"With Real Intent"

I've never really thought of myself as a pushy person. Ok, so maybe my husband and children will disagree. They know that sometimes I won't take no for an answer. Like the time I insisted that a store clerk look in the back for a shirt in another size that I desperately wanted to get for someone for Christmas even though they told me they didn't have it. I could sense there was one back there. I could smell it. So I "encouraged" them to look, which they did, and lo and behold it was there.

So I guess there are times when I feel motivated enough to insist on something, but there are also other times when I don't feel like pushy is in my nature at all. Like the time I was selling garbage sacks door to door (yes, I did that for a summer job once in high school) and sometimes I would end up telling the people I was trying to sell them to that I understood why they didn't want to buy them and frankly I really didn't blame them one bit. Needless to say I didn't make a lot of money that summer. I don't like putting people on the spot. And I don't like it when people feel uncomfortable. I am always the first one to leap into a conversation if there is an awkward silence. Like right now for instance........... So,
why am I talking about this?

The reason I bring this up is because I want to share with you something I have come to feel strongly about with regards to the way we do missionary work that frankly has surprised me.

In Preach My Gospel it encourages us to extend the invitation to baptism pretty early on in our teaching of an investigator. Of course this must be done under the influence and direction of the Spirit. The invitation basically says, "When you receive an answer that the things we have taught you are true would you be willing to be baptized by someone having the authority..."

My normal non-pushy-I-hate-for-people-to-feel-uncomfortable-self should feel very uneasy with this.  I should be afraid that if we invited people too soon we would scare them away. It wasn't until our mission in Italy that I began to see that by extending the baptismal invite we are not just pointing someone or even pushing someone toward the goal of baptism, but we are teaching them an important principle. We are teaching them about the role of real intent in getting answers to our prayers. Discovering this connection for myself has made all the difference in my confidence in doing something that I normally would have thought of as being too pushy. Here's the principle:

Elder Bednar taught that Joseph Smith didn't just pray to know which church was true, but to know which church he should join. He intended to ACT on the answer he was given.  He intended to do something about the answer when he received it. This is what it means to pray with real intent. We pray with the intention to do something about the answer we receive. (Could Joseph ever have imagined how much he would be required to do about the answer he received!) I can imagine myself in Joseph's place saying, "Look all I really wanted to know was which of the existing churches is true. Which corner of the four corner's churches should I go to? Which corner is correct?  Just tell me which side of the street it is on and we can call it good. I really am not interested in ushering in a new dispensation or in restoring the fulness of the Gospel with all its blessings, keys and authority to the earth in order to prepare the world for the Second Coming of the Savior or in translating an ancient record in 65 days while being hounded and persecuted and having my life threatened. Never mind. Sorry I ever bought it up."

But Joseph prayed with the intent to act on the answer he would be given no matter what that answer would require of him.

On our mission in Italy it hit me that the baptismal invitation is a way to help people into their own personal sacred grove. We can promise them that if they, like Joseph, will pray with the intent to act on the answer they receive by being baptized then they, like Joseph, will also get an answer.  They may not have the Father and the Son appear to them, but they can have the other member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost provide them with an answer. This is pretty amazing! It hit me that as we teach people the Joseph Smith story we can also teach them about the importance of the principle of praying like Joseph did with the intention to act on the answer they will receive.  We must teach them that it is this kind of real intent - the intent to act on our answer, that Moroni's promise refers to, that will enable them to receive an answer. The Joseph Smith story is the perfect foundation to ask someone if they too will be willing to act on the answer they will receive by joining the Church by being baptized. It is the perfect platform by which one can extend the baptismal invite.

Case in point:

David and I were in a lesson with the elders with a man whom they had been teaching for several weeks. When they asked him if he had prayed about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon he said that he had prayed about it but that he did not get an answer that it was true nor did he get an answer that it wasn't true. I wondered why this man's response would be one of such ambivalence. And then when the elders asked him when he did get an answer if he would be willing to be baptized, the man said no because he had already been baptized in his church. Of course the elders proceeded to teach him about the need to be baptized by one with proper authority and all that goes along with that, but it became evident that this man did not have real intent. The Lord wasn't going to give him an answer he had no intention of acting on.  He wasn't going to answer him just to satisfy his curiosity.  By contrast, we have seen others who have prayed with the intent to do all that would be required of them if they received the answer that the Book of Mormon and the Gospel are true who have received powerful witnesses of their truthfulness and this witness has given them the strength to make many difficult changes in their lives and to receive many blessings as they have been true to the answers they have received.

Seeing the connection of the baptismal invite with the principle of real intent as demonstrated by Joseph Smith has made all the difference for me. It has helped me to not be afraid to teach the importance of giving the baptismal invite under the direction of the Spirit early on in the teaching process. Understanding this principle of praying with real intent has helped me to find a place within myself with regards to encouraging someone to be baptized where I don't need to feel like the insistent customer repeatedly asking the store clerk to go look for that shirt in order to give me what I want, nor am I the reticent person trying to sell something who doesn't really believe that the person needs to buy the goods that I am offering, but instead, I am a person who can have great confidence in teaching someone the true meaning of an eternal principle that if properly understood and acted upon will change their life forever.

I like to tell our missionaries, especially the more timid ones, that they don't need to feel like pushy salespeople in order to teach the Gospel, but they can think of themselves as an investigator's  personal guide or escort into that person's own sacred grove instead. Their job is to teach their investigator the connection between knowing and doing and doing and knowing as demonstrated by Joseph Smith. They must be the one to help the investigator do what they, the missionaries, have already done and that is to learn how to gain their own testimony. Some of our most effective missionaries have been timid by nature, but they teach with a gentle boldness and a quiet confidence when they understand this.

God be thanked that Joseph Smith prayed with real intent and was willing to act on the answer he was given. And God be thanked for the missionaries who taught me the Gospel who at times I thought were being kinda pushy with me.

And God be thanked that in order to be a great missionary we don't have to be a pushy person. For those sometimes timid souls like me this is good news.  It's the good news of the Gospel.

The story of Joseph Smith can be the archetype story for all of us. It can be our story too. It must be our story. It is the pattern for receiving revelation.  It is where the heavens are opened. It is the way the morning can break and the shadows can flee in each of our own lives. We may not be the one who restored the Gospel to the world for the very first time as Joseph Smith did, nor are we the one who brought forth the Book of Mormon, but we can be the one who helps restore the Gospel in an individual's life for the very first time. We can be the one to bring forth the Book of Mormon to them. But before we can do this effectively each of us must have the Gospel restored in our own hearts and lives.We must experience our own personal Restoration. We must come to know for ourselves the dawning of that brighter day.

"And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." Moroni 10:4-5

* Elder David A. Bednar, Ask In Faith, April 2008 General Conference. 

* The four corners is the intersection on a street in Palmyra, New York where eventually there would exist a church of a different Christian denomination on each corner of the intersection. These four churches were not built at the time of Joseph Smith, but the four corners have often been referred to as a way of illustrating the many conflicting sects in existence during the time of Joseph Smith.