Righteous Desires

In my study of Come Follow Me this week, I was really intrigued by D&C 7. Sections 6, 8 and 9 all have similar themes regarding prayer and revelation, but Section 7 has a different lesson for us to learn. One lesson I learned from Section 7 is that the Lord accepts all of our righteous desires to help in His work and that we need not compare what our work is to the work assigned to someone else. The more that I thought about this lesson, the more I wondered if it actually does relate to the other sections. In the section 8 heading, we learn that Oliver Cowdery also wanted to be endowed with the gift of translation. The Lord seems to be okay with this request (8:11), but we learn in Section 9 verse 1 that it didn't work out for Oliver to translate and the Lord asks him to continue his work as a scribe for the time being.

As I compared the story of Peter and John from Section 7 with that of Joseph and Oliver, I saw some similarities:

• Peter and John had different desires which would lead each of them to a different work, but both were good and acceptable to the Lord (7:5-7)
• Joseph and Oliver both had different gifts (Joseph to translate 5:4, Oliver to scribe 9:4) which would enable them to accomplish different work, but both were good and acceptable to the Lord (9:12-14). 

The work that Oliver is called to do is to be a scribe for Joseph (9:4). He wants to translate but the Lord tells him that “it is not expedient that you should translate at this time” (9:3). The word expedient  means convenient, practical, suitable or appropriate. That makes me think that it just wasn’t practical to have Oliver blessed with that gift at that particular time. Instead, the Lord needed Oliver to use his gift as a writer. The Lord will also use our spiritual gifts and righteous desires to help further His work. There will be times when we desire to be endowed with more spiritual gifts, but we need to remember that it will take a lot of faith (8:11) and effort (9:7-8) on our part in order to receive those gifts. 

We all have different gifts and desires. The Lord is pleased with all of our righteous desires. A quote by Jeffrey R Holland that I love says:

"[God] doesn't measure our talents or our looks; He doesn't measure our professions or our possessions. He cheers on every runner, calling out that the race is against sin, not against each other."("The Other Prodigal")

We shouldn't compare what our work is to someone else's work because God needs everyone's work to be a little different from that of their neighbor. Our gifts and desires are not meant to compete with each other but to compliment each other. No matter the work we are called to do, the promise is the same for each of us: "Stand fast is the work wherewith I have called you, and a hair of your head shall not be lost, and you shall be lifted up at the last day." (D&C 9:14)