followHIM - Doctrine & Covenants 3-5 Part 2 • Prof. Robert Eaton • January 27-February 2 • Come Follow Me
Episode Date: January 22, 2025Professor Rob Eaton examines Doctrine and Covenants 4 and the Lord’s power given to those who ask and serve others.SHOW NOTES/TRANSCRIPTSEnglish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC205ENFrench: https://...tinyurl.com/podcastDC205FRGerman: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC205DEPortuguese: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC205PTSpanish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC205ESYOUTUBEhttps://youtu.be/ame2rocgec4ALL EPISODES/SHOW NOTESfollowHIM website: https://www.followHIMpodcast.comFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookWEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletterSOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE00:00 - Part 2 - Prof. Rob Eaton00:08 D&C 5:11-28 - Martin needs to humble himself03:10 Witnesses and Undeniable04:00 D&C 5:7 - Intellectual evidence isn’t enough05:56 A What If Exercise8:37 Salvation dependent on valiant testimony10:45 D&C 5:34 - Lord prepares a way11:44 Oliver Cowdery’s backstory13:42 D&C 4:1 - Gathering Israel’s importance15:55 D&C 4:2 - Embark19:16 Football and doing things part way22:29 Anxiously engaged without formal assignment26:33 D&C 4:3 - Motives in God’s economy29:09 Remembering the message, not the messenger33:44 Seek to bless, not impress37:27 Serving with love as a teenager39:46 D&C 4:4 - Setting goals based on agency43:37 D&C 4 testifies of Joseph as a prophet of God45:12 D&C 4:5-6 - Who we are and why we serve47:39 Helping young missionaries50:25 Serving under protest52:07 How to serve as Mission Leaders56:09 Seek and expect miracles57:32 Asking and receiving miracles1:00:58 Professor Eaton shares his testimony of Jesus Christ and the Restoration1:05:48 End of Part 2 - Prof. Rob EatonThanks 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 NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsAmelia Kabwika : Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to part two with Dr. Rob Eaton, Doctrine and Covenants, sections three through five.
I was reading this as a one-time extraordinary event, but eight months later, when Martin then
goes to Harmony and now has an even more audacious ask. Really, he's now saying,
I'd like to see the plates. His wife's brought a fraud trial against Joseph. He'd like to see
the plates before he was just asking to borrow the manuscript for a while. On section five verse 21, this is
apparently an ongoing process for Joseph Smith that he's not yet completed eight months later.
And similarly, Martin's made progress and is told conditionally he can be one of these three
witnesses if he repents. So verses 11 through 13 and 18.
John, would you read those for us? 11 through 13 and I'll read 18.
In section 5 now. 11 through 13. Yeah.
And in addition to your testimony, the testimony
of three of my servants whom I shall call and ordain
unto whom I will show these things and they shall go forth with my words that are given through you.
Yea, they shall know of a surety that these things are true, for from heaven will I declare it unto them.
I will give them power that they may behold and view these things as they are. And their testimony shall also go forth unto the condemnation of this generation, that's
verse 18, if they harden their hearts against them.
But then before being able to do that, Martin's told he's got more humbling to do.
In verse 24, he exalts himself and does not humble himself sufficiently before me.
But if he will bow down before me and humble himself in mighty prayer and faith in the
sincerity of his heart, then will I grant unto him a view of the things which he desires
to see and oh, what a view he gets."
And then verse 28, and now except he humble himself, and this is back to what Hank was
just saying, and acknowledge unto me the things that he has done which are wrong.
So he couldn't say, yeah, but I'm the victim here.
Look, I was stuck in this terrible situation.
In fact, both Martin and Joseph could have said, I'm the victim here.
But the Lord's saying, you need to own up, you need to acknowledge what you did that
was wrong.
Your covenant did do something, you need to own up, you need to acknowledge what you did that was wrong. Your covenant did to do something, you broke that covenant.
And then continuing in verse 28, and covenant with me that he will keep my commandments
and exercise faith in me.
Behold, I say to him, he shall have no such views.
As you're talking, I keep replaying through my mind the scene from the movie Witnesses.
They did such a good job of showing this scene.
They're all in there waiting
to eat and Martin Harris is outside by the fence like you described and he doesn't want to come in
and the way they portrayed that I thought was really, really well done. You can get witnesses
on Living Scriptures, I think it's on Amazon Prime too, and you can watch that depiction of that
moment where Martin comes in to eat and finally
tells them, I've lost my soul. I've lost the manuscript. I watched witnesses in preparation
for this, thoroughly enjoyed it and thought provoking. I also had previously listened,
just coincidentally to Susan East Black's book, Undeniable, a wonderful concise overview of the
process of the three witnesses and the lives of each
of them.
I learned things I didn't know.
Very well done.
As we focus on their lives, as everyone knows, it's interesting that each of the three leaves
the church and yet remains true to their testimony in the Book of Mormon.
Then Elder Oaks in his talk, Witness, said, all three went their separate ways with no
common interest to support a
collusive effort, yet to the end of their lives, periods ranging from 12 to 50 years
after their excommunications, not one of these witnesses deviated from his published testimony
or said anything that cast any shadow on its truthfulness.
We know that intellectual evidence alone is not going to be enough to change people's
minds.
In fact, in verse seven of section five, the Lord tells him, Joseph, if he showed people
the plates themselves, it wouldn't convince the hard-hearted.
And we know from 1 Corinthians chapter two, Paul's marvelous teachings that it's only
through the spirit that we gain a lasting witness of spiritual truths.
Elder Bednar said, a witness of truth by the power of the Holy
Ghost that we invite into our soul produces a spiritual knowledge and illumination, a conviction
more sure, more powerful, and more enduring than can be received through seeing, hearing, touching,
or rational argument alone. Sort of like spiritual oatmeal, stuff that stays with you is that conviction born of the Spirit. But that said,
the Lord sees the witnesses' testimonies as playing a role, maybe giving people an intellectual reason to pause and take this story seriously and then undertake the work that will be necessary
for them to eventually receive that spiritual witness, because he continues to have us publish
the testimonies
of the three and eight witnesses with the Book of Mormon wherever it's published.
We're looking back a couple of hundred years, but think about the communities right then
with those witnesses, the three and the eight, that guy that lives down the street, how much
more powerful that could be that when they're right there and they're among you in your
neighborhood, I've always thought about at the time what that meant for them. I love the phrase that
Alma uses if you will give place
Love those two words and I feel like maybe
Read these witnesses of the three and of the eight read how they're different
I'm sure we'll be talking more about that. And if that can allow you to give place,
to go from I doubt it to I wonder, oh, that little step,
from I doubt to I wonder, oh, can give place.
