Your great adventure

When you embrace your own personal ministry, you can embark on your great adventure through your single years.

It’s time once more to return to Conference and feast again on the spiritual sustenance it provides.  In looking over the various addresses, my eye caught hold of Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s remarks in the Sunday morning session.

I love Elder Uchtdorf, and in that sentiment I’m not alone.  And his remarks entitled “Your Great Adventure” have great applicability for LDS singles, even though he wasn’t speaking specifically to singles.  Elder Uchtdorf did this by paralleling the story of Bilbo Baggins and the great plan of happiness God presented to all of us before we came to this world.

Bilbo lived the comfortable life all respectable hobbits admired.  But then he was presented with an opportunity to embark on a great adventure that offered challenges and struggles but also the promise of great reward.  Bilbo decided the reward was worth the risk and embraced his great adventure.

Likewise, we lived with our Heavenly Parents in a comfortable home.  Then we were presented with an opportunity to embark on a great adventure that offered challenges and struggles but also the promise of great reward — to become something more than we ever could becoming staying in our place of comfort.  Although a third of our brothers and sisters rejected the plan, the rest of us thought the reward worth the risk.  And so here we are.

In this great analogy, I see yet another parallel, one that applies to LDS singles.  When you embrace your own personal ministry, you can embark on your great adventure through your single years.

See the parallels

God presented a plan for our great adventure through mortality.  But that plan required us to leave the comforts of our heavenly home.  In exchange, we received the opportunity to grow through making choices.

Here in mortality we find challenges and struggles as well as the chance for failure.  But we judged the potential opportunity for growth worth the risk, and so we embraced the plan.

Likewise, Joy in the Journey Radio has long presented LDS singles with the plan to experience more joy in singles life by embracing a great adventure called a personal ministry.  This choice requires singles to leave a comfortable, mediocre existence on autopilot in exchange for growth by making a unique contribution of goodness to the world.

Just like mortality, performing your personal ministry has many challenges and struggles as well as the chance for failure.  But those who embrace their personal ministry judge the potential for growth and joy well worth the risk.

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Begin your adventure

How do you begin your great adventure?  Elder Uchtdorf taught you begin the great adventure of God’s plan by embracing the path of discipleship.  In like manner, LDS singles can begin their great adventure of LDS singles life by embracing the path of their personal ministry.

Walking that path means partnering with the Lord and counseling with Him regarding what your personal ministry should be and what steps you should take.  You’ll have more success if you simultaneously embrace the path of discipleship Elder Uchtdorf recommended in his remarks.

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First, you need to choose to incline your heart to God. Strive each day to find Him. Learn to love Him. And then let that love inspire you to learn, understand, and follow His teachings and learn to keep God’s commandments. The restored gospel of Jesus Christ is given to us in a plain and simple way that a child can understand. Yet the gospel of Jesus Christ has the answers to the most complex questions in life and has such profound depth and complexity that even with a lifetime of study and pondering, we can scarcely comprehend even the smallest part.

If you hesitate in this adventure because you doubt your ability, remember that discipleship is not about doing things perfectly; it’s about doing things intentionally. It is your choices that show what you truly are, far more than your abilities.

Even when you fail, you can choose not to give up, but rather discover your courage, press forward, and rise up. That is the great test of the journey.  God knows that you are not perfect, that you will fail at times. God loves you no less when you struggle than when you triumph.

Like a loving parent, He merely wants you to keep intentionally trying. Discipleship is like learning to play the piano. Perhaps all you can do at first is play a barely recognizable rendition of “Chopsticks.” But if you continue practicing, the simple tunes will one day give way to wondrous sonatas, rhapsodies, and concertos.

Now, that day may not come during this life, but it will come. All God asks is that you consciously keep striving.

Keep striving, keep trying, keep reaching for the light and the best life that can be yours.  When you choose not give up — whether in the path of discipleship or the path of your personal ministry, God extends a helping hand.

Set out today

Often that helping hand will come from other people.  That’s because we need others to progress in our great adventure through mortality.  Elder Uchtdorf taught, “The only way for you to progress in your gospel adventure is to help others progress as well.  To help others is the path of discipleship.”

You’ll need the help of others in your personal ministry as well.  If nothing else, sharing your light with others means having others to share with.  But those others don’t necessarily need to accept your offerings.  Your success in a personal ministry lies in your choices and actions, not in the choices and actions of others.  It’s the same with sharing the gospel, as Elder Uchtdorf explains.

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May I remind you that God does not need you to “sell” the restored gospel or the Church of Jesus Christ.  He simply expects you not to hide it under a bushel.

And if people decide the Church is not for them, that is their decision.  It does not mean you have failed. You continue to treat them kindly. Nor does it exclude that you invite them again.  The difference between casual social contacts and compassionate, courageous discipleship is—invitation!

It’s normal to feel compelled to wait until everything is perfect before proceeding.  This is your biological hard-wiring defending the status quo, and the status quo will never deliver your best life, not in terms of the gospel, and not in terms of a personal ministry.

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If you and I have felt the stirrings to join the great adventure of living and sharing what our loving Heavenly Father prepared for us a long time ago, I assure you, today is the day to follow God’s Son and our Savior on His path of service and discipleship.

We could spend a lifetime waiting for that moment when everything lines up perfectly. But now is the time to commit fully to seeking God, ministering to others, and sharing our experience with others.

Start your great adventure through life by embracing more fully the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  And start your great adventure through LDS singles life by embracing more fully your own personal ministry.  When you do, you’ll feel more satisfaction and growth than you’ve ever known.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

You can listen to the monologue from today's episode of Joy In The Journey Radio here.  Please also feel free to continue the conversation by leaving a comment below.  Want to hear more?  Listen to the whole show by going to the show page for this episode.