Why We Believe

Nathan Gwilliam
  • 5.0 (60)
  • Christianity
  • Updated Weekly

Why do we believe? What inspires faith, testimony, and conversion in members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? Dive into the personal conversion stories behind faithful members of the church. Join Nathan Gwilliam, host and life-long member of the church, as he sits down with guests with unique backgrounds and perspectives to discuss the deeply personal and spiritual journeys that led them to embrace the teachings of Jesus Christ and why they believe. Through one-on-one interviews, hear firsthand accounts of the life-changing conversion stories and events that ignited and solidified these members' beliefs and personal testimonies. Gain powerful insights into the many unique paths that lead to faith and discover what continues to feed their dedication year after year. Join us each week for inspiring stories from faithful Latter-Day Saints and discuss Why We Believe.

  1. 4d ago

    Depression Nearly Destroyed This Mission President, Until He Felt the Savior's Love (with Brent L. Top)

    Brent L. Top spent 34 years teaching the gospel at Brigham Young University, where he rose to Dean of Religious Education and wrote more than 30 books. For years he had counseled students to cast their burdens on the Lord. Then the relentless weight of leading a mission brought him to a breaking point, and he had to find out if he truly believed what he had taught. In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Brent to trace a faith tested across a lifetime. Brent shares the witness that came to him at 18 in the Austrian Alps, the discouraging Denmark mission that quietly became his own great conversion, and the embrace from Elder Uchtdorf that finally taught him how to offload his burden onto the Savior. Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that the Savior's strength is made perfect in our weakness. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere! Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ. Follow the Why We Believe Show: Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/ Follow Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/ Follow Brent L. Top: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-l-top-8b24198b/

    48 min
  2. He Has Felt the Joy of Forgiveness, So He Knows the Resurrection Is Real. (with Craig Ostler)

    6d ago

    He Has Felt the Joy of Forgiveness, So He Knows the Resurrection Is Real. (with Craig Ostler)

    Craig Ostler has spent more than 40 years teaching the Restoration. He taught seminary and institute for 15 years, then 28 years at Brigham Young University, and co-wrote a 1,200-page commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants with Joseph Fielding McConkie. He has photographed and walked nearly every sacred site in early Church history, and he lived in Jerusalem with his family twice. With all of that study behind him, he will still tell you a testimony is not built from books. It is felt. He felt it at seven years old, kneeling on a porch when his dog had gone missing. He felt it on his mission, the night God told him in every fiber of his being that he was His son. In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Craig to trace the moments his faith stopped being inherited and became his own. Craig describes the gentle change of heart he felt in the mountains before his mission, when he knew he had been forgiven. He shares the promise he had to make to a man facing prison and ruin, and the night he walked away and fell apart because the cost of belief had become real. He remembers watching his young children kneel to pray in the Sacred Grove, and standing in the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem contemplating the resurrection. Craig has never seen a resurrection. But he has felt the joy of forgiveness, and so he trusts that the rest is true. Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that the joy of forgiveness they have felt is a witness that the resurrection is real. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere! Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ. Follow the Why We Believe Show: Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/ Follow Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/ Follow Craig Ostler: BYU Faculty Profile: https://religion.byu.edu/directory/craig-j-ostler

    45 min

  3. Jun 19

    Mark Mabry: Reflections of Christ Photographer Faced Nine Months of No Faith

    What happens when a photographer feels prompted to delete every song from his computer and throw away all his art books? Mark Mabry did not know it then, but those quiet impressions were preparing him to create Reflections of Christ, the first mainstream photographic depiction of Jesus Christ. In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Mark to hear how his bishop arrived unannounced one afternoon to set him apart as a photographer for an art form that had never been done and was not even allowed in the church handbook at the time. Mark shares the promise from that blessing that millions would one day see the work, and how that promise came true exactly as foretold. He also opens up about waking up one morning in 2016 with no faith at all, the car ride to the temple where his wife wept as he told her he no longer believed, and the spring afternoon walk through Hobble Creek Canyon where Elder Uchtdorf's voice brought every layer of his testimony rushing back. "Repentance works. That is where I find my testimony." Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone walking through their own season of doubt! Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere! Follow the Why We Believe Show: Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/ Follow Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/ Follow Mark Mabry: Instagram (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/itsmabry/ Instagram (Reflections of Christ): https://www.instagram.com/reflectionsofchrist/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/itsmabry/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmabryjr Website: https://reflectionsofchrist.org/