To anyone listening who's not yet studied the Book of Mormon
and taken it seriously, we would extend that invitation.
Do this what if exercise.
Just open your mind and heart enough to contemplate
the possibility that there were actually plates.
And then study the Book of Mormon seriously.
And ask yourself, which seems more likely
that the young Joseph Smith with so limited education
in such a short period of time about 66 working days produced this
extraordinary work and lied about how he did it or that you're actually reading the words of Nephi and Jacob
Mormon and Alma and Moroni see which feels more plausible to you and then
Take that answer up the mountain if you will to the Lord and ask that I get it right
And when you ask in faith in real intent Take that answer up the mountain, if you will, to the Lord and ask that I get it right.
And when you ask in faith, in real intent, through the power of the Holy Ghost,
Moroni promises us, you can come to know the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.
Even as Martin learned it for himself, even though we won't get the angels,
we'll know through the Spirit just as surely of its truthfulness.
John, do you remember our episode with Joe Spencer on Seguni Phi 27?
It can't be about the book. It has to be about the words of the book.
So good.
We'll link that in our show notes, too.
There's a lot of extras you could go to this week, but that episode with Dr. Spencer really changed the way I
see, hey, why can't we show the plates to everybody?
Because it's not about the book. It's about the words of the book.
The plates might convince you, but the words convert you.
And speaking of the designs of God long term, right? Who is 2 Nephi 27 quoting Isaiah,
who saw a book that was sealed and that would be spoken upon the
housetops. So John you've already talked some about the rest of the story with
Martin Harris's life but let me just kind of walk through that quickly. He and
Joseph respond again well to some pretty stern rebukes from the Lord and that
allows Martin to get
this privilege three months later to become one of the three witnesses and
again I love how that's depicted in the film, Witnesses. August 1829 he mortgages
his farm which he later has to sell to finance the publication of the Book of
Mormon. In June 1830 he and his wife separate never reuniting. If Martin fears he might lose his wife, it turns out it's a well-placed fear.
He makes an extraordinary sacrifice to be true to what God's asked him to do here at
the cost of his marriage.
In 1835, he and two other witnesses get to select and ordain the men who eventually become
the quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
But in 1837, he has a falling out with Joseph over the failure of the Kirtland
Safety Society and he's excommunicated. And then he bounces from the Shakers to
the Strangites to the Church of Christ. He serves as the caretaker of the
Kirtland Temple for years. Something else we should be indebted to him for. And
then finally after multiple invitations in 1870, he joins the saints
again in Utah, is baptized again, dies in 1875, and like the other two witnesses, his dying words
are literally his testimony of the Book of Mormon. It's as if they feel their salvation hinges
on being valiant witnesses. Elder Cook has suggested that
maybe ours does too, not of the Book of Mormon, but in terms of being witnesses
of Christ. He taught in all things we should remember that being valiant in
the testimony of Jesus, quoting doctrine and Covenants 76, is the great dividing
test between the celestial and terrestrial kingdoms.
We want to be found on the celestial side of that divide.
God has high expectations for all of His servants,
but especially those He trusts with sacred responsibilities.
Unfortunately, He's not just just, but He's also merciful.
So when we sin, if we then repents and receive divine correction,
well, he blesses us with second and third chances
and even greater opportunities.
And the Savior invites all of us who follow him
to stand like Joseph as witnesses,
to stand as witnesses of Christ and his atoning sacrifice
and his teachings of Heavenly Father and his plan
and his mercy of the Father and his plan and his mercy of the restoration and
of living prophets.
It's a privilege, as it was for Martin Harris to stand as a witness of the Book of Mormon
for all of us who follow Jesus Christ to stand as his witnesses.
But doing that requires us to care more about what God thinks of us than what anyone else
thinks of us than what anyone else thinks of us. Rob, one thing I find interesting at the end of section five is the Lord says in verse
34, yes, we're going to halt here for a portion of time.
I will provide means whereby you can accomplish the thing which I have commanded thee.
The Lord has already put the process with Oliver Cowdery in place.
I have another way we're gonna do this. Yes,
you send and don't worry, I will provide ways for my work to go forward. It's gonna be okay.
You know, when you think of that, along with John talking about how Isaiah was inspired centuries
earlier to do this, Mormon was inspired to translate and include first and second Nephi
for a wise purpose he knew not.
It reminds me of something President Eyring said often when I interviewed him for his
biography.
God plays infinite dimensional chess.
We see that going on here.
It's almost like the designs of God can't be frustrated or something.
So speaking of Oliver Cowdery, it's interesting to know his backstory and how he ends up in
Harmony, Pennsylvania, literally at the prophet's doorstep.
Joseph Smith Sr., who is an interesting character in church history.
Let's just say his resume looks quite different than that of the current members of the first
presidency in Quorum of the Twelve.
He was not a world-class heart surgeon or jurist or academic leader.
He struggled to make ends meet as a farmer.
And yet, I love him then as sort of a placeholder for all of us in the church as he receives
the revelation that becomes Section 4.
He's got a question about what his role is in whatever it is that's unfolding.
In February of 1828, he travels over 120 miles to Harmony to see his son and to get the Lord's direction.
Now, at the time, he and his wife had a border in their home who'd been peppering them with questions about Joseph and the plates.
And frankly, it had not gone well when they talked publicly about those things in the past,
and they were understandably gun shy. They didn't give him a lot of information.
But after receiving the revelation that we now know as section four,
Joseph Smith Sr. returns home and opens up.
And apparently he and Lucy open up and testify so effectively
that this young border gets a spiritual witness of his own so strong that it
impels him to make that trip of over 120 miles to Harmony, Pennsylvania and that
is how Oliver Cowdery ends up on Joseph's store. Joseph Smith Sr. then
becomes in effect one of this dispensation's first member missionaries.
And that's one of the main points I want to make with this section is while it is marvelous for
full-time missionaries, it's great for all of us sharing the gospel. Frankly, it's a charter
for any of us who want to serve in the Kingdom of God. Like you said, this was not a missionary
section originally. There is no
church. There is no missionary service. Yeah, there were no callings, let alone name tags.
The church has not yet been organized. And so I think this is a sweet but important example of how
we get more out of this text, more out of this revelation, when we understand its backstory.
This was not just something delivered to missionaries in the MTC, though it is certainly relevant
for them.
Robert, can we go verse by verse?
Let's do it.
John, would you start with reading verse one?
Absolutely.
Now behold, a marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men.
President Nelson has taught there is nothing happening on this earth right now
that is more important than that, referring to the gathering of Israel on both sides of the veil.
There is nothing of greater consequence, absolutely nothing.
My wife and I love serving as mission leaders, but it's exhausting.
