The Power of Everyday Missionaries by Clayton M. Christianson

Author:Clayton M. Christianson [Christensen, Clayton M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Missionary
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Every time I have set a date—first to invite someone, and then to find someone who says yes, God has blessed me to intersect with someone who has accepted my invitation to come into our home to study with the missionaries. I have noted above only a few of the experiences from which I learned important lessons. Most of these people, of course, did not accept baptism—and that’s fine. I succeed when I invite. And in almost every case, we have emerged from the experience with a stronger friendship with the people we invited into our home. Also, again in every case, there is no way I could have predicted in advance who would accept or reject my invitations.

Out of these experiences in setting dates, I have learned a few important lessons. First, Spencer’s Principle of Desperation is a general principle. When we engage in a covenant with God that we will do something that one of our leaders has asked us to do, and we are desperate to do what we have committed to do, God truly comes to trust us. He came to trust Abraham (see Genesis 18:17–19); and He can come to trust you and me. I think that a reason why so many people have set a date but then never found someone for the missionaries to teach is that they never became desperate. The date was a casual commitment.

The second insight is that setting a date is not a program. Making commitments to God is a principle of obedience and improvement that can and should bless every dimension of our lives. I wonder if a key reason why the missionary work sometimes flounders is that too few members take seriously the commitment we made when we were baptized “to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places” (Mosiah 18:9).

And third: I think that as we get busy in our family, church, and secular lives, our inclination when confronted with uncomfortable commandments or instructions from Church leaders is to rationalize—to assert that because we are already stretched to the limit, we are doing enough, and our particular extenuating circumstances exempt us from having to obey those specific words of counsel or commandment. These experiences have taught me that the busier we get, the more important it becomes, actually, that we exercise the childlike faith of Nephi: “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them” (1 Nephi 3:7).

In the equation that determines whether we can find people for the missionaries to teach, God’s role is a constant, not a variable. He always keeps His promises. The only variable is whether we have the faith that we will be blessed with miracles if we make commitments to God and then obediently do what we said we would do.

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