But I wasn’t really feeling like it was the right time, or that I had enough resources to get it started.

But that desire was underneath everything else that I did.

And then suddenly, the opportunity presented itself, I had the courage to put myself out there BECAUSE of my desire.

Everything fell into place, and I became the co-host of the One Minute Scripture Study podcast in the beginning of 2021 (!!!) with the amazing @kristenwalkersmith.

And boy, did everything feel right. ⁣

I had held onto such a strong desire to start a podcast, and now the opportunity was presenting itself, and I felt the Spirit confirm that this was the answer I had been waiting for. ⁣

My desire to share my testimony in new ways was the prompting I needed to guide my decisions. ⁣

I’ve been really struck by David, Oliver, and Martin’s passionate pleadings this week. ⁣

I had always pictured Joseph asking God who the Three Witnesses to the gold plates should be, and then God giving these three men’s names. ⁣

But really, David, Oliver, and Martin were all moved with a desire to become one of the witnesses that they knew had been prophesied of. ⁣

And they ASKED Joseph to be witnesses to the gold plates. ⁣

Section 17 is the result of Joseph asking the Lord if these three men were acceptable for this sacred responsibility, and the Lord approving. ⁣

But these weren’t random names that the Lord happened to approve—⁣

Because they each had a burning, righteous desire to be a witness in the first place. ⁣

Our righteous desires can be promptings from the Lord on how we can use our talents to build up the kingdom of God. ⁣

The righteous, selfless, or useful things that we really want to do? ⁣

Those desires can be the first whisperings of the Spirit on what opportunities we should be on the lookout for. ⁣

And then we can ask. ⁣

We can ask to be included, we can ask to be in consideration. ⁣

We can let our righteous desires drive us to righteous action.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post I wanted to start a podcast  first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

We always ask our guests, no matter what the topic of their interview was…

“How do you #HearHim?”

It seems like a simple question, but I have been fascinated by the range of answers we’ve received!

I went back to all of our interviews and rounded up what some of our guests have said:

I hear Him when I slow down and write in my journal each day. -Ben Schilaty

I hear Him in the fitness room. -Melinda Brown

I hear Him in the sunrise, good music, and my granddaughters. -Elaine Dalton

I hear Him by seeing and visualizing Him. -Brooke Snow

I hear Him when I feel peace in something I’m doing. -Brian Hales

I hear Him when I exercise. -Skye Fagrell

I hear Him when I look for the little miracles all around me, and when I’m woken up with a scripture in my mind in the middle of the night. -Kay West

I hear Him when I read the scriptures and take time to stop and think about them. -Kerry Muhlestein

I hear Him by realizing He is already speaking to me, I just have to tune in and focus. -Aaron Franklin

Aren’t those beautiful answers?

My answer when Kristen first asked me that same question?

You may be able to guess it, but hands down, I hear Him the most when I am immersed in the scriptures, writing notes down, and praying about what I am learning.

The Lord warns: “And whoso receiveth not my voice is not acquainted with my voice, and is not of me.” D&C 84:52

Are we acquainted with His voice?

Because He is speaking. He is there. He is guiding and comforting and loving.

We aren’t trying to get Him to talk.

Instead, we are trying to listen.

And that’s going to look a little differently for everyone.

We listen in ways that get us aligned with God and help us invite His spirit.

So I’d love to make this a giant post today.

I want to grow this comment list infinitely long in hopes that we can inspire someone to try a new way of listening that might be just the thing that helps them tune in even better to the Divine.

Ready?

How do YOU #HearHim?

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post How do you #HearHim? first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

To LISTEN to this podcast episode, CLICK HERE!

To purchase Ben’s book, “A Walk in My Shoes”, CLICK HERE! (affiliate link)

Cali Black:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our special guest episode today. Kristen and I are beyond excited for our guest today. We have Ben Schilaty here, and he recently wrote a book called, A Walk in My Shoes, if you’re watching here, A Walk in My Shoes: Questions I’m Often Asked as a Gay Latter-day Saint.

Cali Black:

And I have kind of followed Ben’s story for a little bit, and when I saw this book, I’m like, “I have to read this.” And when I read it, I’m like, “Kristen, we have to have him on the podcast.”

Cali Black:

And I just have to make a comment about Kristen, you guys. She is feeling under the weather right now, so I will probably be doing most of this interview on my own. She will pop in, if she’s feeling up to it. But I do want to give her my condolences and hope she feels better.

Cali Black:

Anyway, without further ado, Ben, welcome, and thank you so much for being here. Would you mind introducing yourself a bit for those who aren’t familiar with you?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah, I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. So I was born and raised in the Seattle area. My parents are converts of the church. I have three degrees from BYU, which I call my three degrees of glory.

Ben Schilaty:

I earned my PhD at the University of Arizona, in second language acquisition and teaching. So I used to be a Spanish teacher. I taught Spanish for 10 years. Then I became a therapist. I did that for a little bit. And now I work full time at BYU in the Honor Code office, and I also adjunct a couple classes.

Cali Black:

So Ben, I have been talking with a lot of my followers, and I know that there is a big confusion on to why you say that you can be a gay Latter-day Saint. For a lot of members, there’s kind of this dissonance of, “Wait, isn’t that against our religion? I don’t really understand that.” So I’d love for you to take a minute if you wouldn’t mind, and explain for you at least how these two titles work together in harmony?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah, that’s a great question. So I just want to start out by quoting something that President Ballard said at BYU back in 2017. He said this to BYU students. “We need to listen to and understand what our LGBT brothers and sisters are feeling and experiencing. Certainly, we must do better than we have done in the past, so that all members feel they have a spiritual home, where their brothers and sisters love them and where they have a place to worship and serve the Lord.”

Ben Schilaty:

So Elder Ballard is clear. We have LGBT brothers and sisters, I am one of them, and we need to be listening to and understanding our stories. And I also love his acknowledgement that we need to do better than we’ve done in the past. And that is for sure.

Ben Schilaty:

So there are a lot of people in the church who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer, who are active, faithful and hold temple recommends, just like I do.

Ben Schilaty:

And there are also a lot of people who are part of the LGBTQ community and attend church, who might not be living church teachings fully, but they should be welcomed and understood just as anyone else.

Cali Black:

Yeah.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Can I pop in with a question real quick?

Cali Black:

Yeah.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I think most of us understand the LGB part of LGBTQ. Would you explain really quickly, what the T and the Q, the transgender and the queer, what are those about?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. So someone who identifies as transgender, is someone who was identified as one gender at birth, but identifies as a different gender than what they were assigned at birth.

Ben Schilaty:

So someone who was assigned male at birth, might later identify as female, or vice versa, or might identify as non-binary, they don’t feel like they have a gender or a gender.

Ben Schilaty:

And the Q stands for queer. And queer is just an umbrella term for anyone in the LGBTQ community. So anyone who isn’t heteronormative who… So queer just means not straight. And that can mean a wide variety of things.

Cali Black:

Yeah. Thanks for clarifying that. Ben, tell me if you agree or not, but that’s where some of the confusion comes from, is some people identify with these labels and are worthy temple recommend holders, and some people identify these labels and leave the church, and some people identify these labels, and they still are participants of the church, but make their own decisions as well.

Cali Black:

And I feel like that kind of leads to this confusion of, we feel like this one word, should have all of this meaning attached, and it doesn’t always have that meaning attached.

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. When I say the word gay, some people say, “Well, you shouldn’t call yourself gay, because that means that you are, “Acting on it.”” And honestly, I think the phrase, “Acting on it,” is problematic just to begin with.

Ben Schilaty:

So if you’re in the majority in society, if you identify as straight, it’s not something you usually have to think about or even disclose, because you’re just the default.

Ben Schilaty:

But I want you to imagine if you signed up for a cruise, and actually signed up for a gay cruise, how long would it take you to start telling people that you were straight. And so in this world where straight is the default, there’s a part of me that doesn’t fit that mold.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I use a term to help people understand me and my realities, and that term that I choose to use is gay. And for some people, the word gay means having sex with same sex partners. That is not what it means to me or to most people.

Cali Black:

Awesome. Thank you for clarifying that. So going off of that, why did you feel like you wanted to share your story, your personal experience as a gay Latter-day Saint? Why did you feel prompted to write the book and share it so publicly?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I first came out publicly, seven years ago, when I was 30. I came out on my blog, and that wasn’t something I ever planned on doing. I’m the only Ben Schilaty on the internet, so I’m really googleble.

Ben Schilaty:

And I worried that by putting that information out there, coming out publicly, I couldn’t take it back. I just felt so prompted to do it. And I remember having my coming out post, ready to post and sitting in my parents resting room over Christmas break, and just wondering if I should hit publish.

Ben Schilaty:

And I said, this really fervent prayer. You know that feeling you get when you’re supposed to bear your testimony, like a nervous, courageous sort of feeling. I got that feeling tensed. And I just knew I was supposed to do that, and so I posted it.

Ben Schilaty:

Ever since then, my life has changed for the better. Just me personally… The weight of having to hide who I was, and pretend to be something I wasn’t, has just totally gone. I am a better, happier person.

Ben Schilaty:

But also, I have found that my orientation is so tied to my understanding of the gospel and the things I’ve learned, that the main vehicle through which I share my testimony is by talking about my orientation.

Ben Schilaty:

And so part of the reason I think God wanted me to come out, was because I can use my experiences to build his kingdom. And so that’s when I first came out.

Ben Schilaty:

The reason I wrote the book is… I was blogging about being gay for a long time, but blogs have really short shelf lives. People care for a day or two, then they stop reading them, but a book lasts for a while.

Ben Schilaty:

And I just had some important principles I wanted to teach, and I saw a large gap in understanding. People kept asking me the same questions again, and again and again.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I thought, “Well, I’m just going to write a book that discusses the questions I often get asked. And then that way, people don’t always have to ask me personally, they can just read the book and get them themselves.”

Ben Schilaty:

Sorry, you asked me why I wrote the book. I have a couple of reasons. One of the reasons that was so important to me was, I’m active in the church, I work at BYU, I’m currently a high councilor in my stake.

Ben Schilaty:

I have a really easy story for people to understand and digest, because I’ve lived the Latter-day Saint norm. But a lot of people don’t. And almost everyone has an LGBTQ person in their life who has stepped away from the church.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I wanted to write my story, so that people could understand a little bit about what it was like for me to be gay in the church, and then reach out to their LGBTQ loved one, and ask them to tell their story, because that’s really what’s going to make the difference, when people get to know the people they already love, and already care about in their lives.

Kristen Walker Smith:

And I think that’s so powerful. And just as you were saying that, and as I read the book, and you experienced so much love and acceptance, when you came out. I love how you said it was so liberating for you to actually share all of you with people.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I know this is not on the same level, I either have obsessive compulsive disorder, and for me, there was so much shame in hiding it from people. And as soon as I shared it, it was very empowering, and people were very accepting.

Kristen Walker Smith:

So I can relate to that idea of sharing all of yourself feels great. But do you have any advice for someone who shares all of themselves, and they don’t get that great reception from people, who don’t have wonderful church leaders and friends like you did, and family that turn on them? What’s your advice for those people?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I just want to say I have a lot of privilege in this area. I was dealt the easiest hand of cards. Everyone I came out to responded very positively and remarkably well.

Ben Schilaty:

When someone comes out to someone, or someone important, and that isn’t well received, you got to be with people who are going to have your back. So I have a lot of friends who are afraid to come out to their parents, and I would say, “After you talk to them, come talk to me. I will be with you.”

Ben Schilaty:

Just recently, this LGBTQ magazine in the U.S. wrote a really inaccurate and not kind article about me. It really hurts to just be so misrepresented.

Ben Schilaty:

And then later that day, I had a meeting with the staff I work with at BYU. They’re my co-workers, but they’re my friends. I told them what happened, they just rallied around me. I had felt attacked, but with them I felt protected.

Ben Schilaty:

And so when someone comes out, and that’s not well received, it can feel like an attack. And so I would say make sure you have people in your life who can be a protection to you, and who you know will be with you no matter what.

Ben Schilaty:

And before I came out, I was listening. I knew what people were saying about LGBTQ people, so I knew who I could trust and who I couldn’t. And so make sure you’ve got some people in your corner that you can trust, and then just give those people who aren’t always so kind and loving, give them grace, give them patience and give them time to grow.

