VIDEO: #ComeFollowMe Book of Mormon with Mormon News Report: “By Faith All Things Are Fulfilled”Ether 12-15

Listen, it’s not as good as last week when we were walking out on John’s phone, but it still sounds good to have the snow jams on crystal clear audio, doesn’t it, Jim?

It’ll do. It’ll do. Good morning, Grant. Good morning, Jenny. Hello, everyone, thanks for joining us this morning. My name is Jenny and I am joining you from Provo, Utah. By my side, as always, is my husband, John died. And joining us, of course, is my good friend and co-host for the Morning News Report podcast all the way from Detroit, Michigan. A couple of timezones away.

Malone all the way. All the way. But I am here this week. A big thank you to our buddy friend of the news report, Ben Bernhard’s, for stepping in last week. Jenny was one of those weeks where I’m not kidding you. Every two hours I had something, whether it was come follow me or how to teach the program or then having to pay the rent at eight is great.

Or something. Or something or something. So a very big thank you to you and Ben for stepping in. I listen, I’m going to get the audio posted here probably tonight. It was a great discussion. Go figure. A Ben Bernanke guy, he’s got he might have a career in this whole, you know, virtual Sunday school thing. I might have to start being threatened because he was so good.

He was very good. He should consider doing things like public speaking or teaching the gospel right.

Or maybe like talking to youth or motivational speaker or something like that. Anyways, he was great. It was really OK. We’re really grateful. Thanks again. And for for doing that. And and I’m glad that it worked out because sometimes we have things going on and and it makes it so that it’s not as easy to to do this this Sunday school lesson. But we we like to do it every week. We like to do it on Sundays at 9:00 AM Mom time, 11:00 a.m. Eastern.

And you know, that might change. It has changed throughout since we’ve been doing it since March.

We are a church of continuing revelation. Things change all the time. And that includes the Mormon news report.

Come follow me, a virtual Sunday school.

So, Jenny, I have to ask you, as you had the chance to look over some of aether this week, this is kind of an interesting thing, part of the Book of Mormon, because we’re seeing this mixture of what’s going on in ether, but also a lot of maroney’s commentary. And it was if you’re looking at it from a narrative standpoint in the Book of Mormon, a few things happened. But I can’t really say that, like, we have major developments.

But that’s not to say that it wasn’t a really, really good part of scripture because we get some pretty deep discussions on the whole idea about faith and what that means. Did you get that impression as well?

Yeah, it’s not like there was some, like you said, not necessarily an event per say that we can turn to and say, remember when this happened, other than the very important principles that are taught, which I think is applicable to life in general. Right. It’s not it’s not all the time that we are, you know, experiencing things like visitations from angels are having to take everything we love into the wilderness. Yet daily we are faced with opportunities, with situations where we can choose to exercise faith or not.

So you’re absolutely right. I, I think that we could look at the Book of Ether and there might be a couple of things that stand out the brother of Jared with the finger of Lord and maybe the destruction of the entire Gerardine people at the very end of the Book of Ether. But it’s not like a lot of people are looking at either twelve saying, hey, remember when this happened? But that’s not to say that there wasn’t some really good stuff there.

A few hellos for people checking in this morning, Laurel from Mesa to Randol, from Heber to Audin from Idaho Falls to elder Mangrum from the Democratic Republic of Congo, serving in the Kenya Nairobi mission under Mango. I hope that we can give you something of spiritual fulfillment. I almost think that you should probably be teaching us, but that’s neither here nor there. Bob and Sandi joining us in Cris. I love this. Good morning from the world’s best corn dogs in Las Vegas, which, listen, if you want to tell me that Las Vegas, one way to do it, just tell me, has got the world’s best corn dogs.

Annette from Delano, California. Sheila, good morning and good afternoon and good evening to everyone. Thank you for checking in. But but like what we were saying, there was there was some pretty in-depth stuff on the whole idea of a faith and think that’s something that we talk about as being a very foundational part of the gospel. It’s one of the things that we talk about when it’s the very basics of what we we teach all kinds of people.

Like you’ve got to have faith before you can move anywhere else. At the same time, I almost wonder if because it is so foundational, because it’s something that we tried to take and distill it down so we could teach it to people who have been in the church for a long time, but also.

