we can, you can be a mentor. Jeff is the real deal. One of the things I love about Jeff is we both were new in the stake, and he came right over, introduced himself,

shook my hand, made you feel important, a lot like his dad did, actually, when I got to BYU. Jeff, I've looked up to you for a long time and I'm excited you're here. And Leah, Leah comes from a church education family as well. Leah Sherry. Yeah, Tom, her dad, he was the Institute Director at Oregon State University for most of his career. He was at Penn State for a little bit at the beginning and he's done a lot of work with JST and Joe Smith Papers and is just an unbelievable teacher himself. Leah has been raised by Goodly Parents too. Fantastic. Well, we set expectations high with two solid CES families. I think we found the right guy. Let's jump into the come follow me manual and then Jeff, we're excited to learn from you and your expertise. The lesson this week, the Lord looketh on the heart. We're in 1st Samuel. Saul was a keeper of donkeys. Sounds like my house a little bit. Though tall and handsome, he was little in his own sight and self-conscious about his family heritage. On the day he was presented before Israel as their king, he didn't show up. He was so nervous, he hit himself.

Looking at Saul, you might not have guessed that he would lead the Israelites to victory over their enemies, or that he would later become prideful and rebel against the Lord. David was a keeper of sheep. He wasn't as physically impressive as his seven older brothers. On the day Samuel came to choose a new king for Israel, it didn't seem worthwhile to include David among the possible candidates. so he's left out in the fields with the sheep. Looking at David, you might not have guessed that he would have the faith encouraged to defeat a giant and become Israel's most successful king. But the Lord sees past our labels.

Our physical appearance, our insecurities. He looks instead on the heart. And even when our heart isn't quite right, if we're willing, he will give us another heart. It's beautiful. All right, Jeff, with that, how do you want to go about this? I think all good teaching starts with an anticipatory set. So I have a question for you and John. I'm flipping the script here.

You probably know who Rosa Parks is, and J.K. Rolling, and put them in the same sentence. Amalea Yusazai, do you know who she is? I think so. She was a young girl who was speaking up for education in Pakistan. She was targeted and attacked, but she kept advocating for education. In fact, she became the youngest Nobel Prize winner. In Rosa Parks, we all know her story. She was a very quiet seamstress and wasn't a famous leader initially.

And then she refused to give up her seat in defiance of the Jim Crow segregation laws and really sparked the bus boycott in Alabama. And then J.K. Rowling, I don't know if you know her background, but she was struggling financially. She was a single mother. She was rejected many times by publishers. So she'd go and write in cafes whenever she had time and eventually she created one of the most successful books ever. So my question to you, what do these three women have in common that really connect with these chapters?

What do you think? Wow. I love having a wise, older co-host who always knows the answer to these type of things. I don't know if this is what you're thinking, but not what you expect. it. You would not have seen that coming, the success that they had or the impact that they had. Yeah. I was going to say that same thing, John, now that you've said it, I'm like, oh, yeah, me too. Yeah, totally, me too. No, but I think when I read the manual, you wouldn't look at that person and think, oh, they're going to change the world. That's exactly it. There's probably other descriptors, courage, conviction, trust, effort. They took a lot of effort.

I love thinking about this need for courage and conviction and maybe not being the one that's noticed, you know, at first. As the hook, then that kind of leads to a pre-test. So in my classes, I really like to always pre-test. I think it's a good way to kind of warm up the student thinking. Here are my pre-test questions for you guys. Were you or do you know of anyone who didn't immediately get picked for a team because they didn't look impressive? I have kids. They probably tried out for sports or music.

music productions, and where they picked right away. But then over the season, they worked hard. They were coachable. They became maybe one of the most reliable players. You know, like I coached a lot, so I'm going to make these kind of connections. Obviously, it isn't about looks right away. Sometimes kids become very coachable, or they grow, or they matured at a different rate. So that's the first pre-test question. The next one I'll let you answer. Have you ever noticed someone who was chosen to be a leader because they were popular? or funny, and one of those cool kids or whatever. But it turns out they actually weren't that good of a leader.

And then maybe a quiet student, if you think of maybe in a class that needs a student leader who was quiet but worked really hard and they kept their promises and were diligent, ended up earning the respect and really made a difference. Have you ever noticed someone like that in your life? And then I have two more questions. Here's another question that I think fits that I came up with. Have you ever been tempted to take a shortcut on a project, shortcut and work to get ahead quickly? And at first it might even work, but in the end, it kind of backfires.

We know later on in First Samuel, he's taught to obey is better than to sacrifice. And so I thought of that. And then the final one, do you ever have a coach or a teacher who really truly saw you for who you are, who believed in you and therefore helped you grow more than what you thought you could. There's a strong connection in these scriptures about the idea of seeing people for who they really are and investing in them because God invests in us. We're more than what we could be as husbands, as fathers, as mothers and disciples, right? These are great questions.

And you're right, they do get students thinking. I'm definitely thinking. I think this is interesting how this fits the timeline. This happens late 10th century BC, so they say around 1,000 BC. Moses left Egypt, around 1,300. So we have this 300-year period. First Samuel, I guess in the research it says it was written maybe around 1100 BC. So initially, we're studying right now,

the Israelites really were under Egyptian rule for 400, They're shown all these plagues. And the plagues weren't just for Pharaoh. The plagues probably were for the Israelites to convert them, to remind them. I think it's interesting for how long they've had these judges. They were born and raised. We have probably 300 years of these judges. Everyone else has kings.