Cali Black:

Yeah, I think that’s great advice. One thing you touched on a little bit earlier, and you mentioned in your book is that this book is not meant to be, here is how to be a gay Latter-day Saint and be perfect, and do exactly what Ben does. That’s not why…

Ben Schilaty:

Exactly.

Cali Black:

… you wrote it, but really to inspire us to listen to other people’s stories. So I’m just curious, I know you have a great podcast, I was just listening to an episode this morning, where you with Charlie Bird, called, Questions from the Closet, you talk about…

Cali Black:

You talk to a lot of guests. You just learn their stories. There’s not an agenda where you’re trying to make a clear point, it’s just sharing people’s stories. So what have you learned from listening to other people’s stories?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I have just learned to love people where they are. A story I share in the book that isn’t even about being gay, when I was in high school, my older brother was dating someone that my sister and I didn’t like, and we were worried one day they were going to come home engaged.

Ben Schilaty:

And my sister asked my dad what we should do if they came home, and said they were getting married. And my dad said, “We will cheer for them, and they will be happy. They’re going to do what they want to do, whether we like it or not, but we get to choose how much we will be in their lives.”

Ben Schilaty:

And so, one thing that I’ve learned is, it doesn’t really matter what opinion I have about someone’s life. It doesn’t matter what advice I give them. Ultimately, they’re going to do what they want to do, whether I like it or not.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I just want to look for the good in people’s lives, and cheer on all the good that’s happening with them. Everyone that we interact with is a beloved spirit, son, or daughter or child of heavenly parents.

Ben Schilaty:

And it is such a gift to get to know another soul, and to connect with another spirit. And so even if someone’s life is radically different from mine, I just want to see what goodness they have, what I can learn from them, and how they can be a blessing in my life, because everyone that we interact with can be a blessing in our lives if we let them.

Cali Black:

That’s powerful. Thank you. So you lived in Tucson for a bit. I’m an Arizona girl, not Tucson, but…

Ben Schilaty:

Tucson is the best city in the world by the way.

Cali Black:

Okay, we’ll agree to disagree on that one. I did go to the BYU game when they had that there, and that was a good one for BYU. Anyways, one thing I loved that you talked about in your book is you were in Tucson, that’s when you came out and had a lot of those growing experiences.

Cali Black:

But you started the Ally Nights, where you had support from church leaders, you had support from ward members, from family members who maybe had not been as supportive of their kids beforehand. I was just wondering, could you tell us a bit about that, and what you’ve learned about the importance of bringing people together?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. That’s a great question. Tucson is Zion to me. It was the first place that I was able to be myself, and where people just love me how I was. Came out in a ward setting.

Ben Schilaty:

I was in a singles ward. It was not something I was expecting to do, but I just felt so prompted to do it. And it was while I was teaching an Elders Quorum lesson. And when I sat down, I just felt so relieved.

Ben Schilaty:

And a bishopric member told me later, that he saw that experience, saw me sit down, and saw this weight come off of me. Being able to be open in my congregation was just such a gift.

Ben Schilaty:

Then shortly after that, I moved to a family ward, because I graduated without honors from the singles war because I didn’t get married. That ward just enveloped me too.

Ben Schilaty:

I asked the bishop if I could come out in the first talk I was asked to give, which was just shortly after I moved in, and he said, “I don’t see why that would be a problem.”

Ben Schilaty:

So I came out in my talk, and it wasn’t just to come out, but it was I was telling a story about a gospel principle that was related to me being gay. And after the meeting, there was a receiving line of half a dozen people who just welcomed me in the ward, said they wanted to get to know me, and just hugged me.

Ben Schilaty:

These strangers who I didn’t even know, just invited me into their families immediately, and it was just so wonderful. And so I started a support group for LGBTQ Latter-day Saint while I was in Tucson, and the group quickly grew to a couple dozen people, and those people became my family.

Ben Schilaty:

And some people experienced some fairly homophobic things at church. Some really terrible things were said. And my friend Paul said, “Well, we’ve got to do something about this. What are we going to do to stop these homophobic things?”

Ben Schilaty:

He said, “Well, can I just share my story at your house on Sunday?” And I said, “Sure.” So we invited eight people over, we all sat in a circle, and he shared his story about being a bisexual Latter-day Saint for 20 minutes.

Ben Schilaty:

And then he let people ask him questions for another 40 minutes. And then we went around the circle, and everyone shared a takeaway from the night. It was beautiful. And a lot of the takeaways had nothing to do with what he said, but what the Spirit had taught them.

Ben Schilaty:

And so we said, “That was awesome. Can we do it again next week?” So we did the exact same thing. And after that he said, “You know Ben, you should tell your story too.”

Ben Schilaty:

So we invited a different group of people over, he’d talk for 10 minutes, I’d talk for 10 minutes, and then we let people ask us questions, and then we went around the room and we did takeaways.

Ben Schilaty:

And then as more people joined the group, we’d rotate who would do it. We started calling these nights, Ally Nights, because we’re teaching people how to be LGBTQ+ allies.

Ben Schilaty:

And we did dozens and dozens of these all over the city. Bishops hosted them, my stake president came to one, and hundreds of people came to hear our stories, and it was just so beautiful.

Ben Schilaty:

A bishop of one of the singles wards invited us over to his house, hosted an Ally Night, he invited a bunch of ward members over there, 30 people. One of the women who was there who I’d never met before said this, and I just want to read this quote from my book.

Ben Schilaty:

I’d never met her before, and almost everyone in the support group I started was YSA age. And so she said this, “I want to thank you two for being so open and honest tonight. I want you to know that I’m going to be an LGBTQ ally, and I will support you no matter which path you choose.”

Ben Schilaty:

“I know many of you don’t have families in town, and I will be your Tucson mom, if you need one. Call me anytime, day or night, and I will be there for you. The doors to my home are always open to you, and you are part of my family now.”

Ben Schilaty:

And so it was just beautiful as we shared our hearts and our stories, people just opened up their hearts to us. There are literally dozens of places I could stay in Tucson if I needed a place to stay, because people just loved us that much.

Kristen Walker Smith:

And Ben, as I finished the book, the main takeaway for me was like, “I want to be an ally. I want so bad to be an ally.” But I live in an area where I don’t think that people feel very safe to be open about their sexuality.

Kristen Walker Smith:

And so, I don’t know of anyone who is in the LGBTQ community. I’ve even asked bishops like, “Hey, is there anyone that need support?” And there’s just not a lot of openness around it where I am. How can you be an ally, when no one around you is telling their stories?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. So my friend Diana is the hero of the book. I end the book talking about her. She was one of my closest friends in Tucson, we’re still incredibly close. She knew nothing about the LGBTQ experience when I came out to her, and she honestly wasn’t prepared for it.

Ben Schilaty:

And so when I came out, she was pretty shocked. But then she wanted to learn. She heard my story, she listened to my story, and then I went to this conference in Mesa, Arizona, for LGBTQ members of the church, and I just told her I was going to go.

Ben Schilaty:

It’s a two hour drive from Tucson, and she said, “I want to go. Can I go with you?” That was such an incredibly kind thing for her to say that she would come with me to this place where I knew no one, and she was going to be there with me.

Ben Schilaty:

When I started the support group, she was one of the founding members, one of our designated allies who came and helped. She was there the whole journey. And after I moved away from Tucson, she was still in her singles ward.

Ben Schilaty:

In Relief Society, they asked everyone to stand up, say their name and introduce themselves, and share something interesting about themselves. She stood up and said, “My name is Diana, and I’m an LGBTQ ally. And if anyone wants to talk, I’m always willing to listen.”

Ben Schilaty:

And so sometimes it just takes people starting the conversation. I think having Fifth Sunday lessons, firesides, that’s helpful. I think we should do those things.

Ben Schilaty:

But the most important thing is just organically talking about LGBTQ people. Just bringing them up in everyday conversations, because that’s how we know that we belong. When it’s not some big thing or some big event, but just people are gay and they belong.

Ben Schilaty:

And that just means so much to me. I think Elder Holland really model this in General Conference back in April 2017. It was that talk about how there’s room for everyone in God’s choir. And he said, “There’s room for the single, there’s room for the married, there’s room for large families, and the childless.”

Ben Schilaty:

And then he said, “And there’s room for people with different sexual orientations.” We can do that kind of stuff all the time. Just talk about LGBTQ people in kind, loving and organic ways.

Ben Schilaty:

If the conversation isn’t starting in your area, maybe you’re the one to start the conversation. Read the book in a book club, or something. I don’t know. But there’s a lot that you can do to start a conversation that hasn’t started yet.

Cali Black:

Those are great, solid pieces of advice. Thank you Ben. In your story, you talked a lot about agency. That’s been something that’s been on my heart a lot recently, about how God has given us so much power. I can’t imagine how scary that is for him to be like, “Here’s a trillion different choices you can make and how you can live your life. Hope you find a good path.”

Cali Black:

And obviously he gives us more direction than that, but still we have so much agency, and you talked a lot about, you chose to stay in the church, you chose to come out to certain friends, you chose what relationships you would or wouldn’t have, and how they would go forward. I’m just curious, what are some of your thoughts about agency, and how it’s played a role in your life?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. One of the things I’ve learned is that I’m not a perfect person, and I’m not going to be perfect, and I’m going to use my agency unwisely, and I’m going to use it wrong, and that’s the whole point of mortality.

Ben Schilaty:

That’s why Heavenly Father loved us so much that He sent His son, so that we could have those learning experiences when we made mistakes that we shouldn’t have made. And then as we use our agency in ways that don’t reflect God’s will, that’s how we really learn and grow, and can take advantage daily of the gift of repentance.

Ben Schilaty:

But the most powerful gift of agency I received was from my parents. And I remember when I was 30, just unloading on them. I’d come out to them when I was 23, but we didn’t really talk about it much, and then when I was 30, it felt like I just couldn’t hold on anymore.

Ben Schilaty:

When we talk about the Iron Rod, and all the images of the Iron Rod, the Iron Rods is at waist level. You even hold on to it easily. For me, it felt like the Iron Rod was 10 feet in the air, and I was just clinging to it. My arms were sore, and my hands hurt, and I just felt I just couldn’t hold on anymore.

Ben Schilaty:

It just was physically impossible to stay in the church. And I just explained all this to my parents. And as I did that, my mom said, “You know Ben, we’re not just on your side, we’re with you on 100%. If you need to leave the church and marry a man, you and he will always be part of our family.”

Ben Schilaty:

My parents, they honored my agency so explicitly, and so clearly and so lovingly. They told me that there was nothing I could do that would take them outside of the family.

Ben Schilaty:

I have a quote in the book from David O. McKay, who said that, “The greatest gift God has given us next to life itself, is the power to direct that life.” I think of my parents who gave me life, and then made sure that I had the freedom to live the life that I want to live.

Ben Schilaty:

And by having that freedom… I was at my parents house for a couple of weeks when we had that conversation. And I just spent tons of time just praying and pondering to try and figure out what it was that I was supposed to do.

Ben Schilaty:

And as I pointed my life to Christ, I felt him point me to his church, and I felt compelled to move forward in the church. And during that time, one of the most miraculous things I realized was, as I was reading in Matthew 26, just trying to figure out what to do with my life.

Ben Schilaty:

That’s where Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he prays. He says, “Oh, my Father, if thou be willing to let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.”

Ben Schilaty:

And then something that I had never noticed before, is he gave that prayer two more times. Three times he said, “God, I don’t want to do this, but I want to do your will.” And it occurred to me it’s a very Christ like thing, to not want to do something hard and painful.

Ben Schilaty:

But to be like Christ, we need to do the Father’s will and do that thing anyway. And so that’s what I’ve learned about agency. Agency is all about honoring the choices people are going to make, even if we don’t agree with them, acknowledging that some of those choices are really tough and painful, and then really seeking to do God’s will, and then when we don’t, repenting.

Cali Black:

I love that. Well, Ben, your parents sound amazing from reading your book.

Ben Schilaty:

Oh, they are. They’re amazing.

