I had the most beautiful experience on TikTok Live tonight.
I had been live for about an hour and a half when a gentleman joined and started asking me about my prompt and rules.
First, I should explain that my prompt is simple: Do you have faith in Jesus Christ?
I put up my rules because people would join and become completely contentious with one another—hostile toward me and toward everyone else in the room. So my rules are based on these scriptures:
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
29 For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.
30 Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away.
The idea is simple: if you love God and love your neighbor, you will treat others with kindness. Contention is not part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, be nice and be kind.
This gentleman requested a voice chat and began by saying, “I read your prompt and rules. I know Matthew, but what is this 3 Nephi 11? Is that in the Book of Mormon? I’ve never read that before. I went and read your prompt, and instead of reading just those verses, I read the whole chapter. Can you tell me about what I read?”
My heart immediately lit up.
I explained a brief history of the Book of Mormon, and then we talked about some basic beliefs. He shared a little about his own faith. We discussed Moroni 10:3–5 and how a person can know truth. We also talked about Galatians 5:22 and the fruits of the Spirit. We connected both passages to the process of recognizing truth.
It was beautiful.
I felt the Holy Ghost throughout the entire conversation.
I encouraged him to come back and ask more questions. I told him I would be happy to answer them to the best of my ability, while also recognizing that I am not an official representative of the Church.
About thirty minutes earlier, I had been feeling a little discouraged because I hadn’t had any particularly spiritual experiences during the live that night. It seems that every live is a whirlwind of ups and downs.
But every so often, there are those conversations that fill my heart with the Holy Ghost—opportunities to testify, to hear others testify, and most of all, to feel the Spirit.
This was one of those conversations.
So far, I’ve done 82 hours of live streams. They’ve generated 27,000 views and 11,700 comments.
And every bit of it was worth it for the opportunity to talk with this one person.
He went on to say that I was not like all the others. When he talked to me and read what I had, it was not like what he expected. It did not look like bad fruit. Honestly, it was awesome.