Children, people joining the church and hearing the gospel for the first time, I wonder and I’m going to throw this out there, I wonder if we don’t take faith as seriously because we’ve distilled it down to a few sentences here. It’s the evidence of things not seen. OK, got it. I got it. But I think what I’m trying to say here is it is so much more than just have seen it.

Believe it. OK, I’m good. Yeah. I think it does kind of become a or it can become a trope that we talk about faith and belief interchangeably and they just aren’t. And this is, you know, these chapters. That’s where we get the definition that John just showed a pretty clever visual of this. It’s like an eye chart. But faith is is things which I hope for nothing that’s that’s different if you think about. Belief and hope, those are different.

And and while faith certainly does involve beliefs, I would say it probably more involves hope. That’s interesting, so, I mean, let me let me find a few more of our friends checking in and I want to ask you about that difference between faith and belief. So good morning to Stephanie from South Dakota, Deborah from Detroit. Hey, I’m only about an hour north of you. I am in Oakland County, Barbara from Aurum and Bella from Guyana.

So, Jenny, you made a distinction between faith and belief. And I think sometimes we think that the other. But in in your mind or the way that you’re setting it out there, there there is a difference between the two.

And it sounds like your hypothesis, if you will, is that sometimes we conflate the two to think that one of the other. But are you making the claim that there are two different things that we should be thinking about when it comes to faith and belief?

Well, they’re just not interchangeable the way that we can tend to to to use them. I think it’s really pertinent that especially in Ether 12 that we we find. We find that we find a lot of examples of people exercising faith, and I feel like that is a that might be one of the one of the differences when we talk about faith and belief, because I don’t know that we exercise belief. Right. When we talk about faith and we talk about exercise the exercising faith with exercise being the verb.

You know, we’ve talked a lot about this before. I think just kind of in more general terms. But this might be the time to to delve into it more deeply. When you exercise what you’re doing as you are repeatedly building muscle, you are repeatedly building endurance or strength or whatever your goals are.

It’s it’s a long term journey.

Exercise is I think you’ve mentioned before, you can’t just expect to go do a couple of curls and be like, OK, I’m ready for the bodybuilding competition. Just that’s not how it works. And similarly with faith, when we have an experience where we are required to or we choose to exercise our faith, that leads to a lot of things. I actually, as I’m saying, that could be likened to the physical exercises that we do, too.

I mean, it can lead to being sore. It can lead to being tired, but it can also lead to progression, oftentimes progression that we don’t see evidence of until much, much later and many repetitions or days, weeks, months of that exercise.

That that’s really interesting, because if you think about the whole idea of using weights to build muscles or or by going running to build your endurance, you might not because the the improvements are going to be so incremental, it almost requires you to look back and say, you know what, before I did this, I couldn’t even walk down to the end of my street without being winded. And now I can run a mile and I could probably still go for a little bit more.

But you don’t see that in the moment. And I really like your idea that that is accurate. Laurel actually says faith is energy, and I like that as well. There is this whole notion that that almost in the sense belief is positive, but to have faith takes an actor a proactive measure on your part to make sure that you are exercising it, that you are utilizing. I think about the story that Madson tells about Joseph Smith, and it was either Oliver Kalbarri or Sidney Rigdon, and they had this marvelous spiritual experience.

And afterwards they came out of this experience and Joseph and his counterpart, which was so awesome, some early members of the church and the way that it was described was just look full of energy, look alive and brilliant to things like that. And either Sidney or Oliver, I can’t remember which one it was. What is it going to look like? He had been drained of his energy and said what happened to him? And this is all paraphrasing, but Joseph said he’s not as used to it as I am.

And I think that’s something to be considered to what we are exercising, that if we’re not used to that concentrated energy we have to exert, we might not be used to it. And I think about things like missionaries that have been put in positions where they need to harness all the energy that they have that spiritual energy to utilize it for various reasons. Yeah, it can be exhausting. And when you’re not used to it, it really can wear you down.