Cali Black:

I fully believe it. Do you have any advice? There are lots of parents who listen to this podcast. If they have a child who comes out to them, or maybe it’s their child’s friend or someone in a youth group at church, what would be your advice on how to react or approach that conversation in order to produce the most loving result?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. Honestly, the things that have mattered most to me aren’t things that people have told me, but things I have said to myself. And so I think the most important thing is to create an environment in which someone can talk openly, and then the Spirit can teach them.

Ben Schilaty:

And so, when my mom said that I could leave the church, and I’d always be part of the family, that was an incredibly kind thing to say, but I didn’t immediately say, “Oh, I’m going to stay in the church.”

Ben Schilaty:

It was over the next weeks as I prayed and pondered and read the scriptures, and had conversations with my family, then that’s when I decided that I was going to stay, and I said the things I needed to say.

Ben Schilaty:

So if a child or a loved one comes out to you, I would say the most important thing is to say, “Thank you. Thank you for trusting me with this information. Thank you for letting me into this part of your heart.”

Ben Schilaty:

I’d go ahead and even say, “I’m sorry you’ve been dealing with this on your own. I’m sorry that it’s been hard, and I’m here with you on your journey, no matter where it leads.”

Ben Schilaty:

And then I would ask what I would call a grand tour question. Like, “What is it like to be gay? What is it like to be a lesbian and be in a church? What does it mean to you to be transgender?” And then let them talk and then listen, and then ask follow up questions.

Ben Schilaty:

Just really let them dig into their experience. And as you listen and as they talk, they’re most likely going to figure out on their own what it is that they need to do.

Ben Schilaty:

I think the most important thing is to help people figure out through The Holy Ghost specific and personalized direction on their path, because none of us know where our paths are going to lead, but God does.

Ben Schilaty:

And so that’s what I would say. Just get people talking and keep the conversation going. I would, after someone comes out, bring it up again a week later, like, “Thank you so much for telling me, was there anything else you wanted to say that you didn’t get to say?” And just keep an ongoing conversation.

Ben Schilaty:

And also be prepared for some tough things, because when someone comes out to you, they’ve been thinking about this for years, and you’re just starting to think about it.

Ben Schilaty:

And so they’ve progressed and gone through a lot of stages that you haven’t gone through. And it might be a painful process for you to go through similar stages that they went through, as well.

Cali Black:

Yeah. I feel like that takes the pressure off of like, “Oh, I have to say the right thing.” Instead, it’s just approaching it with the mindset of, “Let’s make sure they know they’re loved and that I appreciate them, and then let them do most of the talking.” Because coming out doesn’t even just mean one thing, it opens up the door to their whole story.

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I just want to add something to that, because people are so often worried about saying the wrong thing, and that often leads to inaction and a lack of conversation.

Ben Schilaty:

Like, “Well, I don’t want to say the wrong thing, so we’re just not going to have the conversation.” And a lot of families end up with what I call, a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Like, “We know you’re gay, we’re just not going to talk about it.” That is so hard on so many families.

Ben Schilaty:

Well, after I had this conversation with my parents, where I was really considering leaving the church, I had a similar conversation with one of my brothers, and I told him I’d recently kissed a guy.

Ben Schilaty:

This was his response. He said, “Sorry to make light of this, but yuck. I mean, if that works, you great, but I just don’t get it.” Now, that is such a rude thing to say. To react with disgust when someone tells you about their love life.

Ben Schilaty:

But you know what, that night I wrote in my journal, I wrote, I love my family, and I’m so glad I was able to be open with them. Because my brother, did he say the wrong thing? Yes. But he said an honest thing.

Ben Schilaty:

And it was couched in a conversation in which he’d already demonstrated that he was willing to be with me on my journey, wherever it led. So if we say something that might not be the best thing, if we say it out of sincere love and kindness, it’s just going to help move the conversation forward.

Kristen Walker Smith:

That is such a… When I read that story I was like, “Oh, goodness.” Brothers are just so wonderful. I do have a question that… I hadn’t planned on asking this, but this is something that has actually come up repeatedly, I’ve been telling people about this book. And I’m like, “You’ve got to buy it.” My sister is buying it for all of her kids, because she’s like, “They don’t understand this well enough.”

Ben Schilaty:

You’re so kind.

Kristen Walker Smith:

No, it’s amazing. It’s amazing.

Cali Black:

We’ll get our commission check later.

Kristen Walker Smith:

But one of the questions that keeps coming up from people that I talked to about this book, is how is this fair? How is it fair that God has created you the way you are, and then asks you to live a life in direct opposition to the life you naturally want to live? How is it fair that God is asking this of so many of his children? And I just wondered if you had thoughts on that?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I do have a couple thoughts. So there is a beautiful story in Acts chapter 10, where… I’ll just summarize really quickly, but it’s where Cornelius is Gentiles, sees an angel, and the angel tells him to go find Peter.

Ben Schilaty:

So he sends these men to go find Peter. And while the men are going to find Peter, Peter has this vision of these unclean animals in a sheet, and God says, “Go kill and eat,” and then Peter is like, “I can’t eat these unclean animals.”

Ben Schilaty:

Then God says, “What I have made, clean, call thou not unclean.” And Peter’s like, “What does this mean?” And then Cornelius men show up, and then they take him to Cornelius.

Ben Schilaty:

And he’s like, “Oh, this is what it means. Gentiles can now join the church, and they’ve received the Holy Ghost and it’s beautiful.” So that happens, and then it Acts chapter 15, all these Gentiles are joining the church, and they’re not sure what to do with them.

Ben Schilaty:

Like, “What do we do with all these Gentiles?” And so they have this argument at this big council in Jerusalem. These churches are arguing like, “Do the new Gentiles have to live the law of Moses? Do we have to circumcise these men? What do we do?”

Ben Schilaty:

And finally, in the midst of all this arguing, Peter stands up, and he says, “Why tempt ye God, to put a yoke on our brethren, that neither we nor our fathers could bear?” I just love that acknowledgement by the prophet who said, “Why are we asking these people to live the law of Moses when we couldn’t do it?”

Ben Schilaty:

So I think it’s very important when we talk to our friends and our loved ones, so often people tell me, “Ben, I couldn’t do what you’re doing.” And then my response when people say that is like, “Well, why are you expecting me to do it?”

Ben Schilaty:

So we need to be careful to not ask people to do things that we ourselves wouldn’t do. But what is God asking me to do? I think that’s what’s important. Like, “What is God asking me of my life?”

Ben Schilaty:

I don’t want to pretend to know what anyone else in their life should do, but there have been a number of times where I was ready to just leave the church, because I thought it just didn’t have place for me. The culture and doctrine didn’t have room for a gay Latter-day Saint like me, but I just felt called and compelled to stay again and again and again.

Ben Schilaty:

There’s this line from Preach My Gospel that says, “All that is unfair about life will be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.” And so, is what’s being asked of us unfair? 100%. It is unfair.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I think that there’s a problem that can happen. Two problems. We can say, “Well, this is unfair, therefore, it’s wrong, and I’m just going to throw the whole restoration away.” People do that and that happens. The other thing is, “Well, everything will be made right, so I’m not going to worry about it.” I think both of those answers are not the correct answer.

Ben Schilaty:

I think the correct answer is, “Well, if this is unfair, what are we going to do? How can we be the hands of God? What is he calling us to do to make things right now?”

Ben Schilaty:

I don’t know what that’s going to look like in everyone’s life, but I think the principle is, we can trust that God will make unfair things fair, and what is our role in making that happen?

Cali Black:

Ben, I know you didn’t ask to become a poster boy for it, but I just picture you as someone who’s helping to make life easier for so many youth, especially of our youth that are LGBTQ that are able to look at you not as, here’s exactly what I want to be, but just as someone who’s willing to speak up and to advocate, and then is inspiring other straight people to become bigger allies and to speak up. What a difference you are making in making it hopefully a little easier to bear, when we all come together for that.

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. And Cali, that’s really kind. I just want to acknowledge, I stand on the shoulders of giants. So many people did things. They laid some pavers behind me, that I was able to walk.

Ben Schilaty:

I hope I’m just laying the next couple stones and the next couple of bricks, so that people can walk a little farther than I made it. I’m able to do things, because so many people did things before me, and I just want to help people along the way.

Ben Schilaty:

When I started my podcast, Questions from the Closet with Charlie Bird, my ideal idea… Not ideal, but my target audience is a 21 year old, who just got home from his mission, who is attending BYU, who is worrying about his sexual orientation, doesn’t know what to do.

Ben Schilaty:

I work at BYU, and I meet these kids. Then they come to my office and talk to me, and they just tell me how much my sharing my stories, help them to share theirs.

Ben Schilaty:

Perhaps it’s not appropriate for an administrator to hug a student, but I was like, “Give me a hug. Thank you for sharing this.” We’re all in this together to quote High School Musical.

Cali Black:

Of course.

Ben Schilaty:

I don’t want anyone to look at me as an example, and to try and live my life, but I hope that my sharing my story just encourages and helps people to have the courage to share their own.

Cali Black:

Yeah. And I see that already, just taking that next step. Ben, as we’re kind of finishing up, there’s this big question that I feel so many people are like, “Yes, I’m loving and kind, and I want to love everyone, no matter what their sexual orientation is.”

Cali Black:

But as you mentioned earlier, there have been homophobic things that are said in church, whether overtly or covertly, but sometimes it can be really hard for people to know, how do I show love, when what they’re doing is not in line with my religious beliefs?

Cali Black:

I feel like there’s just this barrier between this ideal of loving everyone, and then we get down to the nitty gritty, and so many people are like, “Wait, but I don’t know how to for that. This makes me a little uncomfortable.”

Cali Black:

I don’t know if I’m explaining the difference here. But how can you suggest that we become more welcoming, even if we feel that uncomfortableness along the way?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. That’s a good question. Let me tell you about my relatives, my aunt and uncle. So my parents are both converts of the church. Their siblings and most my relatives aren’t members of the church.

Ben Schilaty:

My aunt and uncle think it’s stupid that I’m a Latter-day Saint. They think I should just live my life and stop being part of this phony church. They think it’s just ridiculous.

Ben Schilaty:

But you know what, when I went on a mission, they came to my farewell. And then they wrote me every week. And then when my siblings got married in the temple, they stood outside the temple, and were there for pictures.

Ben Schilaty:

Then when I wrote my book, my aunt said, “Do you want me to buy a copy?” And she read it. My life makes no sense to my aunt and uncle, and yet they are going to support me in every part of it.

Ben Schilaty:

And so if I’m supported that way, what does that look like to support an LGBTQ person that I love? If my beliefs are abhorrent to my aunt, and yet she supports me in them, if someone has beliefs that I don’t agree with, or they go against my deeply held beliefs, how am I going to love them?

Ben Schilaty:

So if I have a friend who has decided to leave the church, I want to hear their story. If I have a friend who’s going to be marring a same sex partner, and they want me to be part of that day, I want to be part of that day too. I want to celebrate that with them.

Ben Schilaty:

I just want to cheer on all the good that is happening in everyone’s life. Loving and including people as a principle, I don’t know what that’s going to look like in everyone’s life.

Ben Schilaty:

And if you’re feeling uncomfortable about including someone in your life, that disagrees or lives a life different than what you believe, I think that’s something that you should go to the Lord and prayer about, and really figure out, “Well, okay, there’s this principle of loving everyone. How do I put that principle into practice?”

Ben Schilaty:

So I’m hesitant to tell people exactly what to do, because that’s an individual thing. But you know there’s this phrase that I don’t really like called, “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin.” And I heard someone rephrase that as, “Love the sinner, invite them to dinner.”

Ben Schilaty:

Because that’s what Jesus did. He literally had dinner with sinners. And I think that we can do the same thing. Not to plug my podcast too much, but we have an episode about this called, How can I be an LGBTQ ally and support church teachings?

Ben Schilaty:

I don’t know what the episode number, but you can find it. We interviewed Ally Isom, and she’s amazing. So pray, find out how God wants you to love the people in your life, and you’ll know what to do.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Ben, I think one of the most powerful things I came away with from your book, was the power of just listening, and not stepping in and trying to fix anyone’s problems or change anyone. You don’t really have to take action.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I think the biggest action that I understood from your book, the biggest action we can take is just listening to people and letting them be who they are, and loving them, no matter what your thoughts or beliefs are.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I think that is such a beautiful part of your book, and for anyone who’s considering… He didn’t pay me to say this, but anyone who’s considering buying the book, if you have a gay person in your life, or someone in the LGBTQ community, he says specifically, “This isn’t hand it to them, and this is how they should live their life.”

