12 Keys of Discipleship
Key Seven – Find Your Mission
The disciple must have a mission. Why?
Without a mission the seeker’s energies will be scattered and however good are his intentions he will not accomplish much. A mission is a work to do in a focused area and when thought is directed away from everything to a pin-pointed objective miracles of achievement can be accomplished.
A great example of what can be done with a mission is the space program. When the race for space started the United States just ambled along with no clear objective. Their energies were further scattered with the Army and Navy competing against each other for research and development funds.
The Soviets, on the other hand, had a clear sense of mission which was to be the first in space. They knew if they could accomplish this, they would score a major public relations victory.
Then, sure enough, in 1957 they launched the first satellite in orbit and startled the world. This woke us up to our own sense of mission and finally Kennedy sealed the deal by making a specific mission goal to put a man on the moon before 1970.
Finally, we had a specific mission and worked toward it, Then two tragedies happened making many wonder if the mission could be accomplished. First, JFK [John F. Kennedy] was assassinated and, secondly, three astronauts were killed by a fire inside their capsule.
Many began to wonder if the mission was just a fanciful dream. But instead of treating the drawbacks as failure they saw them as sacrifices that must bear fruit and the work continued. Finally, on July 20, 1969, the first man set foot on the surface of the moon.
The world was amazed and even now, 40 years later, it is such a fantastic feat that many people on the planet do not believe it happened.
The mission was accomplished. What was next? Were we going to Mars, build a base on the moon or what? For the next 40 years there were few specific goals and nothing much very specific happened. Bush 43 kind of set a goal to go to Mars and return to the moon but no one got excited and many didn’t want to spend any additional money.
Unless someone sets a far-reaching goal for space, governments may just dabble in it for another 40 years, or until private enterprise decides to be the ones to set the new mission — as they have with computers.
Without a mission, even the best of intentions and great knowledge will accomplish little.
How does the disciple find out what the mission is?
Let me tell my own story here. I had a sense of mission from my earliest memories. I knew I had something to do, but didn’t know what it was. When I was around 6 I went to a movie and the main character said he was a scientist. I had no idea what a scientist was but felt that had something to do with my mission. When I got home I asked my mother what a scientist was. After she explained I announced to her that was what I was going to be.
She then told me there were many different kinds of scientists. I needed to figure out which kind I wanted to be. Over the next couple years I thought about it and decided that I wanted to be an astronomer. I was especially interested in the moon and 9 planets and learned everything I could about them. I was fascinated in looking over pictures of them and dreaming about what the future would reveal about them.
Then my uncle bought me a sizable telescope and I was in hog heaven exploring the celestial bodies but also made the neighbors a little nervous for fear I may be spying on them. Some of them seemed to think a telescope could see through walls.
One thing bothered me about astronomy and that was, even though I found it fascinating, there was not much chance of making significant change by looking through telescopes and mapping the heavens. I began to wonder if my mission was not something else. I asked myself this question.
What can I do that would accomplish the highest good for the world?
About the time I was pondering this I began to get interested in making homemade rockets. I had a great time doing this and began setting new rockets off almost daily. Then at the age of 13, on the evening of December 26, 1958 a friend and I were putting the finishing touches on a rocket in our kitchen. As I was working on it, it exploded in my left hand and sent me to the hospital for a month. My friend was also injured but not nearly as bad.
As I was recovering in the hospital a friend brought me a book on rockets and space flight. It was the first book that I had ever read from cover to cover. After I finished it I thought about my mission along these lines: I could perform a much greater service to mankind by building rockets and exploring new worlds than by just looking at them as an astronomer. Then, at that moment I decided I was going to be an astronautical engineer and build rockets to explore the planets. From that point on I developed a love of exploratory reading and studied everything available about rockets and space flight.
Then, about the age of 16 I developed an interest in writing, but still stuck to my goal of becoming an engineer. My interest in writing increased until I started my freshman year at the University of Idaho. I entered the college of engineering majoring in mechanical engineering. I dreamed of going to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but that was not to be.
At the end of my first semester something happened that shattered my mission. I received my first failing grades in my life and it was in my two greatest loves. The first was mechanical drawing — a key course for any engineer. Even though I loved rocket science and the end results of engineering I found I didn’t have much love for the nuts and bolts. Just learning the basics like precise lettering was painful for me.
The second class I failed was English. In high school I always did okay in English, but the teacher of this class was a strange guy that seemed to take a dislike to me.
When I saw my two “F’s” I was devastated. Maybe I just wasn’t intelligent enough to be an engineer or a writer. Maybe my sense of mission was just a dream. What was I to do with my life, I wondered.