Yeah, for sure. That’s that’s absolutely true. I like that. Audin shares. Faith can start as belief. I think that’s that’s absolutely true and and significant here because because they’re not without each other. Right. I want to to jump into ether chapter 12. Right in verse and verse for when we learn about about either being the prophet and and he crying and the people day and night in verse forces where for whoso believing in God. Might, with surety, hope for a better world, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, make us an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.

And then down in verse six is where we are, where we get a explanation, he says. And now I’m wrong. And I would speak somewhat concerning these things. I would show unto the world that faith is things which I hoped for and not seen. Wherefore dispute, not because you see, not for you receive no witness until after the trial of your faith versus by faith that Christ showed himself onto our fathers after he had risen from the dead and he showed not himself onto them until after they had faith in him.

Wherefore it must needs be that some had faith in him, for he showed himself not unto the world, but because of the faith of men he had shown, he has shown himself unto the world and glorified the name of the father, and prepared a way that thereby others might be partakers of the heavenly gift that they might hope for these things which they have not seen. Excuse me, so. Yeah, I just. As we’re thinking about that, as we think about how.

And we and we also learned to in this chapter about how. About how the blessings that we receive can be tied to the faith that we have, we need to be careful about that because as we’ve discussed before, you know, prosperity, gospel. But but there is there is a true principle and that for sure. What are your thoughts on that?

You know, there was something that stood out in inverse, I believe it was. I’m trying to look right now, it was four seven. And it’s something that I hadn’t considered even as I was as I was studying this section of scripture today, I hadn’t even considered it.

But in verse seven four, it was by faith that Christ showed himself onto our fathers, which after he had risen from the dead and he showed not himself onto them until after they had faith in him.

So it’s interesting to say that he wasn’t going to show himself until after they had faith. And I keep coming back to this discussion we’re having about faith versus belief.

And I’m glad that I’m glad that Audin said that faith can start his belief. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m denigrating someone who has beliefs, but I think it’s important to draw this distinction. I’m sure there were quite a few people that believed that Christ would return a Christ would show himself in the flesh after he after he died, after he was resurrected.

But it’s interesting that he only showed it to those who had faith, and I think that that is probably an important thing for us to remember, there is something to be said there about this whole act of having faith and proceeding there.

And I guess I didn’t even think about the fact that no, no, no, it wasn’t just people who believe, but it’s the people who had faith in him. So what is the difference there? And I’m glad that we’re talking about it, because it’s probably something that that we as members of the church, if this is a foundational principle of our gospel, that we should probably be thinking a little bit deeper about and not that there’s anything wrong with that, but not resorting to maybe one or two certain phrases to talk about a very complex subject that I still don’t think we fully understand for sure.

For sure we don’t. I I think, you know, there are times when. You know, when we have faith because of things that we’ve studied, but but also we have faith because of other people’s experiences, right. When you pointed out in verse seven, it was by faith that Christians up onto our fathers and not until after they had faith in him. It makes me just kind of begin to consider the role that our faith and things that we’ve experienced has on others.

I guess the simplest terms would be, you know, children having faith in what they are taught by their parents, by by their experiences. And at what point or I guess. Many points. Does it turn from from having faith in someone else’s experience to having your own faith? And maybe that is a distinction between faith and belief. And I keep going back to this idea of the gifts of the spirit, and I’m trying to look it up right now on the fly.

I think it’s DNC forty six. But there is part of the solar spirit where they talk about for some, it is given to have faith and for some it is given to believe in the faith of others.

I’m completely paraphrasing it here, but that distinction is always stood out to me because I think that we can probably.

Make it a goal to have to have that faith, but I think all of. So that we think that for some people, their gift of spirit is to believe the faith of others or how the faith of others be a defining moment for them. And so, yes, you’re right. And things like you, I look at my children, I look at your children. That plays a factor if you’re a missionary, potentially to say, hey, that maybe the people that I’m teaching my faith is something that will be a benefit to them.

And maybe their gift during this time period is to believe in my faith or have that to be a part of them.

But I wonder if it’s other things, too. We look at our church leaders, I’m sure that that plays a factor. We could all look at the faith of someone like President Nelson and say, yeah, that’s something that we could probably believe in his faith.