Kristen Walker Smith:

But there are so many lessons in there that I think everyone, whether you’re straight, whether you’re LGBTQ, can learn about listening and allowing people to use their agency. And that is such a powerful lesson for absolutely everyone. So I loved it. And five stars, five stars, everyone buy it.

Ben Schilaty:

Thank you. What would a paid endorsement look like if that was an unpaid one? My goodness.

Kristen Walker Smith:

We can work on that Ben.

Cali Black:

For reals. All right. Well, Ben, is there anything else that you want to share about your story in particular, or advice to anyone who’s listening?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I just want to say, when I wrote my book, I’ve tried really hard not to write a gay book. I mean, it’s a story about me, and my life as a gay Latter-day Saint, but I really tried to teach principles.

Ben Schilaty:

And the best feedback I’ve gotten from people is, “I am dealing with this, or this, or this is going on my life, and I found principles in your book that really helped me.” So I just really hope that I can teach principles.

Ben Schilaty:

It’s been an honor to hear how much people are learning from my life and experiences, and I hope to learn from other people, the lives and experiences of those around me as well too.

Cali Black:

Yeah, for sure. And yeah, to your point, when I was looking at all the questions that you’re going to answer, I’m like, “Whoa, this is a very…” Yes. The question, set it up I was like, “Oh, we’re diving into everything about his gay life.”

Cali Black:

But as I read the book, I realized exactly what you’re saying, I had all of these spiritual connections where I’m learning about, “Oh, agency and the power of gathering people together.”

Cali Black:

All right, Ben, we’re at the end here. We always like to end our interviews with going back to President Nelson’s big thing. How do you #HearHim in your life?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. That’s such a beautiful question. There are lots of ways that I hear God, through music, through kindness, just through people in their words. But I am a very extroverted person. I am always with people.

Ben Schilaty:

And the one time every day, where I take time, slow down and be by myself, is when I write in my journal. And when I write in my journal and reflect on my day, I try to write about two things every day.

Ben Schilaty:

I try to write about some spiritual experience I had, like how I saw God’s hand in my life that day, and then something funny that happened. And then when I reread my journals, I’m entertained and uplifted.

Ben Schilaty:

But when I take time to just slow down and think about my day, I see the hand of the Lord in my life all the time. And so it’s through making a daily record of my life that I have seen God’s hand work in my life, and that’s one of the ways that I most often hear him.

Cali Black:

I love it. Thank you for sharing that. All right, thank you so much, everyone for listening and again to Ben Schilaty, for being our guest today and sharing a little bit about his life, his experiences, his thoughts.

Cali Black:

And just as a plug again, his book, A Walk in My Shoes, is available wherever you can buy books or does sell a book, and we highly recommend it. Thank you so much for being here Ben. And for everyone else, thanks for listening and coming closer to Christ with us a few minutes at a time.

The post One Minute Scripture Study podcast episode with special guest Ben Schilaty first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

Are the any great resources that you know of? Comment below to let me know!

• Relief Society Page that has links to a bunch of amazing resources
  • https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/callings/relief-society-organization/work-and-purpose/women-and-priesthood?lang=eng 
• Gospel Topics Essays: Women and the Priesthood
  • https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/joseph-smiths-teachings-about-priesthood-temple-and-women?lang=eng
• Daughters in My Kingdom
  • https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/daughters-in-my-kingdom-the-history-and-work-of-relief-society/blessings-of-the-priesthood-for-all-an-inseparable-connection-with-the-priesthood?lang=eng
• Gospel Topics: Priesthood
  • https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/priesthood?lang=eng
• Handbook Section 3
  • https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/3-priesthood-principles?lang=eng#title_number7
• “Spiritual Treasures” by Pres Nelson Oct 2019
  • https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2019/10/36nelson?lang=eng 
• “Women in the Book of Mormon” Presentation with Professor Joseph Spencer

The post Women and the Priesthood Resources first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

Apple podcasts (for iPhones): CLICK HERE

Podcast player (best for computers, but work on any device): Scroll to episode 292 https://comefollowmestudy.com/podcast

More resources from Kerry Muhlestein, including a free quick and easy guide to the Blessings Promised to Israel in the Abrahamic Covenant, can be found at his website: http://outofthedust.byu.edu/

This podcast episode is about to blow your mind when it comes to the House of Israel and blessings that have been promised to us. Like really, this is good stuff!

Podcasts of this length are always much better to listen to, but if you have the need to read it for any reason, we wanted to make this available to you!

Here is the transcript for Episode 292, an interview with Kerry Muhlestein.

Cali Black: 

Hello, everyone. We are so excited today to welcome you  to our guest episode. I am here with Kristen Walker Smith. Kristen, are you excited for today? 

Kristen Walker Smith:

I’m so excited. I told you earlier, I’m ready to have my mind blown today. I am SO excited. 

Cali Black:

Well, perfect. We are going to get started. We have our special guest, which is Dr. Kerry Muhlestein, and he is a professor at BYU and we are beyond honored to have him on our podcast because he kind of knows a lot about a lot of things. He’s written books, he teaches at BYU, which of course I attended (the best university in the world. Not that I’m biased).  But we’re really excited today to tackle a topic that we know so many of you are curious about because we get questions on it all the time and that is the House of Israel and the promises that are given to covenant Israel. We know President Nelson has asked us to study that recently. So we’re going to talk to Dr. Muhlestein today about some ideas on this, but first I just want to welcome you, Dr. Muhlestein. Thank you so much for being here. Would you mind introducing yourself a bit for those who may not know you? 

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Thanks for having me. And I’m just excited to be with you both. This is a great opportunity, so thank you. And yeah, I’d be happy to introduce myself. Like you said, I teach at BYU, I have degrees in Hebrew, Bible, and Egyptology and I just have a fascination and a love for the ancient world, but I just can’t get enough. I get drawn into it. I can’t stop. I direct an excavation in Egypt, so I’m there, well, not lately because of COVID, but before then I was there at least annually and often more than that, I’ve taught a couple of times in the Jerusalem Center and studied there in Jerusalem. And so I’m just drawn to the ancient world and ancient texts, especially in symbols, they captivate me and I can’t get enough of it.

Kristen Walker Smith:

That is absolutely wonderful. I mean, I cannot wait to hear what you have to say on this because you are someone that actually knows what’s going on. Like I can read about the subject, but you’re living it. I’m so excited. So the first thing that we want to find out from you is President Nelson has really been emphasizing the House of Israel and the gathering of Israel. And I feel like as soon as you say the word Israel, people’s spiritual eyelids go down and they start falling asleep because it’s not something that we know very well. And I feel like you do.  President Nelson has even encouraged us to make lists of the promises for covenant Israel, which we’re part of. So why do you think it’s important enough that the prophet is telling us to study this subject if it’s not something that everyone is naturally interested in? What’s the importance? 

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Well, that’s, that’s a great question. And, I have to tell you that President Nelson is part of the reason I got interested in this. He’s been talking about this for a long time. And, uh, I remember as an undergraduate at BYU going to a talk he gave about the promises to the house of Israel. And, uh, I guess I was a little interested before that because as I’d studied the Book of Mormon and I just have this kind of mind that likes to take themes and not only look at them literarily, but quantify them. And I kind of am counting, “How much is this theme mentioned, and that theme?”, and I figured that after the topic of Christ and the atonement, the Book of Mormon talks about the promises of the House of Israel, more than any other thing, it’s the, I think the second, most common theme in the book of Mormon.

So that interested me, but, but I think you’re right, most of the time we kind of skip over those aspects in the Book of Mormon even though it’s in the title page.  It’s in the last couple verses, it’s in the last thing that Mormon says, it’s what Christ talks about more than anything else when he’s with the Nephites, we still kind of skip over it. But when President Nelson, when at that point he was Elder Nelson, gave this talk, it really kind of caught my interest and that’s when I started to really want to get more. And I was just starting to get into ancient studies at the time. That’s when I thought “I really want to get more into those ancient topics.” And especially that of the Abrahamic Covenant and the promises of the House of Israel. But what I’ve noticed is that over time, it seems to me that the frequency that he mentions it has really intensified.

And that has especially happened since he’s become the president of the Church. I mean, he talks about it frequently and to be honest, like I thought I’d kept a pretty good list of all of his conference talks and BYU addresses and how much he talked about it. And then when he, in this general conference talk he had mentioned hundreds of times.  Like I had listed about 35 talks and I thought that’s pretty good. And then he mentioned he’d talked about it hundreds of times. So I’m guessing that’s in like regional conferences that we don’t do anymore, but you know, all these different kinds of things that we didn’t have access to, but it tells me he’s been talking about this a lot, but even so once he became president, I mean, it’s the first, the first thing he did is that Face to Face and it was the highlight of that. It’s the highlight of his first talk to the Relief Society. It’s just everywhere. When he talks about it at Roots Tech, he’s talking about it everywhere. He goes, he hits on this theme. Again, I haven’t tried to quantify it, but I would guess since he’s become president of the church, he’s talked about that theme more than any other theme. And so I can’t read his or the Lord’s mind as to why maybe but I really have the feeling that he’s been impressed that this is what we need. And the “why” he’s told us is because, and he said this several times, this is the most important thing happening in the world today. And I think when a prophet tells us, this is the most important thing, and he says it several times, we probably ought to pay attention.  I think that might be a good idea. 

Cali Black:

And I remember that Face to Face when he talked about the gathering of Israel, and I feel like something clicked, right. I realized like, wait, this isn’t some obscure abstract topic that like, you know, someone just does a deep dive into, it’s something that I can understand. It just means bringing people closer to Christ and kind of going through that. So I’m curious for, for many of us who feel this way, like they’re still feeling a little overwhelmed, even though we know the prophet has asked us, do you have any advice on where we can start? Like how we can feel more confident when it comes to tackling this subject that we probably have not been exposed to very much just in normal church meetings.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Yeah. I have probably like five hours worth of advice. So we’ll, we’ll try and boil it down to just a couple minutes. But, um, I would say a couple of things, one thing is that we need to recognize that the gathering of Israel and the blessings promised to Israel are part of the Abrahamic Covenant or the new and everlasting covenant. And this is where I find, well, let’s just say in general members of the Church feel like, “Okay, new and everlasting covenant, or Abrahamic covenant, those are important things and I kind of get what they are, but mostly not. So let’s move on.” And I’ve been in lots of experiences, I mean, I teach the Old Testament and I teach Pearl of Great Price they come up in those and I give lectures all the time. I’ve been in lots of, settings where I just have that experience with people, “Okay. I know that’s important, but I don’t get it. So another topic.”  Right?  Next. And in fact, what I found is that most people don’t realize that the new and everlasting covenant, the Abrahamic covenant are really the same thing, that there are two different names for the same thing. We think marriage is the new and everlasting covenant, but we have had several church leaders who’ve made it clear that is a new and everlasting covenant.  Baptism is a new and everlasting covenant, but they’re all part of the new and everlasting covenant, which we enter into a baptism– both President Nelson, Brigham Young, and others have made that very clear– we enter into baptism and then we enter into it more fully in the temple, more fully in the temple marriage and so on and so on. But that’s the new and everlasting covenant made even before the world was between Joseph Smith tells us this, between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost initially; that God will save us and that the Son and the Holy Ghost will do their roles in making it possible for Him to save us.  And then established with Adam and then every now and then it has to be re-established, which is how it gets that name “new,” right?

So it’s everlasting because it’s been around before the creation of the world and we’ll be around after it, but it’s new because it keeps getting re-established. But one of the times it’s re-established is with Abraham. When it’s reestablished with Abraham, there’s a significant thing that happens. And that is Abraham is promised that anyone who is ever going to become part of this covenant from then on out will become part of his seed. And you get that just a little bit more funneled with Jacob where they’ll be part of the house of Israel, right? So from that time forward, Abraham’s descendants primarily through Jacob will be the stewards of the covenant. That doesn’t mean that it’s exclusive or anything and we can talk about that in a minute if we want, but the covenant will be funneled through that family. And that’s why the most frequent way we refer to it as the Abraham covenant, which is immensely important in scriptures, but we often miss it.