They're not necessarily growing stronger. In fact, they have wars and battles. And so I think eventually they're wondering, why don't we try something different? That context is interesting. I also noted that in Greek, the Septuagint, it actually refers to first and second Samuel as the books of kingdoms. So if the book of kingdoms, at first, God was apprehensive to call these kings, but really it's this path towards training them up or reminding them that they are the children of God. They have divine nature. Their king is he, our Savior Jesus Christ and ultimately our Heavenly Father.

This book of kingdoms is an interesting idea to label it as this training and this growth, this evolution towards accepting he who is our king. Where Samuel then becomes a kingmaker, he's kind of labeled as, or he's inaugurating this David Hic dynasty, if you will, establishing this new flow. I want to come back to your questions here. John, you probably remember the story of President Kimball. He's at a stake. I think he's in Arizona somewhere. He has an assignment there to make some changes in the steak. He's got to choose a steak patriarch. I guess he was struggling, asking the Lord, he was interviewing people, and nothing was really coming to him. And then he was sitting in a meeting, the evening meeting of the state conference, I think Saturday evening meeting or something. he sees this man two-thirds of the way back, and he turns to his state president and says, that is your stake patriarch.

The state president was pretty startled, I guess. He said, that's James Womack. He had been terribly injured in World War II. He'd lost part of an eye. He'd lost his hearing. He'd lost both hands and one arm. President Kimball brings him in and says, you know, you're going to be the stake patriarch. And Brother Womack said,

Brother Kimball, it is my understanding that a patriarch is to place his hands on the head of a person he blesses. As you can see, I have no hands to place on the head of anyone. Anyway, President Kimball sat down in a chair. He said, I'm a pretty short guy. Come on over. See if you're, the stumps of your arms will reach the top of my head. And they did. And President And Kimball said, if you can reach me, you can reach anyone. I will definitely be the shortest person you'll ever give a blessing to. I thought of that when you said, can you think of someone who didn't look super impressive, didn't look the part, but was chosen anyway? In our hearts, we love stories like that. Yeah, I love your question, Jeff. I was thinking of Rudy Rudiger. Everybody

loves the movie Rudy that he was much shorter than everybody else. But what's the old saying? It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the size. of the fight in the dock. He's there every day. He works every day. And I've always loved the mentoring stories of Paul with Timothy. And I love that Ameron would find a 10-year-old boy. That's not something you would expect. And say something you wouldn't say to a lot of 10-year-old boys. I perceive that thou were a sober child and are quick to observe. I suspect he saw things in Mormon that maybe Mormon didn't seem himself. I mean, I think Ameron was probably quick to observe. Gave him a, I want you to watch this people when you're 24 years old. That's another one

that I think of. You saw this congregation and you chose the 10-year-old to give that assignment to you. That's pretty good. I love it. The names that come into my mind when you said, did you have a coach or a teacher who saw you? It'd almost be a disservice to start to list them, because I know I'd miss some, but I had a high school football coach, Coach Jacobson, called him Coach Jake. I'd known him since I was just a kid. I'd run through a wall for that man. To this day, I'd do anything for him because he saw something in me I absolutely did not see in myself. I've heard he occasionally listens to the show. If you're out there, coach, sure love you. And there's been many other names I could talk about. And it fills your heart to think

of those people. Yeah, I think ultimately our Heavenly Father sees something in us too, or we want to be where we are on a more local level. As you guys were giving examples, I mean, I didn't prepare this idea, but our spouses, to some effect, we always use that idiom like, you're married up, but the reality is, I did. I mean, for my wife to be patient with me and to see through a lot of my strange habits or whatever, I'm Canadian. She said she had never dated Canadian. She said she'd never date a Canadian. Now, she's married to one. How'd that happen? Yeah, that's probably wasn't on her list of things she absolutely has to have in a spouse. Jeff, I'm interested in this story because this is so, I don't know exactly how to put this,

but they're making a poor decision in choosing a king, but the Lord has not left them. there's a like oh the lord is helping they're also heading in the wrong direction but who's the guy who's they're gonna go west with the saints or you know the trek west and he said this is not a good idea to go but i'll go with you who was that well Levi savage and i'll go with you and i'll die with you and i hope you all i can and once i saw that 17 miracles movie. I thought, okay, I got a new hero in my hero, Hall of Fame. It's Levi Savage. That's incredible to me. The Lord is saying, this is a bad idea. I'll walk the road with you. I'll be along the way. Jeff, let's keep going. On that point, I think it's interesting, you know,

in chapter 8, God tells Samuel to warn the people what a king will do. I love first, because that testifies that Sam is communicating with God. He's being trained. It highlights how he is a prophet. And then he goes and tells the people, hey, they're going to take your sons at war. They take daughter for service, land, crops, and all this. He goes, he tells the people, he warns them on them, and yet they still want it. This really echoed with me in this one example of my life. When I was coaching in California, so I was the varsity head coach for the girls' high school volleyball team, the team, they were solid. They were good. But we had this one player who played a lot more club and just was an excellent player.