But at the same time, how many of us have had just a marvelous teacher ward or state leader, Relief Society president, relief society teacher to say, wow, I wish I could have that level of faith or, you know, and this is something that I’ve experienced a little bit, Jenny.

And I’m not sure if you or John have experienced this either to have this experience of, you know what, I’m going through a really tough time. There’s some things about the church that I’m not exactly sure. You know what? I can look to someone like John. And I know that John knows some of these things and he can retain his faith in the church. So maybe there’s something there for me and John and Jenny.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever had that happen. I’ve had that happen to me where I’ve had some people tell that to me.

And that can be intimidating because you realize the weight that you have now on your shoulders.

Absolutely. Absolutely. By the way, Jenny had to run off for one second. She’ll be right back. But, Brandt, I can’t agree with you more. You know, oftentimes we have to look to the faith of others, right? We especially were more impressionable as youngsters. I mean, so much of our current lives are influenced because of what our parents did. Right. And the faith that they felt. My mom was a convert to the church in college.

My my father, his gosh, he’s a third generation member, first generation within this small area of Montana where we grew up and two missionaries went through the valley. And because of an exceptional vision that is great great grandmother had, I guess, join the church.

And and so, you know, as we look toward those stories, those you know, that’s the power, I believe, one of the powers of family history, of reading those and feeling the strength that others had, which then give us the power to move on. One one interesting thing, and I brought this up for a moment just before, but one interesting thing that I love to think about and I love the analogy of hope, is an anchor.

Hope is not created without faith. We have to have faith, which then creates the hope, but then it creates an anchor to the soul.

I love that analogy. I love that visual that it gives us. Because, you know, what an anchor does is it creates the sheer foundation kind of tying back into Hilman five 12. Right. The firm foundation that upon which we must build an anchor keeps something sure. And stable.

And if we don’t have that hope that comes from faith, then we are easily moved.

Right.

We talk about the whirlwinds and the fiery darts that are sent to us by the devil or by Satan, by Lucifer. If we have hope, which is created by faith, it creates an anchor to our souls. And I think that’s a really nice visual that that is given to us in 10, 11, 12 or excuse me, through 12.

And it’s interesting when you think about the analogy of an anchor, because if you are on a still lake, well, there wouldn’t really need to be an anchor. You might get moved a little bit here and there, but you’re probably going to stay in the same place. And anchor is beneficial when you’re dealing with an active body of water and most bodies of water are active. And so you need that. And so it leads into a little bit of what’s going on in eight or 12, six, whatever Moroney says.

And now I’m around, I would speak somewhat concerning these things. I would show to the world that and this is something that we all know, faith is things which are hoped for and not seen. But this is the interesting part where for dispute, not because you see not and this is one that that, I think is something that we all know. I don’t know if we’ve really talked about that much or really dug into it for you received no witness until after the trial of your faith.

And so if we go back to this analogy of the anchor, the anchor is not going to be useful unless there are forces working against the boat. The anchor is useful when there are waves and things that are trying to push the boat. As John.

The question that I have and Jenny and I were talking about this a little bit, we talk about this whole notion of of weights and working out, but this idea that we can’t. Utilized faith, or we won’t really have a witness of our faith until after it has been tried, and that could be a little intimidating, wouldn’t you say?

Hi, it’s me again. Yes. And I want to I want to thank you, John, for every step away for a second.

I am so grateful that you said what you did about faith being an anchor, because we’ve talked about faith being a lot of things. We’ve talked about the exercise of faith being an anchor. Someone mentioned faith is energy. We we sure have a lot of things about faith is right.

Faith is a seed, faith the miracle, all these things. Right. And I do want to get to Ben’s comment in a second, but I want to talk about what you said, John, and what Grant said. I think it’s really not uncommon for us to hear that like that.

We need faith as our anchor. And if we don’t, then we we run the risk of of becoming lost, of of being unanchored, getting lost at sea, all those those analogies.

And so when I heard you say that, I actually was taken back to a time in my life when I remember hearing that and being like, oh, my gosh, my my faith isn’t enough. My faith isn’t sufficient. So I guess I just want to talk for a couple of minutes about what we can do to move to. To move toward having the faith that we think we ought to have moving from face or moving from belief to faith, and that’s where I think we we need to I think that the exercise analogy is is perfect also, because if you walk into a gym or a fitness center or rec center or even a store to get your own weights or whatever, because you want to you want to build strength or you get your shoes on, your lace them up and you step outside because you want to build endurance.

