24 April 2004 – Oak Hills Stake
My Brethren: I count it a great blessing to have the opportunity to speak to you about missionary work. I wish to ask and answer four questions:
- What is a mission?
- Why serve a mission?
- What kind of mission?
- How to prepare for a mission?
Number 1. A mission is being sent to serve. In this church, we do not call ourselves on missions. Rather, we are sent by priesthood authority, which means that our call comes from the Lord Himself through His appointed servants. The nice thing about this arrangement is that when the Lord calls someone, He also makes it possible for them to succeed on their mission: according to our faith, He endows us with the blessings we need to be successful.
A mission is always a sending to someone, some human being or group of human beings. Yes, we serve the Lord on a mission, but our specific call is to serve His children. We need to have exactly in mind who it is that we are sent to. A father and mother are missionaries, called and set apart in their temple sealing, sent to serve their children. A husband is sent to serve his wife. A wife is sent to serve her husband. A temple worker is sent to serve the patrons of the temple. The patrons of the temple are sent to serve those who have passed on to the spirit world. Proselyting missionaries are sent specifically to the honest in heart in the area in which they serve. Since they don’t know at first who is honest in heart, they must treat all persons they meet as if they were honest in heart and let the persons decide for themselves if they are honest or not. A missionary on any mission is the Lord’s hand reaching out to someone to offer them the spiritual riches of eternity through Jesus Christ.
Number 2. Why serve a mission? Perhaps you have also noticed what the authorities of the Church are saying: The world is getting more worldly, that is to say, more Satanic, and it will get worse before it gets better. What can you or I do about the rising tide of selfishness, of lying, of pornography, or licentiousness, of wickedness in high places, of political chicanery, of endemic disease, of the terrible treatment of women in many cultures, etc. There are many things any of us can do to try to fight against these evils, and the good people of this world are doing many of them. But there is one best thing to do in any culture, in any circumstance: Invite people to come to Christ and be perfected in Him. To be sent on a mission, at home or abroad, to extend this invitation is what the world and all of its problems need most.
When the Savior was on earth the crushing power of the Roman empire was keenly felt by the Jews, and the corruptness of the Jewish leaders was keenly felt by the common people. The Savior did not directly try to change either of these things. His solution was to reach out to individuals, with love, to get them to repent so that He could bless them in their individual misery through their faith in him.
The world has little changed since the time of the Savior on earth. Evil still has great sway over every people on earth. Their salvation is not in economic reform, political savvy, equal opportunity, more education, welfare plans, miracle cures or better looks. The answer is the same as it has been since Adam: Because of the Fall, men are carnal, sensual and devilish and will be forever unless they come unto Christ and be renewed in Him unto the likeness of our Savior himself. This is true salvation. Remember: Every nation on earth will fail before Christ comes, including our own. Every work of man will crumble and be brought to naught. The only thing that will survive is a soul purified in Christ through receiving and living by the ordinances of the Restored Gospel. So if you want to help anyone, or be of help in this dying world, be on the team whose work will survive the fire. We go on missions to have an eternal impact on the problems of this world by saving the people of this world from the worldliness of this world, even as our Master did.
Number 3. What kind of mission can we serve? It is important to remember that every calling in the church is a mission. We are sent by authority to someone to bring them to Christ and to be perfected in Him, be it as a bishop, a ministering brother, a quorum president, a Sunday School teacher, a volunteer at Deseret Industries, or a full-time missionary. But there are special blessings and opportunities that accrue to a full-time missionary, for they have special suasion with the Lord. Worried about your family? Serve a full-time mission. A sister I know in this stake was serving a full-time mission with her husband when serious trouble came to their family. She prayed earnestly for help. The Lord gave her a specific reply: “You take care of my children, and I will take care of yours.” She stopped worrying about her own family and concentrated on the work of her mission and the problems at home were taken care of.