And we were playing this team early in the season and the rest of the team wasn't playing well. I told the girls, okay, time out. The ball is only going to go to Tracy. And so I told the said everything goes through Tracy. And the other players are like, well, what about us? What do we do? So don't worry. That's my decision.

That's where we go. And a couple of girls are like, no, I don't think that's a good idea, coach. It's like, trust me, that's what we're doing. So said her listened, and they only said Tracy. Well, then what does the other team have to do? They only have to block one player. We get destroyed that game. Afterwards, the girls are like, coach, we told you.

And I was like, you're right. You know, I should have listened to you guys. Hindsight's 2020 and grateful they had it because then with this Maple Mountain team when we won state, again, we had a great player. Unbelievable player. He plays for BYU right now. Trey and we could have just said him the whole time. But instead, I remembered that and I thought,

okay, you know what? We need to develop some other players. Everyone needs to contribute. This is a team. It's a team sport with this kid. Johann, he's from South Africa, and he had never played volleyball, and he came and tried out,

and he was just this really great athlete, but he could not play volleyball. But Trey took him under his wing, and he would come early and stay late and come on days when we didn't have practice. and he worked so hard. By the end of the season, he's starting, and he's pounding the ball. The team just rallied around that kind of mentoring,

having someone to mentor and to build. And you see this team come together as a family, and that becomes our motto. And the family stands for, forget about me, I love you. That's what we said in all our cheers. And it really changed the dynamic of the team, the second half of the year we come together. They just had a lot of trust in each other.

You see this in the scriptures where we're warned, but we don't listen. Imagine if we did listen. Imagine what would have happened to Israel had they listened? What would have Saul's life been like? Yeah, I just share that story because it kind of is similar to Martin Harris. Martin Harris goes to Joseph Smith, hey, I need to show these transcripts to my wife and to some friends. I'm investing heavily in you. Can you go ask God?

Right. Help me out. goes and ask God, God gives an answer. No. How many times did he go back and, you know, he's third time and finally God's like, okay, you're not going to listen. So yeah, I guess do what you want. We know the story. They're lost and it didn't help his relationship one single bit in the end anyways, meaning Martin Harris and his wife. There is that kind of buyer's remorse, that cognitive dissonance that we all experience when we're asked to listen and we don't, this idea of pride and humility. When I was thinking about that story, I looked up, Doctor in Covenants 3, and I love this scripture,

says, the works and the designs and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated. Neither can they come to not. Behold thou are Joseph and thou wast chosen to do the work of the Lord, and because of transgression, if thou art not aware, thou will fall. Nevertheless, my work shall go forth. That's not just a testament, but a promise. God's work will go forth. In spite of our pride, in spite of our inability to see clearly and be myopic, it goes forward. I love that promise and that testimony that God gives us in the scriptures, and it's highlighted again in this book in 1st Samuel.

How wonderful. I think that does happen here. They choose kings, and John, you can help me with my facts here. They choose kings. It's going to be a long time until Israel's God. going to take its place back as the people that will bless the whole earth. In fact, we're still rebuilding from this decision and then the scattering that comes after it. And then the millennia, the Lord is waiting. And then 1823, it's time to gather Israel. I think a lot of it starts right here. That tells you how patient the Lord is. He's not saying, hey, don't do this. It's going to take me 2,500 years to come back from this. But okay, okay. I can work with you. I will never force Israel to be Israel. I will walk you along your path.

I have a question for both of you. We want a king so that we may be like all the nations. That desire to fit in or to not stand out, I've been through times in my life where I didn't want to stand out. I wanted to fit right in. I remember there's times where I've told Sarah, I don't want to do that. It'll look terrible if I do that thing, you know, at this whatever a corporate event. That desire to fit in can blind you to consequences. Yeah, I think you're looking at 1 Samuel 8.5 is it? Yeah, 8.5 and then 820. Yeah. Make us a king to judge us like all the nations, kind of a we want to be like them. Everybody else is doing it right and we're not. Maybe that's a hard part to think, we don't want to stand out that way. I like the way you put it.

What did you say? We don't want to stand out or we want to fit in. Yeah. I want to fit in. Kings are trending. Don't you know that, Samuel? Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Yeah.

I really like the ESV to compliment the King James version, you know. And it reads appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, how I was born into the easiest, generation that has ever existed to be raised. I think of my dad. My dad, when he was born, they had an outhouse, they had a pump of water. You compare that to our kids nowadays. They have technology that we couldn't even imagine. And the temptations and the rewiring that happens because of it. And then you have us, those kids that were born in the 70s, raised 80s and 90s, we had indoor plumbing and no technology. So it was this easy time period. And these kids nowadays,

where there's so many competing voices. It's not just appoint us a king. It's, whoa, this is really important. This is really important. This is really important. So when you think about a generation being saved, this generation had to be saved for these latter days. They're way more talented and capable than we are. They have to be because they have to decipher what is important. They have to decipher what is truth. With all the AI, they have to be able to dig deep and find what is truth and say, I don't need a king appointed for me. I know who my king is. My king is my father in heaven. My king and my prince is Jesus Christ. This is an amazing generation where they can clearly state, I don't need a king appointed, he's been appointed, and he's saved me. Yeah. That's beautiful. Jeff, I don't know if you ever went through this as someone in Canada. I'll have students who say that there was a time in their lives where they got tired of waking up at dark 30 in the morning when no one else was doing that.