You’re not going to get to the heaviest things first. You’re not going to run a marathon immediately. And I I’m just a real strong believer in the idea that five pound weights, two pound weights. Are are really helpful. And so I guess as you were talking, John, I just had the thought. Can we make our anchors stronger if we think about the visual of an anchor, it is what is there? Yeah, there John just pulled up an image of it.

It says, why is an anchor point to a boat? How is hope an anchor to the souls of men? And and those things are important. We can have an anchor if we find ourselves. I guess that’s what I’m saying.

If we find ourselves in a spot where our anchor isn’t as heavy or as chiseled or as strong or defined as we would prefer, we are we are we talking about real anchors?

Are we talking about Dundy?

Because this could go either way without one that chiseled is the objective of choice. Just think the shape anyway.

But yeah, the we can we can make our anchors stronger.

I mean, that is what the exercise of faith does.

So I guess I’m mainly talking to anyone who may be hearing this who feels I don’t want you to feel any sort of sense of well, I don’t know that I could consider my faith an anchor because it isn’t strong enough.

And and I don’t want there to be any sort of lack of hope in that for you, because because it is a journey and we can we can develop our faith over our life.

And before we get to Ben’s comment, I just want to add on to your analogy, Jenny, because I know that you and John and I, we’ve got a lot of experience going to the gym, working out in my situation, a lot of experience of starting and stopping and starting and stopping. But one of the things that is so important when you’re beginning on this journey is to make sure that and I’m speaking of this from I’m not a physical trainer, but from what I’ve heard physical trainers talk about, what you don’t want to do is get someone who hasn’t been to the gym in a while and maxing out right then right there.

Because what you’re going to find is the next day you’re going to feel awful and you’re not going to be able to do what you think you could do on the timeline that you’re doing it. And that’s why one of the things that I’ve heard physical trainer say is even if you can do is get into the gym and lift the five pound weight. That’s better than nothing. That’s OK, and you know what I’m working at and The Graduate, which will lead into Ben’s here, which is really good, the dreadfulness is what does it for someone like President Nelson or someone like the brother of Jared Mahone?

I’m sorry, incomer did not get to the point where they had the faith to see the finger of the Lord overnight. That was a long, long journey.

And sometimes there were probably great days. And I know we’ve all had it, whether you run or lift weights or whatever you do where you think I could take on the world. And some days and I’ve had this happen quite a bit over the last little bit because of school and a bunch of other stressors that I’ve got going on in life, to be honest, it’s just enough to be able to walk into the gym and say I’m I’m here and think about it in the context of the gospel in church.

Sometimes it might just be enough for us to get on our knees and say, Lord, I’m here and I’m having a hard time.

Sometimes it might be enough for us just to set foot or to sit in the parking lot of a church. And that’s why I think, Jenny, you and I are so passionate about making sure that we never, ever, ever, ever, ever judge someone’s journey that they’re on. When it comes to the church we’ve talked about, there is more than one way to mourn. One of the reasons why we do that is because we’re not a homogenous people.

But at the same time, we never, never know the burdens and the journey that someone else is on.

So I’ll turn it over to you so we can get to Ben’s comment.

Thank you so much. That’s absolutely. I think you covered a lot of really great pertinent things there.

Excuse me, Ben, thank you so much for what you shared and and for those who participated in last week’s lesson. And when you share that audio, people know right before we began recording last week, Ben was so excited to get into eather 12. And I was like, I think that’s next week. And so I’m glad that he took the time to generously take this out and share with us. He says, I love the analogy of physical exercise in regards to faith.

It has made the most sense to me as I’ve tried to walk along God’s path years ago, I decided I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I decided to try to learn how to be healthier, lose weight, learn how to run, lift weights, all those things. I knew nothing about exercise and I had horrible habits to overcome. I’d get frustrated that I couldn’t lose weight and weak and all my previous efforts seemed fruitless.