We don’t really recognize it. So I’d say that’s the first step is to recognize that those are the covenants, everything else, every covenant and ordinance you enter into is a step or an element of that covenant. But that’s the overarching covenant, which is God’s promise to save us. 

So once we realize that, then we need to start to recognize how it’s referred to in the scriptures. And this is what I find, especially for this challenge that President Nelson just gave us where he said between last conference and next conference study the lessons promised to Israel and the gathering of the House of Israel . . .  that’s where it gets tricky for people, right? 

There are a few places, especially in the Book of Mormon where that’s explicit, right?  Like I said, Mormon, Moroni, Nephi, Jacob and Christ talk about it pretty explicitly, but even then sometimes it’s hard to figure out what’s going on. And, and we miss things about this. So maybe I’ll digress just a little bit, because this is also part of the tools that will help us study this. And 1 Nephi 19:23, probably everyone listening has heard that verse where Nephi says that they likened the scriptures unto themselves. Right. And we typically hear that and we say, “Oh yeah. So that means that whatever is happening in other people, I kind of put myself in that situation and then it applies to me in some way.”  Which is true. That’s a fantastic secondary interpretation of that verse or application of it.

But if you read the context carefully, what Nephi’s talking about before it, and especially the verse he says, right after it in verse 24, what he is saying to Laman and Lemuel is this, the scriptures are about the Abrahamic covenant, or the House of Israel. You are of the House of Israel, therefore– and take the time to read verse 24 there– therefore what Isaiah and other prophets say, because they are speaking about the House of Israel and the covenant with Israel, they are about you. And so you can liken them to yourselves. And that is as true for us as it is for Laman and Lemuel. And hopefully we do a better job of it than they do. But the point is that really from Genesis 12 on the scriptures are about the Abrahamic covenant and the House of Israel, all scriptures are, and they presuppose tha, you know that and understand it.  And so if you don’t get it, then you’re going to miss a lot of things.  

But what’s more, they really are about how God works with the covenant people. And as covenant people, when we recognize that  then that’s what they’re teaching us– how God deals with us in the same way he’s dealt with our covenant ancestors. Then the scripture is applied to us in a new and powerful way. And they’re much more personal and much more applicable. Then they become family history, right? As much as when you read about Grandma Joanne or whoever, and you read her story and it’s wonderful. And it tells you something of who you are, and it gives you power. When you’re reading about Grandma Sarah and Grandma Rachel you should get something from that. That’s your family history and it’s equally applicable to you.

And in some ways, even more so, because these are the ones that God preserved for all of us to learn something from. So I’d say first, we have to understand what the covenants are. As we said, that you know that this is the covenant we’re all in. Then we have to recognize how applicable they are to us. And then we have to start to recognize covenant phrases. Because most of the time the scriptures talk about the covenant they don’t have a great big highlighted in red sign that says covenant. They just assume you know the covenant well enough that when they refer to it, you say, “Oh, they’re talking about the old covenant. Okay, I’ve got that here.” So I’ll just give you a couple of examples and then if we want to talk about some of those a little bit more, they’ll lead us into what I think is the heart of the covenant.

But for example, well, the heart of the covenant is the promise that God says, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” That’s the very core of the covenant. And we can talk about that later, but I’ll just tell you now that those phrases are used frequently in scripture. And if you don’t realize that that’s God and the prophets’ way of saying, “I’m talking about the covenant,” you just pass over them, but it’s everywhere in the scriptures. So that when God says “my people” automatically as soon as you recognize that you should be saying “Oh, He’s talking about covenant and He’s about to talk about blessings promised or what He will do for covenant people, because He said my people.”  Or when He says, “Then I will be your God,” or,  “I am your God,” and you say, “Oh, he’s talking about the blessings from this covenant relationship that we have with each other.” 

So phrases like that, or anytime He talks about prosperity or numerous posterity or protection or a guidance, or promised lands, those are all elements of the Abrahamic covenant. So once you recognize that, you’ll start to realize that He’s talking about the covenant and our covenant. So maybe I’ll just give you, and then I really will pause for a second, but maybe I’ll just give you two examples of scriptures you’re probably familiar with that you may not have recognized as being part of the Abrahamic covenant. 

One of those is in the 10 commandments. You’re probably familiar with the commandment to honor your father and your mother that thy days may be long in the land, which the Lord thy God has given thee. As soon as you read “land which God gave you,” you know, you’re talking about the Abrahamic covenant, and it’s a shorthand phrase for saying “honor your parents, so that I can give you all the blessings of the covenant,” right?

That commandment really has a covenant connotation attached to it. But we don’t recognize that if we don’t stop and think, “Oh, promise land He gave us, that’s a covenant phrase,” right? Or here’s another one that we quote all the time in the church that is powerful for us, but can be more powerful. Malachi says that Elijah will come to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children. Well, if in Malakai’s audience, this Jewish group, when they hear “fathers,” they think Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, right. That’s who he’s referring to. So he is going to hear what his audience will hear– he’s talking about that Elijah will come to help us remember the covenant right now. Here’s a really interesting thing. His audience would understand that. So what, when Christ quotes that in the book of Mormon, so what his audience, their understanding, right?

They’re all very covenant tuned to him. So Malachi says it that way, Christ quotes Malachi the exact same way, they all get covenant reference. By the time you get to Joseph Smith’s day, people aren’t getting Abrahamic covenant references so well anymore. So when Moroni quotes that he changes it just a little bit, and he says, “Elijah will turn your hearts to the promises made to the fathers,” so that we can’t miss– but we still do– but so you can’t miss that what he’s talking about is if it’s promises made to the father, that’s gotta be the Abrahamic covenant right there. There’s no other option there. So we usually think of this as about family history and it is, but not in the smaller version we think of it. It’s about the covenant God has made with all of mankind and that he wants us to be tuned into that covenant.

And part of doing that is getting our families to be part of that covenant, but also getting our ancestors to be part of that covenant and sealed to them so that we all become sealed together, part of this covenant all the way back to Abraham who tells us in Abraham chapter 1, that his covenant is going all the way back to Adam. So as soon as you recognize that you recognize, and this is what President Nelson has been talking about, that when you tune into the vast majestic sweeping story of the Abrahamic covenant, you realize every little thing you’re doing in family history or missionary work is part of that covenant. When you go to the temple and do work for someone, you’re helping them be part of the Abrahamic covenant, which is the gathering of Israel, you’re helping to gather Israel.

When you get someone to go to the temple and gets sealed, when you get someone to join the church and enter into baptism, you’re getting them to enter into the Abrahamic covenant, which is gathering Israel. And so that’s, I think what President Nelson is trying to get us to tune to, which is what Malachi and Christ and Elijah and Moroni were trying to get us to tune into as well. Right? And President Nelson is another in this great line of prophets that is getting us to turn our hearts to the fathers. So those are just a couple of examples of how we can start to find those promises in the scripture once we tune into those things.

Cali Black:

I love that because I feel like, kind of the example you said, I’m trying to take President Nelson’s challenge and so I’m looking for, “Where does it say these are promises to the house of Israel?” Like those references are few and far between but that’s just beautiful. Like there are those phrases we can learn that are clearly referring to these covenant people that can clue us in like, “okay, wait, this is what we’re talking about.” And also in general the whole scriptures are about it. We don’t have to be so picky and choosy instead it’s, “Hey, this is why I’m giving you these records is to learn about this beautiful covenant that I’ve made with all of your forefathers and here, keep it going.” I love that.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I was taking notes and looking at my scriptures and I think that I work on a lower level. My brain works on a lower level, so I need to, if we could just back up and restate what you said because I think it’s so powerful, but I want to make sure that anyone who’s working at my level can understand it. So I think what you were saying, and I want you to correct me if I’m wrong, is that the Abrahamic covenant is really just God’s covenant that He made in the premortal existence, that He was going to be our God and He was going to help us get back to Him. And that has been the covenant He’s made dispensation after dispensation. Is that right?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

That is really well said. That’s really well said. That’s the essence of the covenant. And then it has lots of little subsets each time it’s given, it’s given in a similar way, but with different things tailored to the group and the individual as it’s new again, it’s reestablishing. And you know after we get to Abraham and Jacob, then a key component of that is that He will gather Israel and we can talk about why He would do that in a minute if you want. But the essence of it is this is God’s promise that He will bring us back home. So you nailed it.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Oh, good. I’m so glad I was feeling like I wasn’t nailing it. So then from there, if we’re part of covenant Israel, that just means that we’re part of God’s true church that has access to the covenants that make it possible to return to Him. And that then the gathering Israel is trying to help people to come to the church where they can make covenants that will bring them back to God and help us keep our part of the covenant.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Very good. I would reverse the order just a little bit. Maybe not everyone will agree with me honestly, but I would reverse it this way. . . so you said that we’re gathering Israel, which is just joining the church. I would put it this way. The first step is to get people to make a covenant. So they join the church but the point of joining the church is to become part of the House of Israel and I would put it in this way. God is going to save families only. So the unit that He works with and He saves families, and that’s why He asked a family to do this work. It’s not exclusive. Everyone not only can be part of the House of Israel. We beg, plead and do everything we can to get people to be part of the House of Israel in this life or the next.

We want you dead or alive. 

We’re doing everything we can to get everyone to join the House of Israel. But that’s the family that He asked to do the work, and that’s the family that He’s going to save. So everyone’s welcome. But you have to make the choice to be part of that family. So the Church is an organization and this is something that, so President Nelson’s initiatives may seem separate, but they’re really all part of the same thing. This focus on we’re home centered church supported is the same thing as saying we’re Israel centered and all the rest of us are trying to get people to join the house of Israel. So it starts with your little family and it gets to a bigger family, bigger until finally you get to the House of Israel and that’s where we’re trying to get everyone to be. So I would just have changed it that way a little bit.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Okay. I told you, I expected to have my mind blown and it’s happened. I just want you to know my mind is blown.  As you’re talking about families, that brings up a question for me about finding out in your patriarchal blessing that you are part of the family of Israel, and it tells you your specific lineage within the House of Israel. And I remember getting my patriarchal blessing and that was the most boring part. I’ve got to be honest, the rest of it, I’m like, “Tell me who my husband will be!” You know everything else was super exciting. And then I hear that and I’m like, “Oh, okay.”  Not exciting. So why is that actually an exciting part? Why does our lineage within the House of Israel even matter?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Great, great question. And I think your reaction is what most people have. Although President Nelson has talked about this a little bit and if we understood better– and we typically don’t when we’re like 14 or whatever and getting our patriarchal blessing– if we understood better instead, that should be maybe the most exciting part.  Because what it does is it takes you and the rest of your patriarchal blessing– which is your individual life and how it will affect some other people– and it fits you into the grandest story in the history of the earth.  And what President Nelson talks about, he says that the Abrahamic covenant is of transcendent significance; it puts you in that story. So it takes your individual part of the tapestry, your individual little corner, and it puts it into this beautiful tapestry and allows you then to do exactly what He’s asking us to do: to take your blessings and fit them into these big blessings– this huge story and all of these blessings, all throughout the scripture, so that you know how you fit in.  This is God telling you personally where you fit into the covenant, and that’s a big deal.

I think that means something to us. Now, we also have these things, you know, the different tribes have different blessings, and that can be a little bit tricky to figure out, especially because most of the blessings are really kind of obscure and hard to understand. Recently as I was writing a book about the Abrahamic covenant, I recently tried to go through all the places where it talked about each blessing for each tribe and make some sense of that. And I think that can be helpful, but what we have to remember is that it will play out for each person individually, but it’s worthwhile to try and understand. So I want to be clear that in that book, I’m not trying to tell everyone what their life is going to be like, but I am trying to say, these are the historical blessings for those tribes. And then you can try and take what’s going on in your life and see how it attaches there, but then attach it back to Jacob and then to Abraham and then to Adam. Right. So it fits you in a wonderful way.

Cali Black:

So what, what blessings do you see as we study the Abrahamic covenant, the new and everlasting covenant, as we’re learning about the House of Israel, what blessings do you see, coming to your life specifically, or just members to members of the Church in general? Why do you feel that this is an important thing to study?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

We really don’t have time to go through all of that. So maybe let me just spend a moment on the biggest, most important one.