I'm tired of looking for modest clothes when no one else has to do that. I'm tired of being the odd one where everybody kind of looks at me sideways. I'm tired. I'm tired of that. I come back to this story. I'm tired of being different. Let me be like everybody else. And this was the beginning of the end, or a part of the end, I should say, for Israel. Yeah.

I can't remember who this was. It was either Brad Wilcox or Randall Wright that talked about showing up at school one day. I think it was Brad with a lunchbox, like in high school. Okay. Saying, no, you can't sit at this table unless you have a lunchbox. Somebody did something funny like that. And just completely changed the trend with the whole school. because what people perceive is cool.

I remember kindergarten. This was a big moment. For some reason, it was important to have big feet in my kindergarten class. People were always comparing shoe sizes because you'd take off your shoes to sit on the red carpet and have a story read to you. I was just normal stature, I guess,

and other kids had bigger feet than me at the time. And so I remember going home and coming up with a plan. And my plan was put a little bit of masking tape on my toes, pull on multiple pairs of socks, and show up with big feet. Somehow I managed to get my shoe on at home, but then when it was red carpet time, I was all proud. I had pulled off my kangaroo, my ruse shoes, my Velcro, and pulled them off and just flaunted my big feet, my fake big feet, and sitting there just with those dogs hanging out. And it was time to go out to recess. and I tried to get my feet back in those shoes, I could not get them in. So ultimately, my teacher said, well, you're going to have to stay inside for recess,

so it backfired, which it backfired for the Israelites, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I might have to use that on you next time I might see you. Yeah, yeah. Normal shoe size here. Yeah, yeah.

It happens to all of us. And when it does happen to our kids, because it will, I think it's a very normal thing for a young person to think, I don't want to be different. I want to fit in to come back to this story where the Lord says, let me be your king. On that point, Hank, I'm glad you brought up kids because, you know, if you look at Come Follow Me for our youth and how it's been redesigned to help us be better parents. I remember my daughter coming to me several years ago. She's assigned to Tahiti. She's in the ProMptecy right now.

And she really wanted social media. Since I teach technology, I was very apprehensive. It wasn't something that I was excited about giving her access to Instagram, you know. I kept putting it off. I was like, well, wait to you're 16. And then when she turned 16, she's like, well, what about now? I said, you know, maybe 17 would be a good time, right? Eventually, she came to me and my wife with a PowerPoint, like a Google slide presentation,

with an argument of why it would help her life. slide one, slide two, slide three, slide four. I think about what God tells Samuel to do. He says, go back to the people and warn them and say, okay, you want a king? Here's what's going to happen. I remember this exact thing happened with my daughter. I said, okay, you really want social media. Here are the things that I'm worried about, just so you know.

The constant comparison, the endless scrolling. So I made a list too. I think it was a good list. I don't think I did it the right way. I think I needed to maybe spend some more time thinking about it and talking with Heavenly Father and going to for the strength of youth and then having a better honest conversation with her. But I did appreciate that she listened. And I think that's really what the strength of youth brochure, booklet, training advice us to do as parents is to have a conversation with your youth and to involve God in that conversation. And in the end, it worked out.

as our teenagers are going towards young adulthood, there has to be that conversation where maybe when you were younger, it was, your brain's not fully developed, and so until it is, I'm your brain. But as your daughter, 16, 17, 18, you're saying, okay, here's what I'm worried about. And here's what I hope you would do.

I see the wisdom of that here. There's a certain amount of, because I said so that, and that works for a while. And then you have to start developing PowerPoint. I've never thought of that before, but, boy, does the Lord get out of PowerPoint right here? Okay, slide one. This is going to be the manner of your king. All right.

He's right. He lets him know. I guess the humility of knowing. I think maybe God knows stuff that we don't know. Right. He also is going to say, okay, I will let you. Learn this for yourself. And they do.

And we get to talk about it and act like we're smarter than they were. Yeah. That's funny. My kids are much better than I ever was. And I find myself being critical. I think Sarah sometimes leans over and says, they're five times the people we ever were. I served my mission in the Philippines,

and this is the 80s. This is a long time ago. and things have just grown there tremendously, and I love the Filipinos so much, but people would come to church with a beer t-shirt on or something like that. Guess what we said, thank you for coming.

Because that's all they had. And maybe we have a different expectation for someone else, and maybe the Lord has a different expectation for us, but boy, can we start with acknowledging all the good, as you've talked about, Hank, with your kids, and I need to do that. too. You guys might remember Brother Randall Wright. He taught seminary forever down in Texas and he taught it especially for youth and things like that. He talked about, I think it was a challenge

you gave to a kid in his seminary class to wear these pants called Dickies. It's a brand. I've seen it before. So he had to wear these pants. They were not cool. They were not fashionable. And if I remember Brother Wright's story correctly, Randall Wright, if anybody said anything to him about his pants. Like, why are you wearing those? He had to turn to them and say, because I like him. That was the people, because I like him. And there's a couple of things I remember about the story.