But I saw some good examples from those around me. I read some good words from people who had been on a similar journey and deep inside something told me that if I just tried what they did and patiently stuck with a program and kept picking myself up when, not if, but when I failed and faltered, maybe, just maybe I would get results like they did. In essence, I believed in some far off goal that I couldn’t yet see.

But I had faith that if I gave it an honest shot, I would get there. So I gave it a shot. And the results didn’t come overnight, not by a long shot. But after that first week of consistent effort when I saw the baby tender shoots of success starting to poke through the proverbial soil, I realized that just maybe it was working. So I kept going and the results kept coming. And once I reached my physical goal was finally able to say for myself that I knew that the exercise could work, whereas before I only had faith that it could work.

So now I try the same process repeatedly in spiritual matters like the Council and Alma. Thirty two. When we plant the word in our souls, when we try to nourish by faith the gospel in our lives, we have to be patient that it will bear good fruits. Thank you, Ben, for sharing that.

I think that’s, that’s so important.

I, I’ve long maintained that one of the most frustrating aspects of just our human existence is, is the passage of time and our inherent sometimes impatience.

We want what we want, when we want, and it’s now is when we want it. So it’s so having to wait and be patient is is is helpful and in building our faith and and to tie it back to the previous few weeks when we talked about the importance of keeping records and keeping journals, that is one way to track our progress for sure.

You know, if you I know I’ve found journals from when I was young, when I was a child or a teenager, and I would read even my testimony and just the things I had a testimony of then. It’s not that they’ve changed, but they certainly have evolved. They’re not the same. And to see that that progress, that path has been helpful. I like what John just brought up here. This image of firing those who do not see their weaknesses do not progress your and this is very important.

This might be the quote of the week. Your awareness of your weakness is a blessing. As it helps you remain humble and keeps you turning to the savior, and I like that a lot, I think that that’s an integral part of this lesson, because as this other image, Jesus Christ can make week things strong.

It it makes it’s our choice as we are aware of our weaknesses, where we turn with that and turning to the savior, those weaknesses can be made into strengths not always as quickly as we would we would prefer, but certainly that he is the source.

He is the source for for where where we get strength and where we learn how to continually become better. Yeah, absolutely, and that’s a that’s a great way to to think about it, too, if if you don’t have the capability to look back or to see our own weaknesses, No. One, I think that says something about your personality. You might want to talk to a professional because that sounds a little bit like a narcissist, but at the same time, like that’s part of being human.

One of the things that I do professionally is I work on process improvements. And it’s always, always stunning to me when I talk with teams sometimes and usually it’s when we’re doing what we call a post-mortem to say what’s one thing that we could have done better? And even if you have a flawless execution of something, it is always stunning to me that sometimes you will find someone who goes not nothing better.

We could have done it with perfect.

And for me, that is a giant red flag to say, no, no, no, we need to start digging into that, because you’re telling me that everything was perfect and you should be running this company because that’s not the case. And I think that’s a theme in the church.

If you were to talk to someone like a president, I he’d probably tell you, yeah, I’ve got these weaknesses, but this is the reason why we work on it. And and I know that we’re running short on time. But speaking of weaknesses, and I know that, John, this is something that you and I were talking about before we started recording.

So I I hate to grab the steering wheel and make a sharp left. But speaking of weaknesses, we see a little bit of this coming out in in Maroney, because what we’re getting is we’re getting his commentary on a lot of things. And as we’re seeing all this explanation on faith, we start to see a little bit of his personality. And as much as we want to bring up Maroney as a very strong someone that we should look up to.

He’s also very introspective on some of his own shortcomings, right? Absolutely.

And John is at the same thing you and I were talking about earlier. Yeah. Kind of this imposter syndrome, right? I think that’s what I’m trying to figure out where it it begins. But basically, he talks about the brother Jared here in twenty one, all of these things. And he said he’s going to laud the Gentiles, will market these things because of our weakness. And writing for the Lord has made us mighty in word by faith.

But thou hast not made us mighty in writing for that has made all this people that they could speak much because of the Holy Ghost, which has given them. So consider this for a moment.

Moroni probably had a lot of Mormons genes, right?

He was his dad. These were strong and mighty men. Right at the age of 15, he was basically Mormon, was told he would be basically the the general in the fight armies at sixteen, he became that.