So I had an interesting experience– I’ve been teaching for about 27 years now at BYU, for a while at BYU-Hawaii, in different places, I did Institute for a little while– but mostly BYU.  I taught Old Testament courses and Pearl of Great Price courses. And so we go through the Abrahamic covenant in there, and I’ve done lectures really all over the world on this. And I typically would go through a bullet point early on, I think back in 1994, when I first taught Old Testament, I tried to go all through all the scriptures and find all the places where I could say here’s the blessing of the Abrahamic covenant and make a list of them. And then I just put that up on PowerPoints in bullet point fashion. And that served well in the classroom; bullet points were great.

But when I wrote this book that I was talking about, I’ll just say that for the last six years I’ve felt the need to really intensively study the Abraham covenant; now I’ve casually studied it for a long time, but really, really intensively studied it for the last six years. And so I’ve had several articles come out on it in the last couple of years, a couple more about to come out, but I felt like I needed to try and put all of it together. So I wrote a book about it which I just feel blessed in the timing that I just submitted this book when President Nelson asked us to do that. And this book is about how to recognize the blessings of Abrahamic covenant in your life and what the gathering of Israel is about.  It’s called “God Will Prevail.”  It’s coming out in mid-February and the whole point behind it, Covenant Book really rushed it because they felt like this will help people better be able to understand the Abrahamic covenant. So everything we’ve talked about here is in much greater detail there. But when I wrote this book, I thought, “Well, bullet point’s not fantastic for a book. So I want to write about it, not just give them a bullet point. I want to say something about each of these.”  So that forced me to say, “Okay, well, how do I group these things together?” And as I tried to figure out, “okay, these ones seem to go together,” suddenly it made sense to me in a way that I wish I’d done twenty-five years ago.

I understand the covenant so much better just in the last six to eight months, I guess it was about a year ago that I was actually putting these groupings together that I understand them so much better as a result of this. I also came to realize what the key element of the covenant is. And it is encapsulated in what we already said in this phrase, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” But we often say, so what does that mean? Well, this is what it means. God wants to have a deeper relationship with you, which in the end, the point of the whole plan of salvation until we can become more like Him, we can’t have the full kind of relationship he would like to have with us.

Like we are just too distant, too unlike him to have the capacity to have that relationship. The point of the covenant is to deepen our relationship with Him. And when you make that covenant with Him, it changes your nature.  So think about it: you enter into the covenant of baptism, that’s when you’re cleansed and also you received the Holy Ghost, you’re sanctified, you become holy. You become a different person. 

And that’s exactly the description that God gives to covenant Israel. You will be a peculiar people, meaning different than everyone else, a nation of priests and priestesses, a Holy nation.  All of those, every single one of those, what they mean is “different”, “no longer worldly,
but “more godly.” That’s the root meaning of holy or sacred means “different or set apart from the normal, the profane, the mundane.”  

You’re no longer normal. You are different. 

In fact, you are more like God and being more like God you can have a different relationship with Him. You can be closer to Him. And this is part of why, for example, in my opinion, when Christ is on the earth, He says, “I’m not sent to the Gentiles. I’m just sent to the house of Israel.” Because we’re so cut off from God’s presence that God doesn’t interact with us directly. He interacts with us through his mediator, which is His Son, but for the most part, His son doesn’t interact with all mankind directly. He interacts with those who have entered into a relationship with Him and the Father and have their nature changed enough that He interacts with them. And then He sends them to go get everyone else to make that same covenant so that they can interact with Him so that He can bring them to the Father.

So we have these degrees of holiness, which is represented in the temple, in the tabernacle and all sorts of other place.  Degrees of holiness that allow us to come closer and closer to the Son and then the Father so that we can interact with Them. So what He’s trying to do with the covenant that will change you so that you can have a closer relationship with Him. And when you do have that closer relationship, you’ll have access to greater power. So for example, the Holy Ghost, right? Parts of the promises of the covenant are that God will guide you and protect you.  Well a lot of that happens through the Holy Ghost, but it happens through a whole bunch of other ways, but probably the biggest difference– and this is one that’s not easily detectable– is you have access to something that is a Hebrew word that is difficult to translate.

So most often in the scriptures is, well, there’s no good English equivalent for it. The word that’s used most often is “loving kindness,” but sometimes it’s just “mercy.”  And I think– I haven’t double checked this– but I think every time you read “loving kindness,” it’s “chesed”– but sometimes there are other words that are used for it– “chesed” literally means “covenantal love and mercy,” a mercy and a love available only to those who are in the covenant. Well, let me put it this way. It means “everlasting, unbreakable, covenantal, love and mercy”. So that’s a kind of love and mercy available only to those who are in a covenant with God that are not available to anyone else. And what it means is He will never, ever stop working with you and never give up on you.

So first of all, when we hear about a special kind of love with God, well wait, does He love everyone? Yes, He does. So maybe, and I talk about this in the book a little bit more than we can do here, but an example I used there is like my wife. I think she loves everybody, but I hope she loves me differently than she loves everybody else. Because we’re in a covenant together. And that has created a bond between us, which also created a common cause, common goals, common experiences, and all of that has just created a different kind of love. As much as we would like to love everyone else that way it’s impossible without that kind of a connection; that just can’t happen. And it’s the same thing with God; when we are in that covenant relationship with Him, which changes our nature, we agreed to do His work and His will it creates a different level of love and mercy and willingness for Him to forgive and work with us again and again and again.

Another way you’ll read it is when it talks about His everlasting mercies, that it’s everlasting, it’s never going to stop.  This in fact is why God will gather Israel, no matter how many times they mess up. And this is the great message of the scriptures. And I’ll tell you just personally . . .  so one of the books I wrote was about seeing God’s mercy, especially through the Old Testament, because I see, and I know I’m weird in this, but I see the Old Testament speaking of God’s mercy and patience more than any other book of scripture.  And what you have in there is a group of people who mess up again and again, and again, and in crazy incessant ways. And they never stop messing up. And in the midst of that, God never stops working with them.

Sometimes He can work with them easy, and sometimes He has to work with them hard, but He never stops working with them.  Including– and think of it in this way– the scattering of Israel, which starts in 732 BC is God humbling Israel. And we’re now in what a 2,500 year cycle of Him still working, right? That’s a process. He started to humble Israel to bring them back to Him. And He’s patient enough to take 2,500 years to gather them back to Him. By the time the Restoration starts and the gathering of Israel begins, that’s 2,500 years. And that’s when He’s finally saying, “Okay, I’ve humbled you enough that I’m bringing you back now.”  And that’s the reason there will be a gathering of Israel is because once He made that covenant He said, “I don’t care how long it takes.  I don’t care what you do. It’s never over. I’ll do whatever it takes to bring you back.”

 And the beauty is that somewhere in the middle of there, Israel, God scattered throughout all the earth. So that now, as He brings Israel black, they can bring everybody with them. They can bring the whole world with them as He brings them back. So that’s powerful to see us as part of that big story, but then let’s remember not only is that covenant with all of Israel, that’s a covenant He made with you individually. You have “chesed” with God now, and it doesn’t matter how stupid you are and how many times you mess up, He’s not done with you. He’s not going to give up. And you’re never so far removed from Him that He won’t keep trying to bring you back to Him. And that understanding of that relationship with God has changed my understanding of who I am and of what my purpose is in life and of my relationship with God in a way that is so tremendously comforting and beautiful, that it really is transformative. And I think it is for anyone in life. I think it is, especially for people who are struggling say, with depression or anxiety and often struggle with feeling the spirit in those instances. But hopefully they can know that if God will take 2,500 years with Israel, however long it is with them, it’s going to be less than that. And He will bring you back. And that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing to understand.

Kristen Walker Smith: 

My mind was blown again. I so appreciate everything you just said. And actually one of my favorite phrases in the Old Testament is about how his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. It says it so many times, and I love that testimony of yours that He will not give up on us. 

Now I want to bring it down to Kristen level, because again, I think what you said was so beautiful, but I want to make sure that I’m understanding right and that everyone that listens is understanding. 

So what I heard– and I freaked out in the middle there was because something suddenly clicked and it made sense– is that God is working through Jesus, who is talking to His covenant children and that God and Jesus want us to bring the others who are outside of the covenant, into the covenant so they then can have Jesus as their mediator with the Father to bring them to Him.

 Is that right? 

So it’s like these layers of mediators, and we’re actually a mediator between Christ and the people who don’t know Him yet, and we’re bringing them to Him so they can then get to God, is that right?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 

You have a way of saying things perfectly– you nailed that and I think you’re right. You just described it. How, in some ways we are symbols or types or figures of Christ, right? That’s why we’re saviors on Mount Zion because we are mediators to help others to Christ so He can bring them to the Father. Now I do want to add in there lest we be misunderstood I don’t think that that means that anyone who’s not part of the covenant never has an experience with Jesus. I don’t think that.  Lots of people do, they have experiences with Jesus, but not the kinds and the consistency that they can within a covenant context.

Cali Black:

Yeah, that’s awesome. And one of the things that made the biggest impression that you said is it’s really all about love; it’s that love. I love that analogy of your love with your spouse. Like it’s a different, stronger kind of love that binds together. You’re on the same page, you’re creating life, you have these common goals together, and then you’re trying to do as much good as you have. That just really clicked for me– this is all about love. And of course He loves everyone, but it’s this special everlasting love and kindness that we are seeking that we can’t fully reciprocate yet. We’re never going to be able to reciprocate that until we have become even more perfected, but we can at least do our best to covenant and try and become a little better. And He is doing more than His fair share of, of showing that love to us right now. Yes.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

And of course, as a parent, He wants to have that kind of loving relationship with all of His children, but His children are going to have to make some choices to be able to have that relationship. And that’s what He’s asked us to do. That’s why President Nelson is saying– I think. . .  I can’t read President Nelson’s mind– but I that’s why I think President Nelson is saying this is the most important work. This is a transcendent work because it’s what God wants more than anything else is to get all of His children into that kind of a relationship with Him.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Kerry, this has been beautiful. I have to be honest, I don’t think many people are excited to talk about the House of Israel and I am now pumped.  I’m pumped and I cannot wait to share this with everyone because I think everyone needs a Kerry in their back pocket just reminding them repeatedly that this is what it’s about. So thank you so so much. 

As we finish us we always like to ask our guests on the podcast– kind of in the spirit of what President Nelson has been inviting us to do, where we recognize the spirit more in our life– so we would love to ask you, how do you #HearHim?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

What a profound question. I’m glad you asked. I always ask that question. I would say that the primary way is of course through the Holy Ghost; but for me primarily, as I study the scriptures, or as I have time or make time– I shouldn’t say “have” but “make” time– to stop and think, and then either try and talk about it with others or write things down. That’s when the ideas come. And then I just have to recognize that those ideas when suddenly you understand, it suddenly it’s delicious, or something along those lines, that that’s the spirit. It’s honestly part of why I write or teach, because that’s when I learn; it’s a little bit of that idea of, “open your mouth and it shall be filled.” I can’t tell you how many times, either in a classroom or a lecture, or as I’m writing, I suddenly say something that I didn’t fully get how it all went together before, but as I say it I’m learning and I know it’s true. And so it’s the study, the pondering, and then the doing something with it is how I hear him.

Cali Black: 

I love that. And I feel like I relate to that a lot too. There’s something powerful in trying to teach or put concepts into words that the spirit fills in those missing gaps. Thank you so much for being here today. Um, what’s the name of your book that’s coming out again?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

God Will Prevail: Ancient Covenants, Modern Blessings, and the Gathering of the House of Israel– I can’t remember other people come up with these titles.  My original title was the Abrahamic Covenant Path, which is also a good title, but I liked this one even better. So I don’t remember it exactly

Cali Black: 

Whatever it’s called. I am excited to get it myself. 

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Honestly the whole point behind it, the whole reason I wrote it, and the reason that they’re pushing it is because we want to help people be able to recognize the covenant and the blessings that are available in the covenant and do what President Nelson asked them to do. And so I’m thrilled if this podcast or any of the different things I’ve written and anything that helps anyone find the beauty and power of the blessings of the covenant, the way it’s affected me, that’s what this is all about.

Cali Black: 

Thank you again so much for your time and for those listening, thank you for coming closer to Christ with us a few minutes at a time. We’ll see you next time.