And one of them was how, man, it taught him something about this, be like the nations as far as fashion goes, that was really surprising and sobering to this kid, how much there was a force of you've got to look, this way or dressed this way. That's all we wore on our mission. It was our mission pant because they were so hardy. They were so tough.

Yeah, they're like mailman pants or something. We were, yeah, a biking mission. He set the trend. And yeah, there was a force to that and you wanted to be like the nations or like the other people were dressing. So I guess that you wouldn't stand out. Boy, the Lord, I guess, is asking us, you tie your identity to me, not the other what everybody else is doing.

Easy to understand, harder to do. Tie your identity to me, not everybody else what they're doing. Yeah. And that it's hard to do. Even for adults. Easy to say, hard to do. Sure.

It was pretty depressing when my wife said, we need to update our kitchen. I was like, well, what was that mean? Well, this, these colors are all wrong. Well, look, this covered, you open it, it works. You close it, it works. You know, you need to update it. Everything's just fine here.

When I learned that kitchens also have to follow fashion, that was a hard day. As a religion teacher, I remember a girl came up to me. It was a few years ago, and she said, your ties are way too wide. And I was like, what? You're way too wide. They look, I don't know, you look, it looks kind of frumpy, I think the word was or something. I said, oh, and I remember going home, Sarah, I got to change all my guys. I don't want to be the weird religion teacher with the tie that doesn't trend.

I think we can all understand this. And maybe instead of looking at these people with a judgmental, I can't believe they did that to, I wonder if I'm doing that. Exactly. What's hard for me to believe is it sounds like such a convincing case. He's going to do this. He's going to take your sons. He's going to appoint him for himself. He's going to take your daughters.

He's going to make them bakers. He's going to take your seed, your vineyards. and he has a super convincing case, probably some really impressive PowerPoint slides. And what do they say? No, we want a king so we can be like the nations. He's just in one ear, out the other, picks up speed during the trip,

and they didn't hear a thing. Amazing. I wonder how often I'm like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. Yeah, yeah, I get that. No, I'm going to do it my way. Yeah. Thanks for your help.

Thanks for your input, Lord. And I like Jeff, you've taught us with Martin Harris, with these people and with us, he'll say, okay, I'll go with you and it's going to be a longer journey. Yeah, absolutely. So we just show a little more trust. Jeff, this is fantastic. I knew you would be great.

You have some Dennis Wright scripture knowledge in you. Let's keep going. Should we move on to Chapter 9? Yeah, absolutely. That's a great chapter. Chapter 9, one verse that pops out there that I thought was really interesting was, I will send you a man, anoint him to be captain or ruler over my people Israel. That verse really jumps out at me because here is God saying,

okay, I can see all the thing I'm omniscient. You really want a king? All right, well, then I'm going to send you somebody. Here is a great person. We've all read Saul, tall, handsome, impressive. Hank, you were saying that about John earlier. He is the Saul. Goodlier. Saul looked the part of a king that Israel would accept. Even though he was of a tribe

that might not have been recognized as the tribe to come from, he was tall and handsome and impressive. And he was a hard worker evidently. He was taking care of the donkeys. He's worried about the donkeys. He had to go find them. And he knew where to search. And he knew to go to a prophet. There was prophet Sammy. Why don't you go ask him, his servant says, and he's willing to He had some background of faith and some belief. God sends this great person with lots of potential to him. I love that intro, and it did make me think of a personal story. This comes from my time living in California, and I was teaching part-time while I was

coaching. I was teaching this computer class. On the first day of class, in walks this taller, handsome, impressive young man. Those words that we see about Saul. He was a span of kid, and he's just one of those kids. When you see him, you're like, okay, that is someone that all the kids probably like and respect. And he came up to me, and he gave me this handshake. I couldn't follow along.

And he's like, my name's Greg. I was like, pleasure meet you. I'm so glad to have you in class. He's like, thank you. Thank you for being a teacher. He was just like a really cool kid. And he sat down and other kids were coming in, and it was time to get class started, and they were being loud. and usually as a teacher you try and get their attention.

Instead of me doing it, Greg stood up and say, hey, you guys, listen up. All of a sudden, I deputize him as my helper here. Every day, same thing. He'd come on time. He'd give me this handshake that I never quite figured out, and he'd always look me in the eyes and say, how are you doing, Mr. Wright? I love this kid.

He was just impressive, and all the other kids respected him and liked him too. halfway through the semester, he disappears. And I wondered where he was. He'd never missed class. And I called up his buddy, one of his buddies, AC, and I said, AC, come here. I said, hey, where's Greg? And he just shook his head.

He's like, don't worry about it. And I said, I am worried about it. And he said, don't worry about it. And he turned him to sat down. So a couple days go by, and I'm worried. He didn't come back. So I decided to drive to his house. I look up his address. No one's there. I didn't know what to do. And then, you know, the next week

rolls around and he shows up. And he's got a hoodie on, pulled over his head. It doesn't come up to me. He goes right to his computer, his desk. He sits down and has his head down. And I was like, whoa, okay, what's going on? A little dark cloud kind of over him. So I try to go to him. And then we had like a no-huddy policy at the school. I said, hey, Greg, you know the road. You got to pull your hood down. And he shook his head. He didn't say any words to me. I said, hey, Greg, are you doing all right? You got to take the hood down. So he slowly pulls his hood back. And he was visibly beaten, bruised. And so I said, hey, are you okay? And you just shook his head. And he just said, leave me alone. So I went back, sat down. And I called up AC again. And I called up AC again.