Someone asked us just a few days after we'd gotten home, do you miss it? And I thought, have you run a marathon? Five minutes, 10 minutes afterwards,
you're not eager to go run the marathon again, even though you're so glad you did it. But if
you gave it your all, you're emotionally spent. Sometimes even in the middle of it,
I found myself maybe too consumed by the most challenging aspects of the call.
But one Sunday, I had just a sweet day where I got to use a little bit of my German.
I got to connect with a woman whose husband was not yet a member but had faithfully come
to church for years, by the way, whose baptism we attended seven years after that Sunday.
Wow.
It was a long time.
I was speaking in sacrament.
I felt blessed and guided by the Spirit.
And the Spirit whispered to me
This was just a few months past the halfway point of our mission
This is your dream calling. What are you whining about?
Lean into the good parts and that was really
helpful transformative counsel for me to focus on the joy that comes from serving in God's kingdom and not focus on
Maybe the most difficult and emotionally
challenging aspects of the call. Yeah, we get tired in the work because we're mortals, but we
don't have to get tired of the work. Verse two, let me read the first part of it. We'll pause there
because I want to hear what John has to say about embarking. Therefore, oh ye that embark in the
service of God. John, the reason
you know so much about this verse is because you wrote a great talk, I've
listened to it many times, on wasn't it the youth theme four years ago? Yeah and
that's when I discovered just some interesting stuff. First of all, embark
like I said, only appears once in the entire standard works. You might find it in a synopsis,
the italicized text before a chapter, but in the actual text of the scriptures one time. When I
looked it up on dictionary.com it said something like to board a ship or aircraft or vehicle as
for a journey. And I laughed out loud because I thought you can't sort of embark. If you sort of get on an airplane and it leaves,
this can cause great physical discomfort. You can't sort of get on a ship and leave.
It kind of has that both feet in type feeling to it. If you're gonna embark, embark, and when you keep going,
see that you serve Him with all your heart, embark, embark, and when you keep going, see that you serve Him with all
your heart, might, mind, and strength. I mean, this sounds like get both feet in, that you may
stand blameless before God at the last day. John, I've heard this talk many times. I want everybody
to hear about halfway Harv. Okay. There were a couple of boys, they were neighbors named Marvin and Harvey or Marvin Harv and Marvin
Went to bed one night got a full night's sleep got up
Got showered got fully dressed had a full breakfast said to his mom
I love you with all my heart went off to school where he went to all of his classes had a full lunch
Went to football practice afterwards where he was a fullback, came home, had a full
dinner, read his scriptures and went to sleep. Now his neighbor Harvey, his friends called him
halfway Harv because he seemed to do everything halfway. He got up one morning still kind of
half asleep after half a night's sleep, got half dressed, think about that, okay that's long enough,
made half his breakfast, said to his
mom, I love you with half my heart, we don't know how that turned out.
He went halfway to the bus stop, he said to the bus driver, can't you meet me halfway?
And then he went to half of his classes, he had half of his lunch, he went to football
practice afterwards where he was a halfback, and then he went halfway home, ate half his
dinner, read half his scripture, said half a prayer and fell half asleep.
Now if you think that's a strange story, you don't know the half of it. You should meet his auntie almost. We went to see her once, but we only got halfway there. So anyway,
I want to read the scripture the way halfway Harv might read it. Therefore, oh ye that halfway
embark in the service of God, see
that ye serve him with half your heart, half your might, half your mind, and half
your strength. Here's the scary part, that ye may stand half blameless before
God at the last day. You read it that way, it's just like, eww, isn't it? Because at
first it sounds kind of overwhelming. Oh, your heart might mind a strength, but
when you read it that halfway part, you could kind
of go, yeah, I don't want to do that either.
We don't want to be halfway half, so we want to embark.
You know, John, you're the half back and full back thing reminds me of seventh grade football.
I'm a small guy.
I was the smallest guy on the seventh grade football team.
We didn't have enough seventh graders, so we scrimmaged with the eighth graders. And at that
time of life when people are growing, the eighth graders were bigger. And the biggest eighth
grader was Eugene Tufts. And we did this drill where we lined up in single file lines and squared
off with the guy at the head of each line, about 10 feet away from each other. They didn't even
designate one line as offense
and one as defense.
They just said, ready, set, you got down in your stance.
They blew the whistle and you ran into each other.
But that's what we did.
So we were lining up to run into each other.
As I'm in the line, I've got one thought,
which is anybody but Eugene Tufts, please not Eugene Tufts.
He was the biggest, strongest eighth grader. I get up there sure enough. It's Eugene
I started thinking this through in my seventh grade mind and I think maybe if I run it kind of half-speed
It won't hurt as much. Oh
I don't understand the laws of physics
But it hurt both on the impact with Eugene, and then after I went through the air,
the impact on my backside as I hit the ground.
And then to rub salt in the wound,
the coach comes, stands over me, and yells at me,
and makes me run a lap.
I'm thinking, Eugene, hurt me.
Why are you yelling at him?
Why are you yelling at me?
But he was yelling at me,
not because I wasn't big enough or strong enough,
but because I wasn't brave enough or strong enough, but because I wasn't
brave enough, because I went halfway in. In fact, I learned a strange principle and I don't know the
physics of it, but at least on defense, no, even on offense. When you initiated the contact,
it hurt less. When I went all in as a football player, it was more enjoyable and the same was
true for our full-time missionaries. Some, not many in our
mission and it didn't last very long, they changed quickly. But some seemed to have the goal of doing
as little work as possible without getting in trouble. And their missions actually ended up
being more painful for them during that period than once they embarked and went all in and said,
I'm going to serve God with everything I've got. There's
far more joy and far greater blessings. In fact, if I were to chart out blessings in effort,
you might be tempted to think it's a straight line graph that if you're 75% obedient, you get 75% of
the blessings. And this is not doctrine. This is just my own take and my own experience. But I think
it will be a curved graph where a disproportionate number of God's blessings come as we approach that end of the spectrum.
Not where we're perfect, but where we go all in, where we strive to serve Him with all
our heart, mind, and strength. There are an inordinate number of blessings that come to
us once we really do that.
I know this doesn't apply only to full-time missionaries, but that is
what I think of because I remember it seems like those that were able to get both feet
in the mission field, actually it was easier when they went home to say, what's next? Then
if you were only halfway there and if you're listening and you're thinking, I'm halfway here, thou art still chosen. Just get your other foot in, be a fullback.
Again, Joseph Smith Sr. gets this counsel and no calling. Now, I love callings. They're a
distinctively powerful feature of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They give us
focus and cause us to stretch and do good and become good in ways we otherwise would not.