    52 min

  4. Jun 18

    Marcus Martins, the Church's First Black Missionary of the 20th Century, Bears His Witness of Christ

    Marcus Martins joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1972 at age thirteen, six years before any Black member could hold the priesthood or enter the temple. He stayed anyway. He believed anyway. In June of 1978, when the revelation came extending the priesthood to all worthy male members, Marcus was nineteen, working as a construction inspector in Rio de Janeiro and engaged to be married. Weeks later he became the first Black missionary called by the Church in the 20th century, the son of Helvécio Martins, who would become the Church's first Black general authority. In this episode of Why We Believe, Marcus shares the conviction he held at seventeen when a leader told him a relationship with his future wife would cost him the celestial kingdom, the ordinary June day he came home from work and found his parents had been crying, and the prayer he offered on a dark mountain road outside Petropolis the week he was first ordained to the priesthood. He shares the moment in the Recife temple when grieving members stopped him in the foyer, each carrying a story about his father he had never heard, and the six words from the Book of Mormon that became his anchor: in Christ come all good things. Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that in Christ come all good things. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere! Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ. Follow the Why We Believe Show: Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/ Follow Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/ Follow Marcus Martins: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrMHMartins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mhmartinspg/ BYU Hawaii Profile: https://about.byuh.edu/directory/marcus-martins

    1h 28m

  5. Jun 12

    A Duke Professor Studies Light at the Quantum Level, What He Found Changed His Testimony (with Prof Aaron Franklin)

    A teenager with no religious background walked into the Mesa Arizona Temple visitor center and felt something shift. That single visit led to baptism, a mission to Georgia, and a return home determined to finish college. But Aaron Franklin had flunked out with a 0.96 GPA. What changed wasn't just his academics—it was him. He came home from his mission transformed, finished with a 4.0, and became one of the world's most influential nanotechnology researchers. Today, as a Duke professor studying light at the quantum level, he's discovered that physical light and spiritual light operate by the same principles. In this episode of Why We Believe, Aaron shares the miracle that unfolded during his mission when his stake president's prophecy came to pass in ways that defied logic. He explains how yielding everything to God didn't just change his grades—it changed his capacity. And he reveals what years of studying light have taught him about Jesus Christ as the light of the world. Aaron doesn't compartmentalize his lab work and his testimony. The gospel principles that govern light in the quantum world mirror the principles that govern light in our spiritual lives. Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear how faith and science can strengthen each other. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere! Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ. Follow the Why We Believe Show: Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/ Follow Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/ Follow Prof Aaron Franklin: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfranklin/ Website: https://www.aarondfranklin.com/

    56 min

  6. Jun 9

    A Seminary Bribe Built His Testimony of Jesus Christ (with Dave Lindsay)

    Dave Lindsay has spent more than 25 years telling other people's faith stories on film, including Front Man: The Alex Boyé Story and four seasons of Come Follow Up on BYUtv. But the testimony that anchors his work began with a sophomore-year bribe. His mom's cousin was his seminary teacher and made him a deal: skip every class, just promise to read the Book of Mormon. Dave took the bribe to dodge a year of seminary. He didn't expect to find a testimony of Christ. By the time he got to Alma, he was rushing home from school to read more. In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits with Dave to trace the page-by-page foundation of his testimony of Christ. Dave shares the Rapid City, South Dakota mission that humbled a cocky young elder, the quiet 1992 decision he and his wife made about an R-rated movie that's shaped their marriage ever since, the family-event conversation that launched his 25-year filmmaking career, and what producing four seasons of Come Follow Up on BYUtv taught him about the gospel as a map for life. His witness lands on a truth he learned page by page: testimonies are earned, not inherited, and the Lord prepares His servants long before the calling arrives. Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that a testimony of Jesus Christ is built page by page. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere! Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ. Follow the Why We Believe Show: Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm Follow Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/ Follow Dave Lindsay: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-lindsay-69b6638/ Avalanche Studios: https://avalanche-studios.com

