Why We Believe

Nathan Gwilliam
  • 5.0 (56)
  • 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. 5d ago

    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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. May 26

    Zions Bank Former CEO Scott Anderson: Bringing Faith in Business and Beyond

    Scott Anderson's family has been building Utah since 1847, when three of his ancestors walked into the Salt Lake Valley beside Brigham Young. Their homestead site sits beneath Zions Bank Tower today. Scott went on to run that same bank for 25 years as president and CEO, growing it from $3.2 billion to nearly $100 billion in assets while steering it through 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and the Silicon Valley Bank panic of 2023. He chaired the American Bankers Association, served on more than 90 nonprofit boards, and has been called Utah's unelected governor. None of that is how he would describe his career. He would describe it as a lifelong attempt to answer the question the Pharaoh once asked about Joseph of Egypt: where can we find a man in whom the spirit of God is? In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Scott to trace the faith that has run through his family for generations. Scott shares how the Polynesian people of Tahiti taught him what simple faith actually looks like during his mission there, and how studying philosophy at Columbia left his testimony stronger rather than shakier. He walks through the parable of building on a rock as his operating manual through every crisis Zions Bank ever faced. And he tells the story of a seventeen-year-old pony express rider, his own ancestor, lost in a Sierra Nevada blizzard at midnight and about to give up, until a voice told him to circle a tree and sing until sunrise. He did. He survived. Scott Anderson has been listening for that same voice ever since. Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that the same faith that carried a family through a blizzard can carry them through 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. 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 Scott Anderson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ascottanderson Twitter/X: https://x.com/ascottanderson

    35 min

  6. May 21

    Filmmaker Paralyzed for Life at 15. Then God Answered His Prayer (with Garrett Batty)

    Garrett Batty has spent his career turning faith-based stories into cinema, but the story that shaped him most started in a hospital bed when he was 15. A routine scoliosis surgery had dropped bone chips into his spinal cord and left him paralyzed. The doctors began training him for life in a wheelchair. Lying alone, Garrett whispered a question to his Father in Heaven and asked if a wheelchair was really the plan. Then he felt his paralyzed foot move. Forty days later, he walked out of the hospital. In this episode of Why We Believe, Garrett shares the open heart surgery he survived at six, the prayer that began his deepest faith in Christ, and why he chose faith-based filmmaking over a more lucrative path. He talks about a mission president in New York who taught him the spirit of the law, the Russian father who returned a missionary's snow cap years after the real Saratov kidnapping took place, the South African film crew who asked for 120 copies of the Book of Mormon by the final week of production, and how the Help Them See Foundation now connects mission-driven donors to faith-based stories. His witness is that Christ is in relentless pursuit of His children, leaving fingerprints in every life He has touched. Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to know that God answers prayer in the moments we feel most alone. 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 Garrett Batty: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettbatty/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garrettbatty/ Help Them See Foundation: https://www.helpthemseefoundation.org/

    47 min

  7. May 18

    US Senator John Curtis' Story of Faith & Forgiveness

    What does a United States Senator say when asked why he believes? For John Curtis, it starts on a mountaintop in Galilee, where at 19 he went 48 hours without food or water and climbed alone to ask if God would forgive him. He walked down certain the answer was yes, and the first to say he would not recommend the method. In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Senator John Curtis of Utah, a direct descendant of Brigham Young and former mayor of Provo. Curtis shares the story of a great-great-grandmother who chose the gospel over her oldest son, a family legacy where all eight sons served as mission presidents, and how a 30-year-old bishop in Richmond, Virginia learned that constant inspiration is the only way to lead beyond your experience. He talks about serving a mission in Taiwan, returning decades later to sit with Taiwan's president as a senator, and why a pattern from those early mission days has guided every chapter since. Loved this episode? Hit Follow and share it with someone who has wondered if their road back to faith is still open. 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 Senator John Curtis: Website: https://curtis.senate.gov YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SenatorJohnCurtis Twitter/X: https://x.com/SenJohnCurtis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/senjohncurtis/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SenJohnCurtis LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-r-curtis/

    42 min

  8. May 15

    Brett Sampson Carried Rocks in His Pockets Until the Savior Helped Him Let Go

    Brett Sampson moved 14 times before he ever left home, served a mission in Rochester, New York where the Sacred Grove was part of his assignment, and grew up to help lead one of the most dramatic transformations in Latter-day Saint education. He has served as a stake president, taught public speaking on campus for over two decades, and led University Relations at BYU-Idaho for 26 years. In this episode of Why We Believe, Brett Sampson shares how the Church became the one constant through 14 childhood moves and how the atonement of Jesus Christ became real to him in a basement bathroom on his mission. He talks about why an unfamiliar scripture came to him during the call to be a stake president, how he kept his footing on the day a beloved prophet died, and what it really means to put down the rocks of unforgiveness we carry in our pockets. Along the way, Brett teaches what it means to surrender what we cannot fix, why following the prophet steadies us in every storm, and how Christ heals more than sin. He heals the actual hurt we carry. Loved this episode? Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to know that Christ meets us in our hardest seasons. 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 Brett Sampson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-sampson-1288149 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brett.sampson.10/ BYU-Idaho: https://www.byui.edu/directories/brett-sampson

    53 min
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5
out of 5
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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
    79
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Copyright © 2024 Why We Believe. All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Why We Believe

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