I would never voluntarily have gone on a camp out with 12 and 13 year olds without a calling that led me to do that.
And I would never have developed some of the patience I hope I've developed along the way and the love actually for those young men that I did.
Maybe one danger in the church culturally of callings is that we can become too dependent
upon them for our spiritual growth.
And that's our spiritual growth might just track our calling.
So if it's a really soul stretching time consuming calling, we get growth.
But when we're released, then we sort of retire and don't do much.
The Savior asks his followers to be anxiously engaged in a good cause, even without formal
assignments.
My father taught journalism for his career at Green River Community College, and in the
summer, sometimes he worked as a reporter, and at least on one occasion, he worked as
a freelance reporter.
So that meant he got no salary.
He had to go find stories on his own rather than just doing what the editor assigned him
to do, and then he would sell those stories to a newspaper.
My wife and I had talked with making this transition from high level of scaffolding
that full-time missionaries have to very little scaffolding.
The churches help provide more, and I'm so grateful for it, for those young men and young
women as they return home.
But we talked about them continuing to make the cause of Christ
their cause and finding ways to engage in that, whether or not they had callings that required
them to do so. So when we got home, we focused on freelancing for God. And we've strived to pray
daily for opportunities to be instruments in the hands of the Lord, regardless of what calling we
had. During a period where I've had no calling
and served as a Sunday school teacher, a deaconscorm advisor, a stake president, and no calling,
and a counselor and an elders' corn president, there's been a remarkable consistency in the
number of opportunities I've had to serve God. Even when I've had some of the most time consuming
callings, some of the most spiritually rewarding moments in my week have come from things that were unrelated to the calling as I've strived to
embark in whole-souled service of God. There's a woman in our ward who's such a good disciple
she won't let me use her name. She's over 70. Her husband is in the later stages of
Parkinson's disease. He's in a wheelchair. He can't say much. She pushes him
on a walk in that wheelchair, snow or rain or sun. Last Saturday, it was a four-mile walk.
She showed me the map as we walked together to church. She serves him in remarkable ways.
She has no calling. And as she walks the ward, she also does another walk alone. She stops and
talks. And I swear she knows, loves, and cares about more people in the ward than anybody but
the bishop and maybe even more than him. She knows everyone, a youth lover, everybody loves her. And
she just goes about doing good. Second to last ministering visit to her, she was asking me to
show her she was having some problems getting a referral submitted. So I'm focused on the technology, helping her get her missionary
referral submitted. And then I finally asked her, wait, what? You have a referral for the missionaries?
How's that? And she says, oh yeah, we've got this home health worker who comes in and we're getting
Richard dressed on Saturday for the Saturday session of general conference, getting him dressed
in a white shirt and tie. And she was asking why we dress him up. So I told her, she just naturally shared the gospel,
not because she was supposed to or had to, but because she wanted to, because she has
embarked in wholehearted service of God. I honestly think she does as much good as anyone
in our war boundaries and she does it even
though she has no calling requiring her to do so. She's got both feet in. Both feet in for sure.
Well, let's go to verse three. John, would you read that for us? Therefore, if ye have desires
to serve God, ye are called to the work. In God's economy, motives matter a lot.
Why do you think that is? Why does it matter to God? Why you serve a mission as long as you
serve a mission? Why you show up at the Ward Service Project as long as you do? Why you minister
as long as you're there? Why do you think God cares so much about what it is that drives us?
Because here he talks about having the desires to serve,
and in verse 5 he talks about doing it with an eye single to the glory of God.
One way that it's been put is it's not just what we do, it's why we do what we do.
There's some motives that aren't so good, out of fear of punishment, to be seen of men, you know, things like that.
And then I guess it's getting to that motive in verse five of
an I single to the glory of God.
That's probably kind of a process.
Pretty much describes the journey of almost every missionary we had
serving in our mission as mission leaders.
We welcomed them.
We were grateful, but they kind of moved through the whole spectrum of
reasons we serve that President Oaks talked
about in his very first talk as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
He said in that talk, service with all of our heart and mind is a high challenge for
all of us.
Such service must be free of selfish ambition.
It must be motivated only by the pure love of Christ.
But then this merciful kicker, perhaps none of us serves in every capacity all the time for only a single reason.
Since we are imperfect beings, most of us probably serve for a combination of reasons.
And the combinations may be different from time to time as we grow spiritually.
But we should all strive to serve for the reasons that are highest and best.
Imagine, well, I'm a ministering brother, but I'm not going to do anything until my
motives are pure.
You could stagnate.
It's better to go even if your motives aren't perfect than to not go at all, wouldn't you
say?
Yeah, that's been true for me.
That's true for my missionaries.
So, you get up and you serve no matter how imperfect your reasons, but then you strive
to move up and you serve no matter how imperfect your reasons, but then you strive to move
up and to have pure motives.
Hank, I was so impressed with what you said as we talked before we began, you reminding
us about the very real needs of listeners.
I think for any of us, but especially those of us who engage in full-time service of the
Lord or who are blessed to be professional teachers of religion in the church, there
can be a temptation to make it about us. I remember hearing a fellow Institute
teacher say, I bristle when I hear students mention my name in the closing
prayer because I don't want them to remember me. I want them to remember the
message. And that stung because I thought I kind of like it. My natural man desires
that. But wow, when
I interviewed President Eyring, he has done this. I can't remember if we got this story
in the book or not. I think we did. I think he was a counselor in the first presidency
by then. Maybe not yet. President Hinckley's there. Anyway, there's a copy of a book by
President Eyring and President Hinckley picks it up, thumps it and says, vintage Hal Eyring,
vintage Hal Eyring. I go home and write in my journal that President Hinckley picks it up, thumps it and says, vintage Hal Eyring, vintage Hal Eyring.
I go home and write in my journal if President Hinckley says that was vintage Rob Eaton.
I'm thrilled with that compliment.
President Eyring is troubled by that compliment and talks with me about it for 10 or 15 minutes,
trying to find the words about to describe why he was frustrated with it.
But it was because he didn't want someone to come away remembering him. He wanted someone to come away remembering
what he had taught. I asked him once, I think I've got it figured out. You would
rather have someone say, this was a great talk, I can't remember who said it, than
to say, you gave a great talk, I can't remember what you said. And he sort of
nodded in agreement and said, no, even better is that they go do something as a result of my talk and can't remember that I'm
the one that said it. For all of us engaging in full-time service, it's a process and not an event,
but of striving to move up the spectrum motivation so that we eventually serve out of love of God and
for His glory, not for our own.
If you're a young missionary, you've been competing to get into college, to get into a major,
or later in life to get into graduate school. Life is competitive.
And even later in life, you compete for the honors of men, you compete for raises, for promotions.
