Can I Increase Spirituality in my Life?
Part 3
Continued from last week’s letter
So far we have covered the first 3 of 10 points which will help us gain spirituality as a mission. We now continue…
#4 Go to bed early and get up early.
So what do sleep habits have to do with spirituality? Elder Joe Christensen has added this to his list of ten things to increase spirituality.
Think about this scripture … “Cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated” (D&C 88:124).
President Harold B. Lee was speaking to a newly called general authority and giving him some advice. Elder Lee spoke about the necessity of receiving personal revelation in order to be effective and said: “If you are to be successful as a General Authority, you will need to be inspired. You will need to receive revelation. I will give you one piece of advice: Go to bed early and get up early. If you do, your body and mind will become rested, and then in the quiet of those early-morning hours, you will receive more flashes of insight and inspiration than at any other time of the day.”
As missionaries we wake up at 6:30 AM and go to bed at 10:30 PM. We get up early and we go to bed early. The general authorities feel it is so important to study in the morning that a large block of time is set-aside in the morning for us to learn and study. As for me, I know that morning studies yield more results than do late evening studies.
A BYU professor friend of mine, Larry Hall, would always go to bed early and get up early. When I say early I mean really early. It was virtually impossible to reach him awake after 9:00PM and he was up daily at 4:00AM. When asked about this schedule he said that it was the only time of the day that he could count on to not be disturbed.
There is something about the early morning that brings tranquility and a fresh look at things. Enjoy it on your mission as a time to get close to the Lord, then after your mission, don’t let that wonderful habit slip away.
#5 Be an essentially happy person
It is certain that spirituality is directly related to how well you follow the Lord’s commandments to “Be of good cheer”.
“Lift up your heart and rejoice” (D&C 31:3)
Every once in a while a missionary will tell me that he or she is very discouraged. The missionary will then recite an experience where an investigator that they care very much about decides not to be baptized after hearing all the lessons. Sometimes a missionary might not ever be able to get in contact with an investigator after having a “Golden First”.
Many times in the scriptures the Lord commands us to be of good cheer. He didn’t say, “Be of good cheer if everything is going well, if you have enough money to pay all your bills, if your investigators all get baptized,” or whatever. No. For us to be of good cheer is a commandment and not merely a suggestion.
One truth that took me a while to learn is that we don’t have to feel and act, based on our environment. We can choose to change our perception of the environment. The story is told of the Lagoon roller coaster. This roller coaster is very old and the wooden structure very rickety. Half the fear seems to be from the ride itself and the other half from the fact that it seems as though it could all collapse at any minute! One day on one ride of the roller coaster an interesting dilemma arose. A rollercoaster car got stuck at the top of the track. Try as they might the riders, by shifting their weight, could not get it off “dead center”. The park managers met to determine what to do. They thought of getting a helicopter to come and airlift the roller-coaster riders down. The wind was too strong to bring in a helicopter. Consulting again they determined to call in the search and rescue specialists. When these mountaineering experts arrived they climbed the old framework and lowered the riders to the ground. The whole process took several hours. The first group down consisted of a father and his small children. The father was so full of anxiety that he had severely frightened his children who were crying and upon complaining of chest pains he was whisked away in an ambulance. The next group down was a group of teenagers. As they finished repelling down to the parking lot they were ecstatic! “That was so radical! We could sit up there and see all the way to Nevada! And the repel down was awesome.”
Can you see how two people can have exactly the same experience and one will find in the experience joy and adventure, while the other sees only fear and unhappiness? We can “make our own weather” meaning we can decide for ourselves how we will react to a certain set of circumstances. Except for those who are clinically depressed, we can decide whether to feel the bright sunshine of optimism and happiness or travel through the gloomy clouds of despair. Let’s choose HAPPINESS!
#5 Work Hard
Each week we recite these words … “Thrust in your sickle with all your heart, might, mind, and strength“(D&C 4:2; D&C 31:5)… this means ‘work hard’.
As a mission president I can honestly say that I have never seen a missionary who is both spiritual and lazy. Laziness and Spiritually just don’t go together. Hard work and Spirituality are the perfect match for each other.
“… if you want to increase your level of spirituality, work hard. Magnify your callings within the Church. Really work!” …Elder Joe Christensen.
Above we said that a happy person is more prone to be spiritual. Not working and being lazy seems to just suck the happiness away from any who indulge in it.
There are many skills that we acquire as missionaries, but unless we go out and use them by working hard we will see very limited success. We will not feel spiritually motivated without working hard. The restful sleep of someone who has worked hard all day is almost reward enough. The peaceful spirit of someone who has worked hard all day is the great reward.
Elder Holland has said “Every mission needs at least one Idaho Farm Boy to show the rest of the mission how to work”. We are blessed to have so many hard working missionaries that perhaps you could say that our missionaries are ‘grafted in’ to the tree of Idaho farm boys.
As we improve sleeping habits, commit to be happy and work hard; we will see increased Spirituality in our mission.
love,
President Brubaker
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