Elder Stuart Poelman, CES missionary in the School of Business, contrasts our sense of duty and our sense of desire in today's devotional, encouraging all to be "anxiously engaged in a good cause."
Elder Poelman prefaced his address by advising listeners how to study the scriptures—not just read them but truly study them. He recommended reading a scripture several times, each time asking oneself the following questions: What does this scripture tell me? What does the Lord want me to learn from this scripture? What have I learned from this scripture? What I'm I going to do about it?
He then shared one of his favorite scriptures, Doctrine and Covenants 58:27-28, which reads, "Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward."
Answering the first question in his method of scripture study, Elder Poelman taught that this scripture tells us that "we should approach our responsibilities with an anxious heart—committed, anxious to do good—and, as he adds, we will do it of our own free will, not because someone has given us responsibility [or] because we have a duty to act."
Continuing on that theme of duty versus desire, Elder Poelman posed the reflective question, "Do we want to continue doing things because it is our responsibility or do we do it because we want to?"
He went on to explain that growing up he was motivated to action by a sense of duty. When he became a teenager he began questioning and sometimes challenging those duties that governed his earlier life. He realized, then, that he had to change his attitude from one of duty to one of desire—a change that came through various learning experiences.
One such experience came while he was working part-time in a department store. He frequently struck up conversations about the church with a non-member co-worker.
"You know, it was really fun to tell her about the church," he said. "I got kind of exited about that, and I think that was a real impetus for making me want to go out and preach the gospel," not just go out of a sense of duty.