God asks us to undergo a huge paradigm shift here, to set aside building
resumes and focus on building the kingdom and building up other people when we embark
in His service.
I bet both of you have dealt with this, your students coming to you as return missionaries
and going, I just feel like this is so selfish.
I'm working on my classes and my degree and my major,
and I feel so self-absorbed right now.
And I don't know, there's a little bit of,
well, you got to sharpen the saw.
You want to become an instrument in the Lord's hands
and this education, it's enter to learn,
go forth to serve type of a thing.
How do you guys answer that?
I usually say that same thing that you said,
which is, look, you're just trying to
become a better instrument. Yeah, you got to tune the instruments, got to be made.
I also tell them, if I could go back to my college years, I would worry just a little
bit less about getting into the very best law school I could, and a little bit more about
serving in the moment, about praying for opportunities to be an
instrument in the Lord's hands. We had a roommate, Brad DeHara, a wonderful guy. Somehow he found the
time in the summer, spring or summer term, when they put on the Special Olympics in Provo to host
a young man who came and lived with us. And we had him for dinner. It was great. But I remember
thinking, wow, how has Brad found the time to do this?
I think if even in that season of life,
students, while recognizing that preparing for a career
and learning as much as they can
is part of what God wants them to do,
that he's not asking them to put serving others on a shelf.
And if they will instead lean into an assignment
to minister to others who might have great needs right then,
that they'll set a great pattern for their lives. In fact, all of us will have to balance this
throughout our lives, these competing needs to decide. But when our overarching purpose
is the cause of Christ, we approach life differently than if our overarching purpose is to
gain all the praise of the world that we can.
Trimidji Madsen told the story. I loved President Hinckley. He was watching a young man speak, young adults.
And the young man felt he was a really strong speaker, a really great teacher.
So he went up to the pulpit full of confidence and really flopped. It just did not go well.
He came down from the pulpit really humbled and apparently President Hinckley said to
him, well, if you would have gone up the way you came down, you would have come down the
way you went up.
All right.
So Rob, you mentioned what we talked about before. It really was the result
of working with incredible teachers for a long time and then me reflecting on lessons
I had taught or talks I had given and I thought, why did that work? And then giving another
one saying, why didn't that work? And I came to the conclusion that often, very often, it's,
my lesson is better when I seek to bless and not impress.
If that's my focus, how can I bless these people,
not impress these people?
And when I get those flopped, when I forget,
and I thought, I'm gonna impress some people,
I end up neither impressing nor blessing.
I think that's true in part because people can read us.
We are less effective instruments in God's hands if people sense we're doing this for
us and not for them.
President Nelson has said the most effective missionaries always act out of love.
Love is the life of good missionary work.
I'm sure that's true for ministering elders and sisters and primary and Sunday school
teachers that when we serve because we love, we do things differently. My wife's love language is
getting things done, not just verbal affirmation. So for Mother's Day and her birthday, we will go
do project day on the close of Saturday to it. Last month on her birthday, we helped clean the
church. We pulled all the plants out of our little
garden. And what I found is that doing them because I want to, not because I have to,
doing them out of love for my wife transforms my service and makes it more enjoyable, makes it more
effective. Whether it's cleaning the church, ministering, sharing the gospel, or attending
the temple, when we do things for the Savior out of love for Him, it transforms our service. And it doesn't
take any more time. I loved Bishop L. Todd Budge's talk in the October 2024 conference. He said,
let me suggest that what may be needed is not necessarily more time, but more awareness of
and focus on God during the times we already set aside for him.
Here's one of those opportunities we got to be instruments in the Lord's hands. I was back
visiting Rexburg, going on a morning workout with my buddy, my dear friend Todd Hammond. We're
driving down the hill and we see a BYU Idaho student with a full set of luggage rolling it
down the hill. And we kind of look at each other, Todd's got a pickup and we pull over and offer the student a ride. He's headed back to Mexico
and he's headed actually to a Graham bus stop that's like a mile away. So he's grateful that we
throw the luggage in and we start talking to him. We ask him how old he is and what his plans are.
We somehow sense that maybe a mission, a full-time mission, isn't in his plans. And so I say, you know, it so happens my buddy here was a mission president.
Can he make a little pitch for you about how your life would be blessed by serving a full-time
mission? So Todd gave this great pitch. And then I just added, I said, you know,
here's one other reason to serve. Make it a thank you card to Jesus. Think about what Jesus Christ has done for you
and one of the best ways you can show him your gratitude
is to go share his gospel.
I don't know if he's gonna serve a full-time mission or not
but he told us at least that he was now thinking about it
much more than he had been before he got in our truck.
It was a simple but wonderful opportunity
the Lord gave us unrelated to callings
that either of us had at the time. And I just connect that with the notion It was a simple but wonderful opportunity the Lord gave us unrelated to callings that
either of us had at the time.
And I just connect that with the notion that when we do things for the Savior, it changes
us.
Yeah.
And your motive was to help that young man, not to get another missionary in the field.
You know, wow, look what I did.
It was, look, I really, really want you to be happy and have a blessed life.
Here's what is the best way to go about it.
And speaking of that, it will bless you
and the notion that it's okay to start with lesser motives
if they get us going.
But when I was a young priest
in a quorum with just three priests,
a sister in the ward who had a son
with a severe case of cerebral palsy,
so he was wheelchair bound,
and she was a single mother
and then also had other foster children.
She developed some back problems so she couldn't get him into the bathtub alone. She had asked the
bishop to ask for a couple of priests every Saturday night to help get Sammy in the tub.
We show up the first night, 17-year-old boys, not clinically trained, and we got to take Sammy's clothes off. I think he got
a bath once a week then there he is without any clothes on. We like try to
get him to the bathtub touching him as little as possible. This is just way
outside our comfort zone. We get him in the tub, we let her know, hey we got Sammy
in the tub and she says, yeah just go ahead give him a bath I'm cooking dinner.
And we're like, what? Give him a bath? What?
And so we did it. And to be honest, we did it out of duty because my dad, the bishop, asked us to.
We knew we were supposed to. And I'm sure it didn't happen on a pivot so sudden as I remember it.
But one time when we went, I'm giving him a bath, his hand comes down in the water hard and water
splashes up in my face and I look over at him and he's laughing and I say, Sammy, did you just splash
me? And he laughs. We learn more about his condition, we learn that his intelligence was
not impaired, his muscles were. He would ask us to read. He didn't know the
citation. We did. He wanted the chapter
where Jesus heals the people in the Book of Mormon. So we read 3 Nephi 17 to him
multiple times. We came to see him differently. I think we came to see him a
little more like God sees him. Years later, when I moved away from Washington and I went back to visit Sammy in a home, it wasn't because I was
supposed to. It was because I wanted to. I had come to love him. My motives had changed over time,
and that made all the difference. I had been transformed by my service.