And I said, AC, what's going on there? And AC said, I told you to leave it alone. I said, hey, you know, what's going on? And he said, can't you see? Can't you see what happened? Are you so blind? And I said, yeah, I guess. I guess I am.

He said, well, he was jumped in. And I guess, you know, that's the, he had jumped into a gang. And he had to get beat up to make it into gang. He's just infrequent at school then. He would never come and say, hi. didn't help with the class and his grades fell off and I was just worried about him and then he disappears completely and I don't see him again for the rest of the school year and his school year comes and I'm just packing up and all the kids are gone and it's the last day and it's you know

maybe four o'clock I'm ready to leave and who walks in Greg walks in and he looks like his old self He comes in. He gives me the handshake. He says to me, hey, I just want you to know I'm out. I ran away. I ran away to Long Beach. I'm living with some cousins. And he said that life was not for me. He looked at me and he said, I got to tell you something. Thank you. Thank you for believing in me, knowing that this was not. for me. Unlike Saul, who really falls into the trap of the world, this young man, he rose above the trials of the day, the temptation to fit in. Oh, thanks, Jeff. Thank you. I've spent my life with young people. Not a lot of those stories have happy endings. That's beautiful that he comes out of that. Because Saul doesn't. You said earlier,

What could have Saul's life been like? It's so heartbreaking to me that Israel wants to fit in, and in their fitting in, they take a good kid out of where he probably would have just lived his whole life. They make him a king, and they watch him nose dive, and they just get another one. Let's just go pick someone else. John, you've heard me say this before. I think we do this as a culture. We find a singer out of some small town that we love. We raise them up and we watch their life nosedive and we just go get another one.

We make them a king basically or we make them a star. Some stories turn around, but usually we watch them nosedive into drugs and problems and then rehabped and then we go get another one. This is an example of that. What could have his life been like? Saul's almost as much a victim of this as anyone else. So sad. Well, Hank and Jeff, choosing a king for Israel. Got President Nelson in my head. Israel means let God prevail or be willing to let God prevail. Here they weren't. We want a king. We're not going to let you prevail.

We're going to go get a king and look what's happening. This is kind of random, but it makes me really think about Article of Faith number five. I don't know if I'll quote it exactly right, but we believe a man must be called of God by prophecy and by the laying out of hand by those who are in authority to preach the gospel and ministering in the ordinances. Imagine if that was the method. We not just called people to church callings and so forth, but that we looked to the world, right? Or we say, okay, God, you are a king. It's help us understand.

This scares me. When I go to look for other kings, and I do it in different ways in my life, I know I go to social media or sports, maybe some influencers, that's who I'm going to follow. I really like this person. I'm going to listen to them. There is an opportunity cost where the Lord says, you have rejected me. You do not want me to reign over you. What's the theme for the youth this year? walk with me.

It's not walk with social media influencers. It's walk with me. Yeah, and when we choose an influencer or any other star or athlete, whatever it may be, when we choose them as our king, we automatically reject our heavenly king. Jeff, this is fantastic so far. Let's keep going. When people are selected, sometimes you're a little bit hesitant about

accepting the call. And we see that with Saul. I think he was a little bit surprised. He knew he was tall, but he also knew he was from the tribe of Benjamin. So he was a little self-conscious about himself. Maybe the family heritage, or maybe he just wasn't well spoken at first. Who knows? Sometimes that happens when we receive callings in the church. You're called to serve and you think, well, I don't know if I could do this. You feel maybe some of that imposter syndrome, but your idea where John that you brought up, let God prevail. Sometimes that show of faith is even in ourselves. And I realize that there's some issues of timing. Sometimes you extend a call on it, the timing isn't right. But even that, there's some beauty in that. I remember recently we were extending a call, and the timing wasn't right for this

individual. They wanted to say yes, but their life was really, really busy. They felt bad. And I said, don't feel bad. I think a lot of times when we extend calls, it's just so you know that God's sees you. And I think that's really important for people understand is God is aware of you, and he wants us to serve and consecrate. But at the same time, in regards to callings, maybe the timing's not right, but he does still recognize your talents and your abilities and your willingness. And people should know that God sees you, and he's grateful for your willingness to serve. And in this case of Saul, maybe it was hard to say, I'm going to be the king. This is a hard to, I'm going to be the first king after these judges.

Maybe he was pretty knowledgeable and thought, this is going to be disrupting to my life. Maybe he was, we should give him a little more credit in this early part of his life. How do you maintain that type of humility? He says, I'm nobody. Be confident in yourself. Move forward. But man, he loses this humility. I sometimes bookend that reference. You just read for Samuel 921, who is,

am I throw a cross-reference in there. First Samuel 1818, where you can say, okay, here's how he started. Here's how it ends. He's so upset because women are saying Saul hath slain his thousands, but David, his 10,000s. Saul is, it says he was very wroth and saying, and the saying displeased him saying, they talk about David in his 10,000s, and to me they have ascribed but thousands. What happened to this guy? I'm just a Benjaminite. The fact that we are reading this, this is why it's so nice, like Jeff said,

to be raised in the scriptures and seen this, because you've seen this lesson play out so many times before. If I start getting all full of myself, the Lord can do anything he wants, and he has a way of humbling people. These scriptures that we all love, how many stories are there of somebody that takes themselves away? too seriously, and here's the Lord saying,

you've got to consider yourself fools before God in the Book of Mormon. In chapter 15, we're going to hear Samuel say, when that was little in thine own sight, and somehow he became big in his own sight. One time Hank and Jeff, I'm watching a video called Faith of an Observer about Hugh Nibbley, that I can't remember understood or spoke or could read 33 languages, was it?