    37 min

  7. Jun 5

    50 Years Responding to Church Criticism: Why He’s More Sure Than Ever (with Daniel C. Peterson)

    Daniel C. Peterson has spent his career doing something most people would rather avoid. He goes looking for the strongest arguments against the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, not the weakest ones, and he reads them on purpose. He earned his doctorate at UCLA, reads more than a dozen languages, taught Islamic studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University for decades, led the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, and now serves as president of the Interpreter Foundation. He can quote the Quran in Arabic and then tell you why it strengthens his witness of the Restoration rather than weakening it. After all of that searching, his faith in Jesus Christ stands as strong as it has ever been. In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Daniel to trace where that faith began and why it has held. Daniel describes the night he baptized his own father, just hours before leaving for a hard mission in Switzerland. He explains why reason can clear the ground for faith but can never plant the testimony itself. He walks through the evidence that moves him most, the sheer existence of a complex book dictated in roughly two months by a barely schooled farm boy. And he shares the quiet experiences that have hit him out of nowhere across a lifetime, the kind no argument ever produced and no critic could take away. Reason and faith, he says, finally point to the same Christ. Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that the most honest search for truth can lead back to faith rather than away from it. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere! Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ. Follow the Why We Believe Show: Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/ Follow Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/ Follow Daniel C. Peterson: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profdanielcpeterson/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-peterson-58967a15/ Interpreter Foundation: https://interpreterfoundation.org/ Becoming Brigham: https://becomingbrigham.com/

    1h 2m

  8. Jun 1

    The Jungle Was His Lab. The Spirit Was His Guide. (with Dr. Paul Alan Cox)

    Paul Alan Cox grew up the son of a Grand Teton park ranger and a scientist. He graduated valedictorian from BYU, earned his PhD at Harvard, and was named one of Time magazine's 11 heroes of medicine for searching the world's rainforests for cures that no laboratory had found. President Reagan named him a Presidential Young Investigator. Sweden made him the first King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor of Environmental Biology at Uppsala. The Goldman Prize, sometimes called the Nobel Prize for the environment, came in 1997 for saving the Samoan rainforest. None of those credentials are what shaped his faith. What shaped his faith was a coconut basket on a thatched mat, a mother dying of cancer, and a hurricane in Samoa that nearly took everything. In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Paul to trace the faith behind those credentials. Paul shares the morning he watched a ranger named Red Rowe slip away to read his New Testament at dawn, and how that one moment sent him into the Sermon on the Mount as a boy. He describes the Samoan branch president who emptied his coconut basket of every coin he had on jars of food for a sick missionary. He talks about losing his mother to cancer and pivoting his life's work toward ethnomedicine, searching jungle healers for drugs that could fight HIV, ALS, and Alzheimer's. He closes with the night a hurricane-driven tsunami nearly took him, his wife Barbara, and their four children, and what saved his peace was a sealing made years before in a temple. Loved this episode? Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that the same faith that holds a family together in a tsunami can hold theirs together in anything. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere! Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ. YOUTUBE   Follow the Why We Believe Show: Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/ Follow Nathan Gwilliam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/ Follow Dr. Paul Alan Cox: Website: https://brainchemistrylabs.org/paul-alan-cox

    44 min
See All (83)

5
out of 5
60 Ratings

About

Why do we believe? What inspires faith, testimony, and conversion in members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? Dive into the personal conversion stories behind faithful members of the church. Join Nathan Gwilliam, host and life-long member of the church, as he sits down with guests with unique backgrounds and perspectives to discuss the deeply personal and spiritual journeys that led them to embrace the teachings of Jesus Christ and why they believe. Through one-on-one interviews, hear firsthand accounts of the life-changing conversion stories and events that ignited and solidified these members' beliefs and personal testimonies. Gain powerful insights into the many unique paths that lead to faith and discover what continues to feed their dedication year after year. Join us each week for inspiring stories from faithful Latter-Day Saints and discuss Why We Believe.

Information

  • Creator
    Nathan Gwilliam
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    83
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Copyright © 2024 Why We Believe. All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Why We Believe

You Might Also Like