That's wonderful, Rob. Well, let's go to verse four. John, can you do the honors again?
Absolutely.
For behold, the field is white, all ready to harvest.
And lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might,
the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not,
but bringeth salvation to his soul.
Let me just say this about this verse. In
the aggregate it's absolutely true that the church has seen astronomical growth,
but not every missionary in every season of their mission will see the kind of
success they would like to in terms of baptism. For that matter not every
elders quorum presidency or Relief Society presidency or young men or young
women's leader.
And if we come to define ourselves and our success
by the choices others make,
we can get pretty hard on ourselves.
So I love what Preach My Gospel says about this
in the new edition, which is marvelous.
I loved the original edition of Preach My Gospel so much
that I was shocked at how much more I love the new edition.
This is what we read.
Your success as a missionary is determined primarily by your desire and commitment to
find, teach, baptize, and confirm converts and to help them become faithful disciples
of Christ and members of his church.
Your success is not determined by how many people you teach or help to bring to baptism,
nor is it determined by how many people you teach or help to bring to baptism, nor is it determined by holding leadership positions.
Your success does not depend on how others choose to respond to you, to your invitations, or to your sincere acts of kindness.
People have agency to choose whether to accept the gospel message or not. Your responsibility is to teach clearly and powerfully
so they can make an informed choice.
And then further remain
focused on your commitment to Christ and your missionary purpose, not the outward
results. The results often are not evident immediately. At the same time,
keep your expectations high regardless of the challenges you face. High
expectations will increase your effectiveness, your desire, and your
ability to follow the Spirit. I think that's great counsel for any of us embarking in the service of God.
I had two daughters who served full-time missions where they didn't get to see a lot of baptisms.
In fact, one of them attended a baptism on a Saturday before coming home on a Tuesday,
and it was the first baptism she had attended of someone she'd helped teach.
And yet, by this definition,
she may be one of the best missionaries in the church because she remained absolutely committed
and worked with faith and energy and love her whole mission. She thought, I'm still, I'm praying. I
want to help bring people into Christ through faith, repentance, and baptism. She never lost
sight of that, never gave up on it. By that measure, she was extraordinarily successful.
I think we can help with this a little bit.
Sometimes we accidentally compound the problem
if we sing the praises of people
based on the number of baptisms they have.
So let's say child number one goes to a place
where lots of people get baptized
and you're excited about that,
maybe even boasting about it to others.
And then child two or three goes somewhere else and they've heard you define success in that way, and now
they begin to think maybe I'm the problem and I'm not successful like this
older sibling. President Eyring encouraged mission leaders to be careful
in how we praise missionaries. I think all of us can be careful in how we praise
success in building the kingdom of God. Wow, that's great.
John, I know this is important to you,
setting goals based on your agency.
Hank, should I set a goal that my favorite
college football team will win games?
Do I have anything to do with that goal's outcome?
No, and in the same way, I love what President Oaks has said,
a missionary's goal should be based on what he's going to do or what she's going to do,
not on what others will do. And that's just what you read to us right there, Rob.
I'm just realizing this section of the Doctrine and Covenants, early, early in Joseph Smith's prophetic mantle, seven verses, yet a lifetime of study.
How long would it take you to take each word?
How long could you study faith, hope, charity, virtue, temperance, patience?
What does that tell you about all of these sections of the Doctrine and Covenants we're
going to look at? What does that tell you about Joseph Smith? What does that tell you about all of these sections of the Doctrine and Covenants we're going to look at?
What does that tell you about Joseph Smith?
What does that tell you about the Lord?
If someone is out there going, I sure wonder if Joseph Smith is a prophet.
This is one small section of the Doctrine and Covenants in how many chapters of the Book of Mormon,
sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, the pearl of great price.
This to me, the fact that I can take section four of the Doctrine and Covenants and literally
spend hours, hours, weeks, months on it tells me that this is not of man.
I don't know if you ever go back to a song or a movie from your childhood that you thought
was great and listen to it again or watch it again and think that just didn't hold up very well.
But the Beatles hold up well
over time. I tell you,
the Book of Mormon, section 4,
these things hold up extraordinarily well.
Again, if you think Joseph Smith is a fraud,
you think he's a genius.
Because this is so rich
with wise divine counsel.
I think it was Hugh Nibley who said, because this is so rich with wise divine counsel.
I think it was Hugh Nibley who said, these things will wear you out long before you wear them out.
And by the way, verses five and six, you'll notice are much more about
who we are and why we serve than tactics we should use.
And there's a role for tactics, but this section,
also how comforting to this fairly unsuccessful
farmer, Joseph Smith Sr., who's had none of the formal training that people call to the ministry
typically get, as none of the kinds of secular accomplishments that he might be tempted to rest
on. Instead, God takes him as he is, helps him become who he needs to become, and asks him
to focus on becoming this powerful instrument in his hands by developing these attributes of Christ.
Not tactics, not strategies, attributes. And like you said, Rob, there is a place for strategy. You
think of Ammon thinking, okay, how can I best go about this? But the strategy isn't going to work if the attributes aren't there.
Hank, I have in my margin, I don't know if this is from four years ago, but here's this list in verse five,
faith, hope, charity, love, and I singled to the glory of God, qualify him for the work and I have in my margin,
not a bank account, Joseph Smith Sr. didn't have one.
Is that from four years ago? I don't know. I'm writing it now. It is because I listen to the podcast and remember you saying you'd written that in your margin.
By the way, John, I love how you model being a lifelong learner. That relates to knowledge
in verse six, but you're so well-informed and wise already, but both of you, your willingness to learn from your guests
models how we should all become lifelong learners.
No, this is our favorite thing.
Back to this why we serve and who we become,
Preach My Gospel says, just as vital as what you do
is who you are and who you are becoming.
I remember one couple who got baptized
while we were mission leaders saying
about the
wonderful sisters who taught them that as they approached their house and talked with them,
they said, we want some of this God juice, whatever it is they're drinking. We want that.
It was who they were that caught these people's attention and not how well they knew things. So
we want to work to develop those skills, it's important that in all our efforts
to go about doing good,
we don't lose sight of striving to become good.
With the help of the Savior and His atoning sacrifice,
this is a process of shaping us as well as helping others.
Rob, can I ask you a question?
The young people that go out
and serve these full-time missions,
these 18-year-old,
19, 20, 21-year-olds, how can we as members of the Church best help them? These are fragile,
good kids who are trying.
