Thinking Different about the Restoration with Steven Harper
Release Date: 02/17/2025
The Holy Sealing by Anthony and Cindy Sweat
Out of the Best Books
For Latter-day Saints, few promises run deeper than the hope of being sealed to those we love. It’s a covenant that stretches beyond the grave, carrying the assurance that families can be bound together forever. And yet, Anthony and Cindy Sweat write that the temple sealing is also one of the most daunting, mysterious, and misunderstood ordinances of the Church. So what makes a temple sealing different from a worldly wedding? Beyond clothing or ceremony, it’s a covenant designed for eternity. While modern marriage often centers on romantic love, eternal marriage is anchored in the charity...
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Doing Small Things With Great Love by Sharon Eubank
Out of the Best Books
The world's suffering can feel overwhelming: wars, natural disasters, and cities stricken with poverty. And in the face of it all, it's easy to wonder how we can possibly chip away at such enormous problems. That's the question Sharon Eubank takes on in her book, Doing Small Things With Great Love. Her message is powerful and hopeful for the average person who wants to make a difference. Sharon makes the case that true humanitarian service doesn't require a passport or a plane ticket. More often, it begins with what's right in front of you. Find on Deseret Bookshelf + or at any...
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The Holy Invitation by Anthony Sweat
Out of the Best Books
The Latter-day temple experience may seem abstract and hard to grasp, but author and professor Anthony Sweat offers a different way in—making the temple endowment more vivid and tangible. In his book, The Holy Invitation, Professor Sweat tells a fictional story that frames the temple endowment as a 'sacred rehearsal,' an intentional preparation for the very real day when we will stand before God Himself. Find on Deseret Bookshelf + or at any Deseret Book store.
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The Power of Stillness by Hess, Skarda, Anderson, and Mansfield
Out of the Best Books
In a church that teaches us to “always abound in good works,” it might feel a little unusual to also have a commandment to “be still.” We're a people who love to do! And yet, woven deeply into our faith is a divine invitation to stillness. In the chapter you're about to hear, the authors of The Power of Stillness —Carrie Skarda, Jacob Hess, Kyle Anderson and Ty Mansfield—explore how slowing down, helps us connect with God. In fact, they invite us to experiment with a state of ‘non-doing’ to find our higher selves. Find on Deseret Bookshelf + or at any Deseret Book...
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Transforming our View of Conflict with Chad Ford
Out of the Best Books
For many of us, peace is something we imagine as a life void of opposition and tension. A calm home. A quiet heart. A life where nothing rubs, nothing breaks, nothing hurts. And while this is certainly aspirational, we know that life has inevitable conflicts. So as followers of Christ, we want to learn not to avoid conflict but instead transform ourselves into people who can navigate disagree, tension, hurt, and disappointment in the way that the Savior would. Chad Ford has spent his life in the middle of some of the world’s most painful conflicts—from war zones to family...
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CHAPTERS: Learning to Listen by Dale G. Renlund
Out of the Best Books
In his brand-new book, Learning to Listen, Elder Dale G. Renlund compares hearing the Holy Ghost to the delicate art of listening through a stethoscope. We are diving into Chapter 12: Feeling the Savior's Love. In this chapter Elder Renlund draws from his career in cardiology and offers a prescription for the Latter-Day Saint who longs to better feel God's love. A patient's heart beats whether the cardiologist is listening or not— just as the Savior's love is constant--whether or not we feel it. But if the stethoscope is placed in the wrong spot, or the settings are off,...
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Embracing God in Unmet Expectations with Camille Fronk Olson
Out of the Best Books
It’s common for many of us to unconsciously subscribe to a prosperity gospel. That if we follow with exactness God’s commands, we’ll receive a life void of strife. One where there is no unpleasantness or unmet expectations. Yet this is not taught anywhere in the gospel, and it’s actually an incorrect interpretation of what God’s love and mercy looks like. This episode helps reframe what we might have misinterpreted or misunderstood about gospel doctrines. Camille Fronk Olson joins the interview and makes the claim that if we uncover these unfounded interpretations of the Gospel...
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CHAPTERS: But If Not by Camille Fronk Olson
Out of the Best Books
Many of us go through life with certain expectations—about relationships, about blessings, about what it means to live a faithful life. But life often doesn’t play out the way we planned. People we love make choices we wouldn’t choose. Pain enters in ways we didn’t anticipate. And we may start to wonder: If God loves us, why does such opposition exist? In her new book, , Camille Fronk Olson explores this tension between agency and expectation. This episode features chapter 5, "Agency vs. Expectations," where she offers a deeply compassionate look at how respecting others' agency...
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CHAPTERS: Original Grace by Adam Miller
Out of the Best Books
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we care deeply about agency. It’s part of our purpose. We believe we came to earth to choose—to grow, to become, and ultimately to return to God because that's where we want to be. But what happens when our choices bring suffering? Or when suffering finds us through no choice of our own? And what do we make of grace—not just as a backup plan for when we fall short, but as something more foundational? In Original Grace, Adam Miller invites us to rethink the way we see grace—not as a response to sin, but as the starting...
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Feeling God's Love Through Disappointment with Wendy Ulrich
Out of the Best Books
As believers but also as people with natural man tendencies, we sometimes struggle to really know what God’s love feels like. We often wrestle with the question, does God love me? Am I loved? That’s a question we want to approach in this episode. It’s core to the human experience to want—and need—love. God promises us His love. So why does it sometimes feel like we don’t have it? Wendy Ulrich joins the podcast to share her research on how we may not feel God's love at times because we, perhaps unknowingly, have built in some misconceptions about how God's love works...
info_outlineThis episode jumps into something that is right the Out of the Best Books alley. It’s all about asking this crucial question of our faith: why does this church matter? We'll explore how we can encourage the wrestle of that. Hopefully we can see our study of the Doctrine and Covenants this year in a new light, and it may enlighten the conversations we have around the Sunday dinner table.
The perfect person to have this conversation with is Steven C. Harper. He is a professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. Steven helps students develop resilient faith and is passionate about them becoming lifelong disciples of the Savior. And his book Wrestling with the Restoration inspired today’s conversation.
Get your copy of Wrestling with the Restoration: Why this Church Matters at your local Deseret Book Store or on deseretbook.com, or download the Deseret Bookshelf+ app today!