So think about this, that the plates were they were not an innumerable resource. Right. There were only a certain number of plates that they could write on. So if you didn’t etch those correctly, if you had big hands, which he probably did, it made that very hard.

The stylus or the engraver with which you worked all of those things, I think would have been really, really tough to work with.

And as you think about that, it it probably caused him some anxiety, some concern, different things that were causing. So I consider that an imposter syndrome.

He basically was saying, you know, should I be doing this?

Should I be the best person suited to finish these plates and actually bury them up? And I just brought up and as we look at imposter syndrome, you know, this is the definition. Jenny, do you want to read it? Sure.

And it’s something that I think we can all relate to, even if we’ve never heard the phrase.

But it’s a psychological, psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments and has a persistent, internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.

You know, I and the reason John and I talked talked about that this morning is because I shared with you, Brant, that it’s been a.

A rough week and and sometimes when I’m feeling really low, I tend to be more susceptible to imposter syndrome and and I didn’t get to study very much this week.

And so I mentioned that to John. And John said, well, there are these verses that that we could discuss. And and just the fact that he excuse me, knew that off the top of his head.

And, you know, and I’m like, I don’t know the scriptures as well. Like, almost every single week I. I feel a measure of imposter syndrome about this very thing, this company listen and and so I was really worried today about that because I thought, you know what? I don’t know that I’m not going to burst into tears because of something that’s really weighing heavily on me. One of my dearest, dearest, dearest friends passed away a couple of days ago.

And it is just. Just intensely unfair, you know, in a week, in a time, in a season when we are supposed to be showing and expressing gratitude and just feeling that way, I was like, I don’t know if I want to log on today and and and feel like out of the three of us, I’m the one that’s supposed to be leading the discussion and I’m the one that knows the least.

But it was very validating to then go over this and be like, oh my gosh, like moron, I felt the same thing. We all feel the same thing.

And like I always say, one of the hardest parts of any sort of feeling that we are feeling that we have is is that the feeling that we’re alone in it can only exacerbate the pain.

So. If anyone out there is feeling like an imposter or a fraud or that any day now, people are going to figure out that you don’t know you’re talking about just now, that you’re not alone in it, you’re in good company, at least with Merlini.

You know, one of the things that we’ve talked about on the news or podcast is the value of having leaders or we can see their humanness. And we’ve seen a bit of a shift in a transmission, I would say maybe about 20 or 30 years ago and maybe even longer.

We have this this view that our leaders were almost superhuman, that there’s a joke that goes around, that is Catholics believe the pope to be infallible, but nobody believes it, whereas Mormons believe the prophet to be fallible. But nobody believes it because for a long time, our culture has been look at these amazing men and women who are leading our church for good reason, for absolutely good reason, because they are amazing individuals at the same time. What that does is that that brings up this environment of we don’t really see the the humanness and sometimes the humanness is much more valuable.

And as we’ve talked about, we’ve we’ve seen some of our leaders, such as Richard Scott, very open about how difficult it was when his wife passed away and how hard that was. We saw that with President Hinckley and his wife passing away. We had someone like Elder Holly get up and talk about depression. We’ve we’ve had individuals who are leading the church now who are showing their human side. And the benefit of showing that human side is it allows us to connect a little bit more.

It does not it is not a situation where we look at ourselves and see the inadequacies, but it is a situation where we can look at them with their inadequacies and say, if God could do this with them, what can you do with someone like me?

And that’s why I’m so glad that this part of the Book of Mormon was included.

And we get this commentary from Romney because it is valuable.

Jenny, you’re an example of that. I cannot imagine I can’t imagine how hard this week has been because we’ve had similar tragedies, similar unfair tragedies. And there’s there is. The only thing that you can do is is just working with those at more because frankly, it sucks. And the amazing part about the scriptures, the benefit of the scriptures, is to not receive the good nourishing words in there, but to see situations like this where we can say, oh, when my father passed away, we saw the morning that he had and it was recorded in the scriptures when when Moroni is writing these things down.

And as John said, maybe he’s not as polished as father.