You know, as we think about the motives for serving, serving God with an eye single to
His glory, it's interesting in sharing the gospel or other aspects of the church that sometimes, sometimes in our righteous zeal, we can become overzealous.
If we're not careful, we can become more concerned about meeting statistical goals that we've set and
how that might impress other people. A young missionary can be forgiven if you've been working
on your batting average and your GPA and all these numerical things. The number of baptisms you get may seem
the next logical step in that sequence. And we've got God asked us to shift gears and serve for
different reasons. Incidentally, I think the likelihood that those who join the church will
come to stay increases when missionaries and their leaders serve out of pure motives, not trying to get baptisms for themselves.
In fact, the missionaries who serve with the right motives when people aren't getting baptized
are concerned not because the missionary is not baptizing, but because people aren't making
a covenant that could lead to exaltation for them.
They're more concerned about the welfare of others than their own personal success. I just think for all of us as leaders in the kingdom,
that when we think celestial, for our missionaries, for those they're serving or any other context,
we tend to connect things to the savior. We do more to help people serve out of the right reasons,
and those have longer lasting results.
We used to do a little exercise with our new missionaries and their trainers.
We'd call it missionary rule boggle and say, okay, 90 seconds come up with all the commandments or rules you can think of that missionaries are supposed to keep go.
And then we would share them on the board, write them all down and say, look, we agree with all these.
We want you to get up on time and stay with your companion and do all
these things. But we don't yet have the two most important rules in this mission on the board.
Will you go with us to Matthew 22, verses 36 to 40? In this mission, the two most important
rules are to love God with all your heart, mind, and strength. And the second is like unto it,
to love his children. And the sooner you get to the point where you serve for those reasons the more effective you'll be as a missionary and the happier
you'll be. If you came because you didn't want to disappoint your mom, God bless you for coming.
We still want you. But ask your trainers how they made this transition because all the people we've
called as trainers, they're here now because they serve out of love for God. We can even help people
facilitate that transition. I think I can share this story without the missionary's name.
I had one missionary who was, it seemed to me like he was there under protest. And I was going to call
him on it and the spirit in an interview said, not yet. So I waited for another interview or two.
And then finally I said, Elder, are you here under protest by chance?
And he laughed and said, Oh, that's a good description of a lot of things I do.
Yeah.
I said, so why are you here?
And he said, well, you know, my mom, couldn't disappoint my mom.
And I said, well, God bless you for coming.
You got three weeks.
And he said, what?
I said, well, there's a, how old are you?
And he said, I'm 18.
I said, okay, you're a majority.
You're, you're an majority. You're an adult.
We don't keep people here who don't want to be here.
So you've got three weeks to decide.
So three weeks in a day from now, you'll either be here and when someone asks why, it's going
to be because I want to be, or you'll be at home.
And if you decide to go home, I'll do everything I can to talk you out of it because it'll
be the biggest mistake you ever make, but you're going to own it.
I didn't tell him I probably didn't have the authority to send him
home just for that reason. And he's the only missionary I ever had that conversation with.
My goal was not just to browbeat missionaries into browbeating people into getting baptized.
My goal was to help change missionaries and have changed missionaries help change people
for the long term to have enduring conversions.
And that may have led to fewer baptisms, but I hope some more conversions. And I think it's
important to never lose sight of that. Turns out that missionary chose to stay. It changed him,
and it changed his mission. And it changes us when we can get to the point where we serve for the highest and best reasons.
Rob, not a lot of people get to serve as a mission leader.
So I think it'd be kind of fun to let us into the heart of you and your wife as mission leaders.
Is there even a temptation for a mission leader to fall into,
oh, we need more baptisms?
I'm the mission leader.
This is reflection of me and who I am.
Is that there at all? No, I'm joking. I can't speak for everybody else. But for me,
it was. It's a natural man tendency to want to succeed in things and a natural man tendency
to try to succeed by the wrong metric. President Henry B. Eyring taught me on more than one occasion, choose the Lord's metric.
And here the Lord's metric wasn't the number of baptisms, even though we clearly wanted
to be focused on doing everything we could to help as many people as we could be baptized
but in the Lord's way.
In the succinct instruction of President Dallin H. Oaks, who wanted to
teach repentance and baptize converts.
So there was some temptation to push and do all that it took to get more people to be
baptized and for those lesser reasons that we talked about in section three, for the
praise of the world, to want to impress other people.
I found there was a real need to be true to God and what he
asked me to do and to do it in his way to not try to take any shortcuts, to serve
out of love for my missionaries, helping them have lasting conversions and helping
them help as many people as possible but have those lasting conversions. So I
think for any of us, whether we're mission leaders or anything else, to be
aware of those temptations and be intentional
about asking God for direction about how best to do his work
in a way that pleases him.
Yeah. And would you say, Rob, be gentle with those young missionaries?
We love them, we look up to them, but they're new.
We love our missionaries, And now, more than a decade after we served with many of them,
we still interact with them, go to a dinner,
go to the temple with them, and love them.
If you get focused on the short-term results,
I think you miss out on some of those long-term blessings.
Sometimes if we focus too much on those short-term results,
people end up serving because they want
to hit a goal or a quota rather than because they want to serve the Savior. Whether others
perceive us as salespeople or servants of God hinges much more on our character than on our
competence and much more than on our motives than on our moxie. This rebuke came to me from the Spirit.
I felt a little frustrated that people were coming down on us about numbers and not thanking
us more for a job we didn't volunteer for.
And then I was teaching in Zone Conference and the Spirit whispered, you know that thing
that bugs you?
You're doing exactly that.
How's about starting here by thanking them for coming on a mission? How about thanking them for serving in the rain?
How about thanking them for persisting despite
perpetual rejection? In fact, I saw a
wise presiding member of the 70 who I think had gotten instruction from the Spirit, maybe somebody else or others, do the same thing with us as mission leaders.
He stopped and thanked us for 30 minutes at the beginning of a retreat that we had.
I learned more stuff during that retreat about how I could do better than maybe any of the
other five retreats. But he began by acknowledging what we were doing in the
sacrifice we were making. And that's a lesson I'm still trying to take to heart
whenever I'm speaking anywhere as any kind of leader. Thank the people first.
First acknowledge the good that they're doing before I maybe lovingly share an
idea or two about how we might be able to do things even better.
That's beautiful, Rob. It really is.
Thank you for asking about that.
President Nelson said,
Seek and expect miracles. The Lord will bless you with miracles if you believe in Him,
doubting nothing. Do the spiritual work to seek miracles.
Prayerfully ask God to help you exercise that kind of faith.
Once I moved away from Seattle, where I had countless opportunities to share the gospel
that I didn't take advantage of and worked in a sea of people who had temple recommends,
I realized I had to be more intentional any time I traveled about sharing the gospel.
