Foreordained to Serve

God appointed each of you to fulfill specific missions in this life.

You can receive opportunities to serve in this life according to your foreordination only according to your righteousness.

Our prophet’s references to the Lord holding the youth of our day in reserve for this time in the gathering of Israel and his invitation to pray to know what the Lord would have you do are, in part, references to the life you lived and blessings you received from God before you were born on this earth. All of us who are born on this earth first lived with our Heavenly Father as His spirit children. The Lord declared to Moses, “I, the Lord God, created all things … spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth.”

When He created you spiritually, He loved you as His spirit sons and daughters and embedded within each of you a divine nature and eternal destiny.

The most important divine destiny is to receive exaltation but that is not the only opportunity that was promised to any one of us.

Before you were born, God appointed each of you to fulfill specific missions during your mortal life upon the earth. If you remain worthy, the blessings of that premortal decree will enable you to have all kinds of opportunities in this life, including opportunities to serve in the Church. … Those premortal promises and blessings are called your foreordination. “The doctrine of foreordination applies to all members of the Church.” Foreordination does not guarantee that you will receive certain callings or responsibilities. These blessings and opportunities come in this life as a result of your righteous exercise of agency, just as your foreordination in your premortal life came as a result of righteousness. As you prove yourself worthy and progress along the covenant path, you will receive opportunities to serve.

Despite the fact that I have stayed committed to the gospel I still struggle with the feeling that the Lord has nothing in store for my life anymore (which is more disappointing because my possibilities seemed so endless 20 years ago).

One Saturday morning when I was 13 years old, I was mowing the grass as part of my weekly chores. When I finished, I heard the door close at the back of our house and looked to see my father calling me to join him. … He asked me what my goals were in life. I thought, “Well, that’s easy.” I knew two things for sure: I wanted to be taller, and I wanted to go camping more often. I was a simple soul. He smiled, paused for a moment, and said: “Steve, I’d like to share something with you that’s very important to me. I’ve prayed that our Heavenly Father will cause what I say now to be indelibly imprinted in your mind and on your soul so that you’ll never forget.”

My father had my full attention in that moment. He turned and looked at me in the eyes and said, “Son, protect the private times of your life.” There was a long pause as he let the meaning sink deep into my heart.

He then continued, “You know, those times when you’re the only one around and no one else knows what you’re doing? Those times when you think, ‘Whatever I do now doesn’t affect anyone else, only me’?”

Then he said, “More than any other time in your life, what you do during the private times of your life will have the greatest impact on how you confront challenges and heartache you will face; and what you do during the private times of your life will also have a greater impact on how you confront the successes and joy you will experience than any other time in your life.”

That is fantastic counsel. If we understand that we can also recognize that by evaluating how we do or don’t protect our private time we can get a gauge of our spiritual health.