What kinds of full-time missions are there? We could probably name ten or twenty kinds in just thinking about it. Some are foreign missions, some are done from home. My sister-in-law could not leave home because of medical problems, but she and our brother-in-law served a very effective and useful full-time mission without ever leaving home. If the desire is there, a way can be found to serve for most people.
Number 4. How to prepare for a full-time mission? The preparation is what everyone should be doing all of the time: Be ready, be prepared. There are four things which might happen to any one of us and they all require exactly the same preparation: 1) The Savior could come in the Second Coming. 2) We could die and go on to eternity. 3) We could become totally incapacitated. 4) We could be sent on a full-time mission. The preparation for each of these is to repent of our sins, set our house in order, make sure we have borne our testimony to those to whom we have been sent, and be ready to serve the Lord with all of our heart, might, mind and strength.
How long does it take to repent? Some of us try to stretch it out over a lifetime or more. That is not the true spirit of repentance. True repentance is always in a hurry. When we figure out that our sins always inflict injury on those whom we love, we become anxious to repent as fast as possible. Alma the younger did it in three days. Of course, he was unconscious and thus could give it his full attention. Each of us needs to ask ourselves: What can I do to want to repent badly enough to get the job done now?
How do we set our house in order? We get our debts paid, we unclutter, we set our estate in order so that our survivors will have a simple task of handling our estate, we simplify and strengthen everything necessary in our lives. This is not just the way to go on a mission, but the way to live. One thing difficult sometimes is to set our health in order. If we are keeping the commandments and are eating for nutrition and not for pleasure, the Lord will solve our health problems through priesthood blessings if he wants us to serve a mission for him.
How do we bear our testimony to those of our family, our stewardship? Mostly by trying. My wife and I tried very hard to teach all of our children the Gospel as they were growing up. Everyone should do that, and that is part of bearing our testimony to our children. But in my old age I now see that there are some important messages I did not teach with sufficient pointedness. I now need to repent of that before we go on our mission to Mexico City. May I mention three things I now see that I missed on:
I want my children to know that our Savior is the center of their lives, whether they realize it or not, or want it or not. In Him we live, move, breathe, think and have the power to act. If we do a good thing, it will be because we have gotten our errand from Him and using His power, we act. If we do an evil thing it will be because we have taken counsel from Satan, but still act by the power of Jesus Christ, who has given us our agency. If they are beautiful, or rich, or smart, or talented, each of these things is a gift from Christ and we must be most humble about being the recipient of such. Since we live and act in the power of Christ, the only intelligent thing we can do is to come unto Him and be perfected in Him so that we will not be sorrowful when He asks us at the bar of judgment what we did with His gifts.
Secondly, I want my children to know that they are daily at war with Satan. They cannot feel, think, or act without Satan tempting them to deny Christ and break His commandments. All they have to do to let Satan win is to relax and “do what comes naturally.” For the natural man is an enemy to God, and always will be, unless he comes to Christ as a little child and repents of ever giving in to Satan. No one can get away from Satan’s influence in this world. The only thing we can do is to face up to that influence and stare it down by heeding only the voice of the Holy Spirit, which is the voice of Christ. I taught my children about Satan, but I did not emphasize sufficiently the black-and-whiteness of the situation nor the tremendous loss it is to give in to selfishness in any degree, at any time, in any situation.
Thirdly, I would teach my sons better about the holiness of the opportunity to have women in their lives and that they should and must treat every woman with great, I emphasize, Great respect. As a man, each of them has a mission to be deferential to all women, those that keep the commandments of God and those that don’t. One of the greatest evils of this world is the almost universal bad treatment of women by men in almost every culture. This fact is just another testimony to the great power of Satan in this world. When they marry, they must do everything in their power to lead their wife to Christ, and with her to be perfected in Him. If they will treat their wife with this great respect in Christ-like love, they will do for their children the greatest thing they can do.
Brethren, enjoy your mission from the Lord. He is the greatest, and you will be great and do great work if you will only love him instead of yourself and do his work in power and the glory of the Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.