So I began praying earnestly for opportunities to share the gospel. And as I did, I've been blessed
with someone on at least one leg
of every trip with whom I've had an extraordinary gospel conversation. So now I expect it. I seek
and expect that miracle whenever I travel. Rob, the context you gave us, look, this is before a
church. This is before really you can come and be baptized. We forget that. We think section four is all about,
okay, I'm going to baptize people and have them join the church. There was no church.
This wasn't the Lord saying go baptize and build up the membership of the church, although that is
important. This is not about tactics. This is about motives and attributes. And I've noticed,
Hank, I've read verse five and six over and over just sitting here. I can't find salesmanship in there anywhere.
It's not tactics.
One last verse that I want to highlight is one that I've glossed over too often, and I learned things just in preparing for this podcast.
Ask and you shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you.
President Packer says no message appears in scripture more times in more ways than ask and ye shall receive. And yet,
ironically, because we hear it so often, maybe we become kind of numb to it. I
think asking is a critical thing to do in embarking in the service of God, both
in praying for things and praying about things as we seek to increase our capacity
to receive revelation. My wife has taught me that specificity is a hallmark of faith when we pray.
I might pray, please bless those kids, whatever their names are in our family. And she prays for
each child and their spouse and their children. And I learned things in prayer about my family
that I didn't know because my wife does
and she prays very specifically.
One time we were traveling to a family reunion.
She and the kids went a day ahead of me.
I was a young lawyer and busy
and couldn't come until a day later.
Was in the pre smartphone day.
I landed in Nashville,
was going to a state park in Kentucky. It was late at night,
I had instructions, but they weren't your current Google map instructions. So I get on the freeway,
I'm heading away from Nashville and it says, take exit 33. And I don't know how many miles it is.
Well, I see the next exit is 99, 100, 101. So I do something I rarely do, I pull over and I look
at a map. And as I look at
the map, I think, oh, there's a state line. I'm going to cross the state line. I'll start
over. So I hop back on the freeway. Sure enough, that's what happens. I get there. My wife
says, oh, honey, I'm so glad you found it all right. Did you have any trouble? And I'm
like, honey, it's me. I'm good with directions, right? And she said, all my brothers got lost
when I noticed the problem in the directions.
I prayed that when you encountered that problem, you would pull over, look at a map and notice
the state boundary.
Specificity in prayer is a hallmark of faith.
The more we ask and the better questions we ask, the more answers we get.
As a mission leader, that was one of my big takeaways.
I fear I've left a lot of revelation on the table, as it were, in my life, that there's
more revelation to be had.
Ask and you shall receive revelation upon revelation, knowledge upon knowledge, the
Lord tells us.
And President Nelson loves that verse because he's learned how to receive revelation and
wants us to do the asking we need to do to receive more revelation especially as we embark in
the service of God. Learn to hear him. There's two steps before you ever open
for the Strength of Youth Guide. Learn to hear him have a heart of, I'm going to let God prevail.
Instead of saying, okay, what's my minimums of behavior here?
What will God permit?
Instead learn to hear him let God prevail and then learn doctrines of discipleship instead
of minimums of behavior.
You can tell I've given this speech before, Hank.
But don't skip those steps.
And I love that President Nelson has emphasized, learned to hear him. What a lifelong pursuit,
but what a priority. Was it Craig Manning that talked so much about praying with specificity?
Same thing, yeah. That's our lesson in Third Nephi. Double witnesses there.
in Third Nephi. Double witnesses there. Rob, before we let you go, you've seen a lot. You've been a mission leader. You've gone to law school. You've been a vice president of
universities. You're a professor. You've done a lot. You and your family, your wife,
you've experienced a lot. And yet here's this restoration, this young farmer and his wife,
Joseph Smith, just getting started
here.
Here's the Book of Mormon that was written really on a farm, two farms.
What are your feelings given all that incredible secular experience?
What are your feelings for this restoration, this prophet?
President Eyring once said, as I was interviewing him, if you gathered all the prophets who'd
ever lived in a room and Joseph walked in, they would stand up.
That's the Joseph I know and love.
I stand in awe of what he did as a translator, as a prophet, as a leader.
I love Joseph. He never claimed to be perfect and he
wasn't perfect. In fact, he published his flaws and the Lord's rebukes for us in these sections.
Yeah, canonized it.
And yet he let God prevail in his life and shape him and change him and help us become.
When I think of section four, I love what it teaches us about who we can become.
I had one of our missionaries who said, President, I'm afraid of going home boring.
I think he was worried that if he let go, if he jumped in with both feet, John, that
God would turn him into some kind of spiritual automaton, some weird robot his friends wouldn't
like.
But becoming like Christ doesn't require us to give up our
personalities, just our sins. Sister Nealef Marriott in a beautiful talk about being yielded and still
said, if we earnestly appeal to God, he takes us as we are and makes us more than we ever imagined.
That's true for Joseph, it's true for us. He transforms us when we engage in whole-souled service.
President Eyring said, and this is a new quote
in the second edition of Preach My Gospel,
this is the Lord's church.
He called us and trusted us,
even in the weaknesses he knew we had.
He knew the trials we would face.
By faithful service and through his atonement,
we can come to want what he wants and be what we must be to bless those we serve for him.
As we serve him long enough and with diligence we will be changed. We can become ever more like him.
I see that in Joseph's life. I strive for it in my own and I find when I lose myself in the service of God, He changes me in ways that I love,
not in ways that I fear. Rob, I can't write fast enough. Becoming like Christ doesn't require us
to give up our personalities, just our sins. Oh my goodness. In fact, I become a more fun person.
Rob, honestly, if we wanted to, how much longer could we talk about sections
three, four and five? We could teach a semester long class on it and not run out of stuff.
Yeah, it's inexhaustible. Joseph F. Smith said that section four has enough material
for a lifetime of study. Yeah. Just one section. Yeah. I loved it. I am sure that our listeners out there,
everyone listening is going, wow, wow, they have a new found love for these sections and these
stories. In fact, those of you who are listening, if you want to come onto YouTube or come to our
website, followhim.co and leave Rob a comment and we'll make sure he gets those because it's fun
to find out where you're listening from
and what you thought.
Rob, thanks for spending your time with us today.
It has been a joy really.
Thanks for having me on and thanks for doing this
to bless the lives of so many people.
We wanna thank you, Rob, for being with us today.
We wanna thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen,
our sponsors, David and, Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors, David and
Verla Sorensen, and every episode we remember our founder.
He would have loved this, Rob.
Steve Sorensen.
We hope you'll join us next week.
We're continuing on in the Doctrine and Covenants on Follow Him.
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