Remain for the Present Time

As the Saints from the east started arriving in Kirtland, the Lord gave this revelation to those already living in Ohio: “It is necessary that ye should remain for the present time in your places of abode, as it shall be suitable to your circumstances” (Doctrine and Covenants 48:1). In other words, for the time being they were not to move like the Saints in New York were moving to be with them—they were to stay put. I think there is a lesson in this verse for us as we serve in the Lord’s kingdom and seek to know what the Lord would have us do next. Sometimes—perhaps most of the time—the Lord wants us to remain for the present time where we are at. We don’t need a new calling or a new home or even a new grand revelation about our lives. Rather, we simply need to remain for the present time, continuing to do what we have been called to do. I learned that this was what the Lord wanted me to do as a missionary in my first area. With transfers every six weeks, I wondered if I was to go somewhere else to do some new thing each time. But again and again I was called to remain in my place of abode. I ended up staying there six transfers of six weeks. In other words, I was in that area for about eight and a half months. And I came to love the people and members there. My next area was similar—I stayed there seven months—and my last area I again stayed there over eight months. I learned that I needed to be content and ready to stay where I was at. I often pondered these words of Ammon to King Lamoni when he first came into the Lamanite lands: “Yea, I desire to dwell among this people for a time; yea, and perhaps until the day I die” (Alma 17:23). I’m confident that Ammon didn’t really think he was going to live there with King Lamoni the rest of his life, but that attitude surely made all the difference. He wasn’t counting down the days until his mission president gave him a new place to go—he gave his whole heart and soul into his role as a missionary and made an enormous difference in their lives.

                In whatever responsibility the Lord has given us, we should strive to be content to remain there as long as He desires. Whether that’s in our current calling in our ward or our ministering assignment or our responsibility towards a loved one, we should try not to simply count the time until we are relieved of our duty. Rather, we should strive to lift where we stand for however long the Lord leaves us there. Elder Uchtdorf put it this way: “If we all stand close together in the place the Lord has appointed and lift where we stand, nothing can keep this divine work from moving upward and forward. Brethren, may we cease to aspire and cease to retire!” We should not aspire to some greater task than what we have been given, and neither should we retire from doing what He wants. As Alma yearned to do more than he was doing, he said this: “I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me…. Why should I desire more than to perform the work to which I have been called?” (Alma 29:3, 6) There will certainly be times when the Lord moves us to new opportunities and challenges, just as these Saints eventually went to Missouri. But until then, we can remain and be content with what the Lord has allotted us to do in His kingdom, striving to do our very best no matter what we are asked to do.