Whether you learn best by listening or enjoy multitasking during your daily commute or chores, podcasts are a fun, convenient way to take in information. With Valentine’s Day coming up, we’ve collected some of our favorite LDS Living podcast episodes on improving relationships to help you find new ideas to love others more deeply as the Savior would.
Kevin Rolfe: “A Never-Ending Love Story”
“It was worth it. I searched, I looked for her for a long time. And I was so blessed to spend the time we had together. … She let me be me, I wanted her to be her, there was no trying to change each other. I felt loved and accepted by her, and it was just the greatest feeling in the world. And it overpowers any of the pain or grief that I have.”
Almost everyone can relate to losing a loved one. But because of Jesus Christ, our love stories and relationships can be eternal.
On the All In podcast, Kevin Rolfe chats with host Morgan Jones Pearson about his relationship with his wife, Lindsey Anderson Rolfe, who passed away from ovarian cancer at the age of 41—just 11 days after the couple’s temple sealing.
Kevin’s story is a beautiful reminder that no matter how brief our time together with someone is, we can shape each other forever. As Lindsey once said, “I’m learning that when you just love people, your heart has so much more room to love.”
Elder Lynn G. Robbins: “Love is a Choice”
“True and mature love is manifest after we discover each other's imperfections and still commit to one another. There are no perfect marriages in the world because there are no perfect people. But the gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us how to nurture our marriages toward perfection and how to keep the romance in them along the way.”
Love is a verb, and the gospel teaches us how to put love into action even when it’s difficult.
Elder Lynn G. Robbins, an emeritus General Authority Seventy, believes that the idea of “falling” in and out of love is inconsistent with Church doctrine. In this All In conversation, he shares helpful tips about how to take full responsibility for our role in relationships and love better as the Savior would.
Whether you want to improve your romantic relationship or learn how to love your neighbor more effectively, this episode is packed with actionable insights on how to choose Christlike love—and ultimately, joy.
Russell Osguthorpe: “Attachment, Relationships, and God’s Plan”
“We all need to find ways to love one another more. And that means to bring that love that God fills us with when we attach ourselves to Him. When we get close to Him, … the closer we want to be with His children.”
Attachment theory is a popular framework for relationships, which means looking at how we can manage anxious and avoidant tendencies to build a secure connection. But what does this look like in our relationship with God?
Russell Osguthorpe, who served as the Sunday School general president from 2009 to 2014, joined the All In podcast to discuss his book on developing healthy attachments with God and others around us. He shares useful insights about how covenants can help us form a divine secure attachment and heal from the impact of negative relationships from our past.
Listen to the episode to learn more about how we can be “filled with the love that He has for us, which is an infinite love.”
“The Proximity Principle of Loving Your Neighbors” with Carolina Nuñez
“It’s not just that we must love the person who was next to us. But we must get close to the person we want to love. And if we are to love people who are different from us, we’re going to have to find a way to get close to people who are different from us.”
The parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us how to love others as the Savior would—even and especially when that means leaving our comfort zones.
In this episode, Dean Carolina Nuñez of the Refugee and Immigration Initiative at Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School speaks with Magnify podcast host Kathryn Davis about what it means to love our neighbors—especially those we may not usually interact with.
The Spanish translation of the phrase “love of neighbor” is “amor al prójimo,” which implies loving someone in proximity. Dean Nuñez shares helpful suggestions about how we can think about this principle to draw closer to people outside of our regular circles and find common ground.
“Loving People as They Are” with Jody Moore
“Striving to put the focus on ‘Who do I want to be? How do I be a more loving person?’ versus ‘What's wrong with everyone else in the world?’ really does shift your brain to find opportunities for it.”
Knowing we should love everyone doesn’t mean it’s always easy. It can be challenging to have patience with someone when they’re not acting in lovable ways.
Author and certified life coach Jody Moore joined the Magnify podcast to share practical ways that we can manage our thoughts and emotions to get from a place of frustration or judgment to a feeling of love. When you’re struggling to get there, she recommends finding a way to rewrite your thought story to find a compassionate angle.
“Everybody's doing the best they can, and sometimes our best is pretty terrible,” she says. “I think Christ was perfect at understanding that. He could love everyone in the story all the time. And sometimes loving the people in the story means having boundaries and protecting them and saying no.”
“How Charity Can Be Magnified” with Brooke Romney
“Charity is not the way we feel about others—it's not even the way we feel about God. Charity is the way God feels about us.”
No matter how busy we are, we can find ways to understand God’s love for others and help them feel that love.
Listen to this episode with author Brooke Romney to learn how striving to see people through God’s eyes can help us eliminate contention and feel more charity. She touches on examples from Christ’s life, such as his interaction with the woman taken in adultery, to highlight how we can lift people up rather than give in to natural impulses to gossip or become impatient.
Brooke points out that demonstrating charity will help us feel happier and more authentic as well. “The more often we're in alignment with who God knows we can be, the better we feel,” she says.
“Unnamed Women of the New Testament: The Widow of Nain”
“This setting and what Jesus does in feeling so much love and compassion for [the widow of Nain] is an example for others in that village to practice pure religion … [and] be more compassionate to those who are without. And in many ways, so often, it's widows and [the] fatherless that seemed to be foremost in His mind.”
The Savior’s life is filled with examples of serving and reaching out to those who may have been marginalized or forgotten.
Scholar Camille Fronk Olson joined Sunday on Monday host Tammy Uzelac Hall to discuss the story of the widow of Nain in Luke 7. While the widow doesn’t speak to Christ in the account, Camille points out that He’s able to respond to her with compassion and anticipate the desires of her heart.
Listen to the episode to learn how we can develop Christlike compassion to help others during their trials—especially those who might feel forgotten or unable to articulate what they need.
Lesson 36: “Ye Are the Body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 8–13)
“How do we create a unified but not uniform community? I think that informs us today, as much as it did Paul in his time, that we want to create strong religious communities. And that doesn't mean that we’re all the same. It means that we all can be different, but that we're unified in Christ.”
Everyone is needed in the body of Christ, and we each have beautiful gifts and talents to contribute. God gives us the opportunity to worship and live together in communities to develop charity, “which never faileth” (1 Corinthians 13:8).
In this episode, Sharmaine Howell and Emily Robison Adams join Tammy Uzelac Hall to discuss 1 Corinthians 8–13. They cover how to give ourselves and others grace as we learn from our collective strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes this means mourning together or respecting people even when we disagree, but it can also mean rejoicing together and embracing our authentic selves.
While it may not be easy to love ourselves or others, coming closer to Christ can help us to find charity and unity through our divine connection. “When you can love Jesus, you really can love others,” Tammy says. “You really do look past people's imperfections because you see as He sees.”
Note: You can listen to full weekly episodes of Sunday on Monday with the Bookshelf+ subscription. Start your free trial at deseretbook.com/sundayonmonday