Maybe he’s got big old, big old bear mitts. Right, that he’s trying to up and he’s not doing a good job. And he’s saying he’s trying to tell the Lord, I’m worried that this is not going to fall with the weight that these poor fall. And that’s where God can step in and say, hey, I got you.

When Joseph Smith is going through and saying, I don’t even have an education and you’re wanting me to do what, that to me is the amazing part.

And when you think about how faith plays into all that, it’s almost as if with all of our impostor syndrome that we had in various degrees that we can turn it over.

And the faith says, I know that I’ve got this, but I know that you can help me. So let’s work together. And I think that is one of the more beautiful parts of the scriptures and of the gospel in general.

Absolutely. Thank you for that. I, I want to pull that one up again, please, because that’s. Yeah. This this from President Hinckley. Please don’t nag yourselves with thoughts of failure. Do not set goals far beyond your capacity to achieve.

Simply do what you can do in the best way you know how. And the Lord will accept your effort.

I want to acknowledge that we’ve gotten some really awesome comments shared here in the in the comment section about your thoughts about inkers about I really like how someone said, let’s see, whereas Randy said the anchor doesn’t work until you let go and let God, which like, OK, that’s that’s a.. Inception right there.

Because anchor is the faith and the faith that the anchor will work to keep us anchored. I think that’s great.

And and our friend is our elder friend who’s serving in Kenya.

So sometimes when we’re talking about faith as an anchor, I’m also as I try to look at the chain which connects the anchor to the boat, we can consider the chains as our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

We do our best to keep it strong by prayer, reading scriptures, fasting and sharing the truth. We will always feel ourselves able to develop our faith.

And that’s that’s absolutely true. Those an excellent point.

Those those links in the chain need to be strengthened, need to be checked on as they do their work as well.

And as people are expressing their their own experiences with faith.

I’m really appreciative. I want to to, I guess, wrap it up with with this from Ether Chapter twelve and. And as we kind of mentioned last week, I mean, the lesson this week is, is chapters 12 through 15, and we really could just do and we have done basically an entire lesson just on a little bit of 12. So I hope you’ll forgive me for that. But but here in either chapter twelve versus twenty six and twenty seven, this is and when I had said this, the Lord spoken to me saying Fools mock, but they shall mourn.

And my grace is sufficient for the meek that they shall take no advantage of your weakness. And if men come on to me, I will show onto them their weakness. I give Untermensch weakness that they may be humble in my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me, for the humble themselves before me, and have faith in me. Then one week, things become strong onto them. And I’m really I’m really grateful for that. I feel like a lot of us go through seasons or periods of time when when our weaknesses seem to be magnified to ourselves.

And that is an opportunity to to accept this invitation from the savior, to turn to him so that he can make our weaknesses, take them and put them into strengths in a way that only he can do because he knows us in a way that no one else does. And I am I am grateful for that. I think that’s a great way to end it. Thank you, Jenny. I know it’s been a very difficult week and I’m really appreciate that you were able to come on, because I think that you sharing your experience is even difficult experiences like that.

I think it helps. And I know that you’ve been very open about a lot of the things that you’ve thought and felt over the years.

And I could just tell you from people that I have communicated with us that your openness has been a great a great anchor to them in similar situations. Thank you, Jenny.

Thank you, John, for all the work behind the scenes. Thank you very much to all of our commenters and our live streamers.

We really appreciate you guys next week. Next week.

Are we still doing there or are we moving on to Ronay next week?

The lesson, it will be December. Sunday, December 6th. Then it’s Murdi chapters one through six. It’s called to keep them in the right way.

And it’s interesting because, you know, and I found himself in a position where he didn’t know he was going to write this. He didn’t think he would he would live this long and he did. And so, like, yes, yeah.

This is an interesting part because it’s like, hey, here’s a smorgasbord of a bunch of random thoughts I’ve got. So it’ll be very interesting to see how we discuss that. So that is next week. Join us next week at 9:00 a.m. Mountain, 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Also, if you’re interested, Jenny and I do a Mormon news report podcast. It’s cleverly named because we review Mormon news. So find us there at the same place you get these podcasts or just Google US Mormon news report.

Thank you to everyone. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you, John. And we’ll talk to you again next week. Thanks.