Qualified for the Work

Today I read Doctrine and Covenants section 4. This is the scripture from my mission, we would recite it each and ever district meeting and zone conference. I have always been intrigued by verse 5 of this section. Verse 5 reads, "And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work." My mission was here in the United States but I spoke Mandarin Chinese, so there were only 10 of us missionaries at the time and I got to know them very, very well. There was one missionary from New York, that every time we would recite this scripture, he would put real emphasis on the line "eye single to the glory of God", it was his favorite phrase. I still remember it, 12 years later.

But I think it is interesting that those qualities are what qualify you for the work. You need to have them before you can do the work. And they make sense if you think about them. Faith is the first quality that we need. This makes sense just like we talked about last week when we read Moroni 6. We have to have faith in Jesus Christ and in the fact that we are doing His will, especially when it comes to Missionary work. Just yesterday actually I was talking to my younger brother and he brought up a story I had told him from my mission. When I first became a senior companion about my year mark or so, I was given a pretty green missionary. He had only been in the field 3 months and I was his third companion. One day we were tracting with little results and I asked him if he knew why we tracted. He replied that it was to find new people to teach the Gospel to. I told him he was wrong. We tract to show to Heavenly Father our desire to do the work, our faith that He will help us and bless us because of our obedience and diligence. I firmly believed that then, and I still do. Tracting is a terrible way to find people to teach, but in most missions, it is a rule to tract so much each week and so you do it to be obedient and you do it to show Heavenly Father that you are willing to do whatever it takes to find people to teach. I would have to review my journals and photo albums, but I am pretty sure that I only had 1 or two people that I helped get baptized from tracting.

Hope, hope is kind of like the forgotten sister. We talk a lot about faith and charity, but we really don't talk about hope very often. Hope of course is the precursor to faith. Most of us cannot just to having faith right off the bat, we first have to hope that the gospel is true. In the case of missionaries, we have a hope that we will be effective and a useful tool in the hands of Christ. I think hope gets overshadowed so much because it is so very similar to faith that they kind of just get lumped in together. But the reason it is a requirement for missionary work is if you think about it, if you don't hope for the things of Christ, why are you doing the work? Why do you serve a mission if not because of a hope that you can be an instrument in His hands to help bring some few souls to salvation?

Charity and love. I have always found it funny that so many scriptures and people separate out these 2 qualities. I have always been taught that charity is ultimate love, so it always amuses me when I see charity and love like this. But it makes total sense that we need charity if we are going to be doing the work of God. The work of God is to save souls and be concerned with their eternal welfare and we need charity to be able to do this. Charity is the state of having love for all people regardless of their situation and doing what is best for them regardless of what is in it for you. As any missionary will tell you, this is absolutely essential to be effective. You have to forget yourself and go to work .

An eye single to the Glory of God. The ability to forget what you want and what you think is best and let your will be swallowed up in the will of the Father. It is incredibly hard to do, as anyone who has prematurely lost a loved one can attest. But as a missionary you have to be able to forget about what you want and follow the Spirit and its promptings no matter what you personally feel about it. That is what it means to have an eye single to His glory. You forget your own needs and what you want and just do what Heavenly Father tells you to do. Like Godly Sorrow, you are more concerned with what Heavenly Father wants than with what you want.

Is it any wonder why these qualities are necessary to be a missionary? Honestly all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should strive to have these qualities but they are absolutely essential to be a missionary. That is why it says if you have those qualities you are qualified for the work. It doesn't say you will be successful, that you will baptize thousands. It says that if you have these qualities, you are qualified for the work. You need those qualities just to begin the work. Success comes much later, through perseverance and hard work. But it is one of the most worthwhile things you can ever do! Until tomorrow.