After I adjusted to the shock of my low grades I assessed my situation and asked myself some questions.
I realized I could retake the failed courses and was confident I could be a good engineer, but I also realized something else and that was this. It did not appear that I was going to enjoy doing the tedious work of an engineer which is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
I was developing a greater interest in writing and often found myself at the library reading literary works and past issues of The Writer magazine instead of working on my classes. I then decided that, figuring my interests and ability, the highest direction I could take would be as a writer. Even though I had just received an “F” in English I was not discouraged.
Since there was no major available or even one course on creative writing I decided to drop out of engineering and just take whatever courses interested me. I felt that if I was going to write that a broad knowledge of things would be helpful.
I thus changed my major to political science and minored in journalism. In addition, I took any course I saw that I found interesting.
Then after my first year of college I went on a mission for the LDS church, as was the custom for young men in the church of that age.
I was called to go to England and serve for two years. One thing that served me well during this period was the one-pointedness of my direction. All my energies were directed to “teaching the gospel” and nothing else. Learning and teaching were the only two endeavors. We worked every spare moment from 6 AM to 10 PM, and often til midnight.
During this period I studied the scriptures and church doctrine every spare moment and fell in love with the concept of Zion. Zion was a society patterned after the order of heaven, which was to manifest upon the earth and produce peace on earth, goodwill to men as well as abundance for all. Best of all it was composed of a gathering of the “pure in heart” that would make it a much more desirable society than we have today.
By the end of the two years I had concluded that the greatest need of the planet was not engineers or scientists in the physical sense, but spiritual scientists.
But there was a major problem with proceeding with my ideas of spiritual science which was this. In the church you had to wait to be called to a work that involves building Zion.
After my mission I went back to college and continued taking a variety of courses. I found myself spending more time at the library studying writing on my own and writing on the side than attending to my studies. I still dreamed of building Zion but seemed limited to working within any calling the church would give me.
I remember I sometimes wished I had lived back in the days of Joseph Smith when there seemed to be much more opportunity to do a great work than there was in modern times. It seemed as if the day of opportunity had passed.
This thinking was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
The only thing that took my consciousness beyond this mistake is that I never ceased asking questions, seeking and studying, not only church approved writings but anything in the direction of spiritual knowledge.
From the age of 21 to 27 I had a sense of mission about building Zion, but there seemed to be no way to go about it because of restrictions from the church. Then, to make a long story short at the age of 27 I proved to myself that reincarnation was a true principle and this changed everything within an instant.
At that point I realized that I did not have to wait for the church to call me to service, but that I could call myself. The true elect are those who elect to serve to the highest of their capacity and let the chips fall where they may.
My free thinking got me kicked out of the church in 1979, but on reflection I call that graduation day.
It was thus around the age period of 27-30 (the end of my first Saturn cycle) that I fined tune my mission and finally settled on the highest good I could pursue.
I had finally found my mission and have sought to accomplish it with varying degrees of enlightenment since that time.
That which I went through is what each true disciple must go through, but with different circumstances. Several things will be the same for all:
* He who is ready to be a disciple in his current life will have had a sense of mission from his youth, or younger years.
* That which he is supposed to do will not be clear until he follows the highest he knows for some period of time.
* Just as I had the church limiting me even so will each disciple have influences in his life that seem to limit him.
* If the seeker “endures to the end” he will find his mission and it will be confirmed through his soul. As he proceeds on such a confirmed mission it will feel very right and satisfying to work on it.
A reader asked if sometimes we take off on the wrong mission before we find the right one.
The answer is yes. This will usually happen. I went from thinking my mission was astronomy to engineering, to fiction writing and a number of other possibilities until I finally found my true course.
But know this. The pursuit of a misdirected mission is far from a waste of time for that which is learned during this period will be invaluable knowledge when the true mission is found.
Another important point is this. Do not think that finding your mission means you will be a Moses or Lincoln. It merely means that you will find the correct work to do. That work may be an effort in cooperation with many other souls. For instance, the building of Zion will take the efforts of many sons and daughters of men on the same mission.
Also keep in mind that the building of Zion is only one mission of many attempted by true seekers.
Then a final point is this. For many the purpose of their life will be directed to learning more than serving. Sometimes a whole lifetime or series of lifetimes is dedicated to learning so the seeker can be equipped to perform a great service at a future date.
“The past is finished. There is nothing to be gained by going over it. Whatever it gave us in the experiences it brought us was something we had to know.” — Rebecca Beard
May 18, 2009
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