The post One Minute Scripture Study podcast episode with special guest Kerry Muhlestein first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

I love Instagram and I don’t plan on leaving it, but I know that so many people prefer to listen rather than to read.

Plus, I love to talk about as much as I love to write!

But as much as I wanted to start a podcast, I knew the timing wasn’t right.

Until Kristen Smith invited me to speak as a guest on her podcast.

And after we finished recording our episode together, I felt the desire to work with her more.

The desire was just natural. (And as I told Kristen about the desire to work with her more, I told her I hoped she didn’t think I was sounding weird or obsessed! Luckily, she didn’t!)

Eventually, after many conversations, Kristen invited me to permanently co-host the One Minute Scripture Study podcast with her.

And boy, did that feel right.

I had held onto such a strong desire to start a podcast, and now the opportunity was presenting itself, and I felt the Spirit confirm that this was the answer I had been waiting for.

My desire to share my testimony in new ways was the prompting I needed to guide my decisions.

I’ve been really struck by David, Oliver, and Martin’s passionate pleadings this week.

I had always pictured Joseph asking God who the Three Witnesses to the gold plates should be, and receiving these three men’s names.

But really, David, Oliver, and Martin were all moved with a desire to become one of the witnesses that they knew had been prophesied of.

And they ASKED Joseph to be witnesses to the gold plates.

Section 17 is the result of Joseph asking the Lord if these three men were acceptable for this sacred responsibility, and the Lord approving.

But these weren’t random names that the Lord happened to approve—

Because they each had a burning, righteous desire to be a witness in the first place.

Our righteous desires can be promptings from the Lord on how we can use our talents to build up the kingdom of God.

The things that we really want to do? The things that are righteous, selfless, or useful?

Those desires can be the first whisperings of the Spirit on what direction we should head, or what opportunities we should be on the lookout for.

And then we can ask.

We can ask to be included, we can ask to be in consideration.

We can let our righteous desires drive us to righteous action.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Righteous desires first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

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We also had a great number of requests for a transcript of this conversation! So without further ado, here is the transcript for Episode 266, and interview with Elaine Dalton.

Kristen Walker Smith:

All right. Welcome friends. We are so excited. We’ve got a special, special guest here on the podcast today. The wonderful Elaine Dalton. And if you are in your twenties or older, you know exactly who she is, but for our younger audience, would you mind introducing yourself?

Elaine Dalton:

Oh, I’d love to. And thank you for having me on this podcast. I get lonely. I love to talk. So I’m Elaine Dalton and I served in the church on the general level as the general young woman president from 2008 to 2013. So I have an ongoing interest and passion and desire to help all young women. And I consider myself a young woman. So there you go. There’s no age differentiation there.

Cali Black:

I have to say I graduated high school in 2010. So sister Dalton, you are my young women’s general president that I think of. I just imagine going to the church, listening to your general messages and yeah, you have a special place in my heart.

Elaine Dalton:

Well, do you know, I call all of you my girls. You’re just my girls. I just claim you.

Cali Black:

Absolutely.

Elaine Dalton:

At one of the firesides I spoke at, it was with young men and young women, and one of the young men came up afterwards and he said, “I’ve heard you speak three times now.” And he says, “Sister Dalton, I think that you were assigned in the premortal world to just follow our generation through.” And I thought, “Well, I hope so. I hope that’s the case,” and maybe that’s why I have such a love for all of you.

Cali Black:

I will claim you.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I love that. We’ve got you on specifically today, not only because we’re … I guess you don’t really have fans in the church, but we’re fans. If you can have spiritual fans, we are, but also specifically to talk about your awesome book, No Ordinary Women. And I have to put in a plug for it. This book, I mean, if you’re watching the video, you can see. I have a million post-it notes in it and it is just phenomenal in that you can pick it up and read it in one day and it can change you. It can absolutely change you.

Kristen Walker Smith:

So we wanted to ask you some questions about things that you wrote in the book to help our audience understand a little bit more about how they are not ordinary women no matter how ordinary they feel. Would that be okay?

Elaine Dalton:

That’d be awesome.

Kristen Walker Smith:

All right, Cali, go ahead and start us off.

Cali Black:

Sure. So one thing that I love that I feel like you always made me feel important. Like I had something to share. And so I’ve tried to carry that with me. I can influence my family, my neighborhood, my community, I can change the world and I try and keep that with me. But I also have two kids right now, three and one years old.

Cali Black:

And sometimes my days are make a meal, change a diaper, clean up a mess and repeat times a million. So I’m just wondering what advice do you have for women who are trying to make a difference, but it seems like we’re kind of limited by maybe the circumstances we’re in right now?

Elaine Dalton:

Oh that’s such a good question. And here’s what I’m going to tell you. You are making a difference every day, every hour. And I think so much of the focus is on what we can do out in the world we say. What we can do as far as our earning power goes, as far as a career and so on and so forth. But I don’t think there could be any greater contribution that a woman can make than to raise happy, well adjusted, righteous, contributing children into adults.

Elaine Dalton:

And the effect of that has ripple effects that just go on for the eternities. So say I raised six children. I changed diapers. I did the same thing. I cried about the laundry. I thought, “Oh, I could be doing something meaningful.” And I looked beyond the mark because I was doing the most meaningful thing I could’ve ever done. That my five sons serve missions, the people they converted, the families they changed. And so you set that solid firm foundation in your family and you do that and you change the world.

Elaine Dalton:

But then here’s the giant secret. After your children are raised and out of the house, your house stays so clean, it’s boring. And you have so much time to make a contribution. Look what I’ve been doing. And right now I’m the president of the Stella Oaks foundation, which is raising money to provide scholarships for young single mothers. So there’s just tons of time to make any kind of contribution you want aside from the gigantic world changing one, which is being a mother. A good mother. And so can make your home a temple, just keep changing those diapers and just have fun doing it.

Cali Black:

Oh, man I love that.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Oh. I don’t know about having fun changing diapers, but I love that insight.

Elaine Dalton:

No, but it’s funny because now I’m a grandmother and I have my little grandkids come here and I I think it’s the do-over. When you’re a grandmother, then you get to do what you probably should have done all the time as a mom. So they’ll say, “Can I have this?” And I’ll say, “Sure.” Can I go do this? Oh, sure.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Oh, you’re a true grandma. That is awesome. Well, kind of in line with that, another thing you talked about in the book is that the world tries to put women into this mold and it tries to make you think that you don’t have influence and you don’t have power in this world unless you fit into this mold. And I’m wondering if you could describe that mold. What do you feel like it is the world is trying to make us feel like we have to become to be worthwhile?

Elaine Dalton:

Well, I think what’s happening in the world is that we are being put in a position, not so much a mold, but more in a position to compare. To compare ourselves with other people. And when we’re put in that position to compare, sometimes we have a tendency to say, “I want to be like that. I want to have that home. I want to have her hair. I want to even know the color of her lipstick, because if I have the lipstick on, I’ll be her.”

Elaine Dalton:

And I think, again, that takes the focus off the amazing thing that it is that we are individual. That we were created unique and individual. One by one with, with the exact things that we need to perform our unique divine mission here on the earth. Even the color of our eyes, the color of our hair, how tall we are, our personality. We’re custom made to do a very unique theme thing here on the earth.

Elaine Dalton:

And so as we focus on trying to be someone else, we’re totally taken off the mark, which is to focus on being the best us we can be and the best unique, gifted, talented, guided, inspired woman that we can be. Does that make any sense?

Kristen Walker Smith:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. And I think that’s one thing I’ve learned so much as I’ve worked with young women, is that Satan, if he can’t get them through sin, he’ll get them through distraction. And I think you’re so right. You’re so right. That-

Elaine Dalton:

[crosstalk 00:07:49].

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yeah.

Elaine Dalton:

Distracted, discouraged, and disqualified. Those kind of just go hand in hand. You get distracted and you forget who you are, then you get very discouraged and then you do things that are not smart and not becoming a daughter of God.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yeah. Oh I love that. The three D’s that’s super powerful and that kind of fits in with another question I had. You talked in your book about my ancestor, Kristina, which I thought was so exciting.

Elaine Dalton:

I didn’t know that. That’s wonderful.

Kristen Walker Smith:

So if you’re not familiar with this story, there is a statue of Kristina who is my ancestor in Denmark. And she was one of the first people from Denmark to come over to Utah. And she was just a teenager when this happened. And so the sculpture that my uncle made is of her standing against the wind with the wind. Oh, you’ve got!

Elaine Dalton:

Look at it!

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yes. I don’t even have it and I related to him. I need to get it.

Elaine Dalton:

I love this. Keep going.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yes, so it’s the wind blowing against her. And I think that so much of what we face that distraction, discouragement, what was the last D?

Elaine Dalton:

Disqualified.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Disqualified. It’s like the spiritual winds blowing against us. But you talk about these small decisions like Kristina made that one day that she was going to get on that boat and how it’s blessed generations. My family is here because of Kristina. So what do you feel like are the small decisions that we, women and girls are making every day that will make such a big influence on our future and the future generations that come after us? What are those small decisions?

Elaine Dalton:

Well, first you got to look at Kristina. Look at the winds blowing so hard, her ponytail’s straight out. I just love that.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Isn’t it awesome?

Elaine Dalton:

And I think it’s kind of almost symbolic for this day where we’re just getting all these winds of opposition and yet there she is standing firm. And in Denmark, I went to Denmark and stood on that pier with Kristina and she’s bigger than life there. And it’s so amazing. And I remember being with the sculptor, Dennis Smith, who said, “This is my great, great grandmother. And on her decision that day hinged my eternal destiny.”

Elaine Dalton:

And I was so touched by that. And that was a long time before I became the general young woman president. On that decision. So I think we do make daily big decisions. I think getting out of bed in the morning is a big decision sometimes. I think making your bed is a difference making decision.

Elaine Dalton:

I think every decision we make forms little habits that become who we are. I also think that we all need to get in the habit of making inspired decisions. And especially in this day and time, I think more than anything that we should be trying to do is to be able to kneel down in the morning and pray for the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and then try to tune in to how he’s guiding you. And sometimes it’s always different, but as time goes on, I think you’ll become familiar with how he speaks to you and when.

Elaine Dalton:

That’s happened for me. I’m old. It’s taken a long time, but it has happened for me. I know exactly when he’s speaking to me now. And so I think if we can make daily guided decisions how to use our time, who to call, who to reach out to, what we should be doing to develop ourselves, setting our goals and making ourselves mind ourselves. It’s still personal progress.

Elaine Dalton:

We might not have a program, but I didn’t think personal progress was ever a program. I think every day we have to say, “I’m going to make some progress today.” And I love what the young women do now. They’re saying, “Make progress spiritually, mentally, physically, and socially.” Just do it. And I love that. So decisions are big. They are. They define everything.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I love that. Oh, that’s so powerful. Cali, you had a question for her though.

Cali Black:

Yeah. And just going off that, I have felt that learning curve where I just remember being a young woman and thinking, “How will I ever be guided by the spirit all day long?” That just seems like such a big thing. And it was never like, “Yes, now I’ve got it.” But I feel like slowly now I can say I have multiple times a day where I’m like, “Okay, do I need to help this kid or do I need to do this?”

Cali Black:

I’m trying to balance my life. And I just get this little thought, like I realize the spirit is just a good thought telling me, “Hey, just play with your kid right now.” And I do it. And then I feel that little quiet assurance that I’m doing the right thing. And I just think it’s this slow progression that doesn’t seem super powerful all the time. But it’s those small moments that I think add up a lot.

Elaine Dalton:

Oh, I love hearing you say that, Cali.

Cali Black:

Yeah. Okay. So my question for you, kind of going back to comparison because I feel like that’s a big thing is women is we’re not only comparing ourselves against other women, but sometimes we get on this slippery slope of, well, this isn’t as bad as something else. I feel like, especially with media watching shows or TV, I sometimes get caught up in, well, it’s not as bad as this terrible thing.

Cali Black:

And so it’s going to be fine or even something that I’ve done before that I may have repented of while it’s not as bad. How do you recommend kind of facing that? Not getting on this desensitization where you’re like, “Ah, I’m sure it’s all fine,” but getting back to what really is truth.