And at the end of the video, I know, He's walking up to these hieroglyphics in Egypt, just reading them. Like we would read a chalkboard. He's like, yeah, the prince of the two lands, he'll come down. And he jumps away from the cameraman, the camera dude's like, where is he going? It's so funny because he didn't care about accolades and stuff. At the end of this video, Hugh Nibbley says, you know, none of us is very smart. None of us know very much.

But the thing the angels envy us for is we can forgive and we can repent. That was you nibbly. We love these stories, but boy, learn the lesson that stay little in your own sight. If God gives you a gift or if you have gifts, he can take it away. Samuel recognizes that when he said, remember when you were little in your own sight? You were better back then. I liked you more back then. I remember President Uchtorf said there's a reason that almost every lesson goes back to the 121st section of the doctor-in-government.

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men. As soon as they get a little thorny, and I love this, as they suppose. As they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Let's move to chapter 10. There's really interesting twist to the story, I think. When we look at chapter 10, as I studied it, you know, Saul is chosen by God, not just the people, because he's anointed. I think verse 9 is very poignant.

In the King James Version, we read, God changed Saul's heart. And all these signs were fulfilled that day. In another way, God gave him another heart, I guess we should read it as. It's a big deal. I teach a material science class where we do plastics and metals, some of the fun projects that we build skis in that class. I love snow skiing. And so I wanted to change how the class had been taught traditionally.

And I decided, well, let's make skis. You know, we're in Utah. That'd be something unique. It brings in design elements. We teach the engineering design process. And the students research the perfect ski for them, for their height, their weight, their style of skiing, or for someone that they want to give the ski to. When you're working with plastics and metals, when you're making skis, if we use a lot of form and jigs and fixtures.

And what you're trying to do is you're trying to form the plastic into the shape that you need, right? And so when you're building skis, you'll have a Baltic Birch core. That's what we use. And then you're going to use a lot of fiberglass on top of the ski. You have a P-Tex, which is like a polyplastic on the bottom. We've created an aluminum jig that you put it in. And then we'll have a vacuum that once you put all your layers of resin and fiberglass, it sucks it all together. So you're really molding this to be a certain style that you designed to be built.

And what we see in chapter 10 what's happening to Saul is that his heart is being changed. Saul really has good intention early in his career. He's trying to follow the prophet. I love that we see that his heart was changed. As a good leader, you're looking to the people, and I'm sure he was looking to the people. I guess that's kind of my intro, is this. idea that God, in spite of us, he'll put us in contexts where we can be molded. And a lot of times, callings do that for us.

Was it President Hinckley? I don't know. He said every new member needs three things, and one of those three things was a calling. Callings help us do that. And we have callings in all parts of our life. A calling as a father, as a husband, or mother, or as a daughter, as a son. These are all callings. You get callings in church, too.

but if you allow yourself with humility and through humility to be kind of formed, I think you can become better than what you thought you could be. That apprehension that Saul initially had, allowing himself to follow Samuel the Prophet, he was starting to be formed into something that was great initially. It was on its way, and you have high hopes for him in these chapters. Yeah, high hope. One of our other projects actually that you say that,

is in the metal section, we were building drift trikes. We teach the students about different types of welding, and then they're given a project, and one of the projects we decided to build was drift trikes, and then donate them to kids. And a drift rike, if you remember big wheels back in the 80s, where you sit low and they would, you know, you could skit out. Students, they're learning to weld, and they're bending metal,

and they're taking apart a bike and using the parts to Frankenstein and weld up this drift rite. I mean, that takes a lot of heat. When you're welding, I mean, you're putting a high volume of heat to break down that initial layer using a midwelder, for example. You're changing it into something greater. There's a lot of heat and pressure that you're using to form these materials. And certainly there was heat and pressure on Saul as a new king. They just had judges for 300 years at least. So there was heat and pressure put on him. Luckily, he had a profit. that he could follow, that he could listen to. I like watching my students put heat and pressure to make these drift tracks or whatever they make, and it doesn't always turn out perfect. What's nice about metal is you can go back

and you can add heat again and re-bend it and re-weld it. There's a great parallel to repentance and the grace of God, which you see a little bit of that come up with Saul. He received some grace, and he had some opportunity to repent. Did he take all the opportunities? think he took it all, but it was offered. I think that's a nice parallel that in my classes, we do talk about that. We talk about the power of repentance and grace and how that ties into the material science of the materials that we're working with. That's great. At a place like

BYU, you can bear your testimony over your plastic fiberglass skis. Right, yeah. You don't have to try them out, Hank. They're good. They're the best skis you can ride. You can come and you can tell me the best key for me. Could you make one that I never fall down? Could you, could you do that? Yeah, okay, that might be a sled. Okay, yeah. All right, I'll take it. One of my favorite moments is 1st Samuel chapter 10, verse 22, where is the new king?

He's hiding. I don't know. Let me go find him. They inquired of the Lord further if the man should yet come thither, and the Lord answered, Behold, he hath hit himself among the stuff. Among the stuff. He really does not want to be king. You're going to have to put up with me here.

There was a sacrament meeting that was about to begin. A mother could not find her son anywhere. She searched and searched. Finally located him sitting outside on the curb with his head and his hands. She said, son, we have to go in now. Sacrament's about to start. He said, Mom, I can't go in there. Nobody likes me.

No one will talk to me. She said, son, but you have to go in, you're the bishop. I thought that's where you're going. Jeff, I know you remember the state presidency. Did that ever make you want to go hide? Right? When they said, hey, by the way. Yeah, it was a little overwhelming when you receive the call, right?

But I don't think it was any more overwhelming than when you're a deacon and you're first asked to pass the sacrament and you're nervous. Yeah. I was thinking about this a little bit about a friend of mine, if I can share a story. He's one of my best friends. His name's Brian Martin. Years ago when we moved from California here to Utah, we moved in. We bought this old house in South Provo, and I was restoring it.

While we were living there that first month, a guy moved into the house next to us. It was his house. He had just got out of prison and come home. And he was on his front porch and he was smoking. You know, I looked over and I thought, all right, this is my new neighbor. So I said, hello, how's it going? He's a little gruff. We're about the same age.

Little did I know that he would become one of my best friends. And how it happened, it aligns here with Saul. We are anointed as sons and daughters of God. And this was my chance to be a good friend and to remind this buddy of mine that he what was the son of God. Really, it was my son that broke down the berry. He was just a little kid, maybe three or four, and he'd go over every day and say, hey, Brian,

you want to mow your lawn? And he'd have his Fisherpriced mower, and he'd just walk him back and forth on his lawn. Brian then would get out his mower, and they'd mow together, and then they'd go watch Elf. They must have watched Elf 50 times that year. He was just such a great guy, and we just became good friends.

Every day I'd go over and talk to Brian, and just talk about life and what he had been through. Eventually, I say, hey, do you want to go to church this Sunday with us? Just sit with us? No pressure, but I'm telling you, it makes me a better man. He said, sure. And so he came to church. He was born in the church, but he hadn't been back for a long time.

He lived a rough life, obviously, if he was getting out of prison. It was just this beautiful relationship over the next couple of years. eventually he received the priesthood. And here you have a 40-plus guy going to pass the sacrament for his first time. What I love is in verse 6, the spirit turned him into another man. He was changed.

Brian was changed, just as Saul was changed, as we talked over the years. And I said, well, what's next for you? And he said, I'd love to be married and be sealed in the temple. I know that's important. I'd love to make that covenant. And I think at first he was like Saul. He hid. He was scared of these covenants. He was scared of coming back to church.

In fact, passing the sacrament as a 40-year-old, that's a little nerving maybe. Having this hope to be sealed in the temple, not having any prospects, having a hard time finding a job because of his life up to that point. But he prayed about it, and I remember fasting with him. and then he met someone. He taught her the gospel and baptized her. It was just this unbelievable miracle I saw unfolding, and then they get married, and they get sealed in the temple. It was just this unbelievable experience,

and it ends, though, rather abruptly. He develops cancer, gets a brain tumor. I remember sitting at lunch with him. I said, I'm so sorry. And he said, in some ways I am, because I am now who I always wanted to be. But, and I remember he also said this to me, he said, but I am so happy I can look my father in heaven in the eyes and say thank you. That I can look to my Savior and say thank you.

And it's a big deal that I can look them in the eyes and say, I'm better now. I love that verse. The spirit can change us. We highlight a lot of time about how Saul changes in the negative, but he changed to something great at one time. And I think we all experience that. We have this excitement about the gospel when we join the church or these spikes of spiritual highlights. And I think we have to be careful that we don't forget those, that we hold on to them dearly. What happens with Saul is he forgets. He forgets that he was an anointed king. He was set apart to do something great. Spirit did change him. But just as the spirit can change us, Satan is strong, and temptation is strong. John wears that doctrine covenants, the wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth.

You had it, and you can keep it. Saul could have kept it. I love that story. Jeff, you could have just said, he and I don't have a lot in common, and then just kind of lived your lives next door neighbors, but not really ever talking. I love that you're like, you know what?

This is my neighbor. It's going to be fun. I'm going to go over and say hi. Never knowing that that could be such a story, such a friendship. Well, I think there's another verse in there that maybe applies to that. It said something along the lines

that the spirit rushed upon him. That's there for all of us. The spirit can rush on us. One of it is just trying to be Christian, trying to see your fellow man as God sees them. When we do that, it can rush on us. I just pray that it happens a little more often in my life

because it is unbelievable to feel that and just to know that he's there. Coming up in part two. I'm digging through. The spirit comes to me and it says, don't do this. I was like, don't do this. We've been doing this for years and I love doing this. I'm doing this. So I keep digging.

The spirit says clearly to me. And I don't feel the spirit strongly like this hardly ever. It says don't do this.