Elaine Dalton:

Well, I call that the scale of descending mediocrity and we just keep saying, “Well, it’s not as bad as,” and then we’re there and then we go, “Well, this isn’t as bad as,” and we just keep descending into mediocrity really when we should be, I think as daughters of God, I don’t think anyone truly comprehends what that means. That we shouldn’t be saying, “It’s not as bad as.”

Elaine Dalton:

We should say, “What is virtuous, lovely praiseworthy and a good report,” and then seek after those things. Because I find that, well, here’s the reason to do it. This is the principle. It’s about having the spirit with you always. And you get in a situation where you’re listening to a movie where there may be two or three words that are very offensive.

Elaine Dalton:

Not only just you, but to the Spirit, to the Holy Ghost. What happens? He’s not going to hang around. He’s Holy and he doesn’t do that. And so I think the whole principle is I want to guard what I listen to, what I watch, what I allow into my life, into my home. I want to guard my thoughts because I can’t do this life alone. I seriously, and now even more than ever, I have got to have help because who’s right.

Elaine Dalton:

We’re going, is it him? Is it this? Is it that? And I just am finding more and more, I really need help because everything looks good. Everything looks true and I need that guidance. So back to the Holy Ghost again, and as far as people saying, “Well, I don’t know whether I have it all the time and I can’t really recognize that I’m being guided,” Elder Bednar taught me a great principle.

Elaine Dalton:

He said, “Elaine, you are,” he called me a good girl. “You are a good girl. And you go to church, right? Yes. Do you take the sacrament? Yes. Are you trying to do what’s right? Yes.” And he said, “Then what you need to pay attention to and worry about is when you don’t feel the spirit. Because you carry that with you. When you renew that covenant, you make it at the sacrament to always have his spirit. You’ve become pure, you’ve repented. And so you’re carrying that spirit with you. And as you don’t do anything to cause him to go home, to leave you, you have him with you.”

Elaine Dalton:

So he said, “Pay very close attention when you don’t feel the spirit.” And that was so helpful to me and still is. You walk into a room and all of a sudden you’ll just go, “I don’t feel the spirit here. I better leave or I better be on guard,” or whatever that is. So I’m so grateful to Elder Bednar for teaching me that because most of the time, I think we all have the spirit with us. Look at your eyes. I can see it in your eyes.

Cali Black:

That’s a cool way to flip that around though. I love that. Instead of am I feeling the spirit, instead focus on, when do I know the spirit has left and then make the change then. I’m going to remember that one.

Elaine Dalton:

Just make those decisions. Don’t rationalize. It’s so easy to. There’s some really good shows on Netflix right now. And everyone’s recommending them. And I put one on and thought, “Oh, this will be really great.” And I turned it off in about two seconds because for me, it’s really hard work to get the spirit back once he leaves. And I don’t like to go through all that hard work and fasting and praying and stuff. I like to eat.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I have to say I was so excited when I read that part of the book. Because I made a promise to myself back in my early twenties, probably actually when you were at the general young women’s president about my media use and it has been hard to stand up for that because there is not a rule. There’s no rule that says exactly what words you should not listen to or exactly what scenes you should walk out on. And so I have struggled for years to explain why I treat media the way I do and why I will not watch what I will not watch.

Kristen Walker Smith:

And when I read that, I thought, “Oh, she just put into words all of these feelings I’ve had.” So it made me cry when I read it. I just thought, “Oh, this is so powerful for young women to realize that you cannot kick the spirit out and expect him to come right back in.” He doesn’t just sit there waiting and he’s like, “Oh, the show’s over. I’m back.” I love what you just said. I think that is a powerful distraction of Satan, those media choices. So thank you for that.

Elaine Dalton:

It’s the same thing how we ask young women to be modest. Modesty for everyone is different. It really is different. And it just depends on, I think when you feel good. When you feel you’re actually portraying yourself as royalty. And so when we say, “Just dress modestly,” it’s not to make the young women unpopular or look crazy. It’s just it’s to have the constant companionship of that member of the Godhead.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yes. Oh, absolutely. And this is a little bit of an aside, but talking about members of the Godhead, something that you and I have in common is that we both had the experience of having our fathers when we were young become ill and praying for our dads to get better and having them actually not get better. My dad died when I was seven. And how old were you? Were you in college when that happened?

Elaine Dalton:

Yeah, first year at BYU.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Okay. I struggled for years to figure out why I should bother praying if, when I want something so much and I pray so hard and I fast, it’s not going to happen the way I want necessarily. So I would love to hear your insights on that. Why is it worth praying if you’re not going to get exactly what you want out of that prayer?

Elaine Dalton:

Do you know what? That’s a question that I think a lot of young women ask, not just you and me. I think that young women have difficult things they’re facing. Their parents are getting divorced and they’re praying so hard that that won’t happen. And they’re praying so hard for different things. I met one young woman who decided she wasn’t ever going to go to church again because her cat got sick and she prayed and prayed for him to get [inaudible 00:20:42] and he didn’t.

Elaine Dalton:

And I told her the story of my father, and you’ve probably told that to many young women too. And the answer is, I don’t know why my dad didn’t get better. You don’t know either. But what we do know is what Nephi told us. Nevertheless, I know that God loveth his children. And so I never, when I didn’t get answers to prayers, I never quit knowing that for some reason. That he loved me.

Elaine Dalton:

And so I kept praying and my prayer wasn’t now, “Help my dad get better.” It was, “Why did you take him?” And I pestered the Lord about that, but I didn’t stop praying. I just kept asking and asking. And as you know, in my book, I maybe have told that in the book, I got my answer, but it took a long time and it didn’t come in a concrete this is why.

Elaine Dalton:

It was Proverbs 3:5 and 6. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him. And he will direct your paths. In other words, there’s a plan in place, Elaine, and this is all part of a marvelous plan. And someday you will understand all of this and be so grateful to our father in heaven. So I guess my advice to any young woman who’s been praying and felt like her prayers aren’t answered is to just hang on because I can testify now every prayer is answered.

Elaine Dalton:

Sometimes not the way we want, but every single prayer is answered. And every answer comes from a loving heavenly father. And it always turns to your good. Always. My dad’s been there when I’ve had babies. My dad’s been there when I got married. My dad has been here when I’ve been ill. My dad was there when I gave my first conference talk. And I know that. I don’t think that heaven is that far away.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I agree. That’s such a powerful testimony. Thank you for that.

Cali Black:

That’s beautiful.

Elaine Dalton:

Thanks for the question.

Cali Black:

As we’re coming to the close here, I was just speaking to a group of young women a couple of nights ago, and I was talking about scripture study and I asked them what’s your biggest struggle with having good scripture study right now? Thinking that they were going to be like, “I fall asleep,” or, “I don’t understand them,” or something. And here these young women were like, “I’m not sure how exactly to use the footnotes effectively.” Or, “Isaiah is a little bit confusing.” And I’m like, “What?”

Cali Black:

These young women were blowing me away with what they were already doing in scripture study compared to what I felt I was doing in scripture study at that time. And yet I know so many of them just feel like your book says ordinary. They feel so ordinary. And yet me, I don’t even feel that old, but I still felt looking at them filled with this love of you are doing so much better than you think you are.

Cali Black:

So I’m just curious if you have any kind of big message that you would want to give to all of the young women or the women in the church of how do we get out of that ordinary feeling? How do we tap into that love?

Elaine Dalton:

Well, I think we’ve talked about some of the principles. One is stop comparing. And the second is let yourself be filled with the Spirit and the light that the Spirit brings because the Spirit will not only testify of the savior and our heavenly father, but he’ll testify to you and your divine identity.

Elaine Dalton:

So those two things are critical. But I think that you should maybe … I did a study a long time ago about who am I? I asked that question. When I study the scriptures, I usually study them asking a question. And when I realized who not only I am, but who every woman and every young woman in the world right now on the earth today is, it was absolutely mind boggling. In fact, when I am in the presence of young women or a group of women, I always feel so humble because I know who they are.

Elaine Dalton:

And in my calling, that knowledge was actually made even more clear to me. I knew who those women were. And I was, I could see the nobility of their spirits, if that makes any sense at all. I could stand at the pulpit and look at a group of women and I could see who God sees. And if anyone ever had that glimpse, oh my goodness. It is absolutely phenomenal.

Elaine Dalton:

But it is also very humbling because you see, we are not ordinary. We have been reserved to be on the earth right now because of how valiant we were in the premortal realms, because we chose Jesus Christ and the plan the father authored. And we bore such strong testimony of that to others as we fought that war that we’ve been reserved to be here now to do the same thing. To bear that witness and that testimony of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Elaine Dalton:

And I think our prophets have been calling to us for a long time. And President Nelson now even has issued a plea. He says, “A plea to my sisters. Just arise to that stature. You are the women that are fulfilling prophecy right now. You’re the ones who will bring women of the world into the church in large numbers because you’re different in happy ways.” And so I think I would just in ending, just say, you’re not ordinary. And remember you have to be different from the world in order to make a difference in the world.

Elaine Dalton:

You have to be different. And so value that uniqueness that is yours and value the fact that you have a divine mission and that you are a daughter of a heavenly parents, of our father in heaven and that they love you and that they will guide and direct all of your paths in your life.

Elaine Dalton:

And those are things, these are just worse for me. I’ve been all over the world. I’ve been in little huts and sat with women, and I’ve seen the nobility of these women. I’ve seen who they are. And I’ve been in mansions and in castles and with queens. And I’ve seen that too. And if we all could get together and understand who we are and whose we are and why we’ve been reserved to be here on the earth, we could really change the world.

Elaine Dalton:

We’re being a little distracted, but I think the heavenly father’s given us this moment in time to be still, to be home, to focus on what matters most and that’s you and your family and getting close to him and learning in this still time to hear his voice. So that’s just my testimony, but it’s also kind of my sure knowledge. I really know that.

Cali Black:

And I can tell that you really know that. And I love that. I feel that truth in my heart too. And I hope that that’s something that we can all learn and have that be our shared truth that we are powerful and we have bigger purposes than we may see at the moment.

Elaine Dalton:

Yeah. I had one of my granddaughters, she’s just getting ready to go on her mission. If she gets to go where she’s called, she’ll be in Tahiti in a few months. And I said to her, she was a little discouraged. And I said, “Ella, you’re forgetting something. You have just gone through the temple. And you came as a powerful young woman, but now you’ve been endowed with extra power because you’ve been in the temple. You’ve been gifted with power. You can change the world.”

Elaine Dalton:

And I think that’s what we all have to realize is we are changed the world girls, and we can change the world and we will. We will. I have every confidence we will.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Who else wishes that their kids could have Elaine Dalton as their grandmother? You’re amazing. Sign my kids up. I’ll send them to your house. Well, this has just been an absolute pleasure. And the last question that Cali and I ask of each person we interview kind of in line with what you were saying about our need for the Spirit is to ask you, how do you hashtag hear him?

Elaine Dalton:

How do I hear him? I hear him in so many different ways. I heard him this morning when I walked out my door early and saw this bright pink sunrise. I hear him when I listen to music. Sometimes he speaks to me, even in contemporary music, not hymns. Like I was listening to James Taylor and it was “It’s Going To Be A Bright Sunshiny Day.” And I heard him. I heard him tell me that. I hear him when I read my scriptures. I hear him in the voices of others who are inspired to stop by or to call.

Elaine Dalton:

I hear him in my granddaughters who call me sometimes at 6:30 in the morning and say, “Nana, are you okay?” They’ve actually, I think how prompting. They don’t know that, but they’ve actually had a little prompting to call and ask that question because most times when they do, I’m not. And so I hear him always. I’ve just heard him talking to you two and I’ve also seen him as I’ve been able to look in your eyes and see the light of our savior, Jesus Christ. So thank you both for who you are and what you’re doing and how good you are and let’s just keep trying together. And when we fall down, we get up because the savior made that possible.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Elaine, I cannot thank you enough for being here and for the powerful testimony that you’ve shared with us. I have felt so built up. Before we got on, I prayed and I said, “Heavenly father, please just help us to build someone up.” And I know that what you’ve said will. I know it will.

Elaine Dalton:

Thank you. Thank you for bringing the Spirit into my home today. Thank you so much.

Kristen Walker Smith:

You are wonderful.

Cali Black:

Of course. Thank you so much.

Kristen Walker Smith:

You’re wonderful.

The post One Minute Scripture Study Podcast episode with special guest Elaine Dalton first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.