Oaks felt the Lord was preparing him for some special service

 

President Dallin H. Oaks: A Life of Hard Work, Optimism, and Faith

By Richard E. Turley Jr.

As Dallin and June pondered their future, they decided to accept an offer from the dean of the University of Chicago Law School for Dallin to serve on its faculty. He didn’t want to teach forever but “felt … this whole thing was just being prepared for me … to equip me for some future job I must do.”...

By summer 1970, Dallin began having premonitions that he would replace Ernest L. Wilkinson, long-time president of Brigham Young University—feelings he resisted. For years after graduation from law school, Dallin remarked to June that he felt the Lord was preparing him “for some special service.” If the Lord was giving him so much, “he would surely expect a return,” Dallin said, “and I hoped I would have the wisdom to recognize the opportunity when the call came, and the courage to accept it.”...

By 1984, Dallin still felt a new opportunity to serve was coming in his life. Yet he did not know what it was. On April 6 of that year, the answer came when President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) called him to serve as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

“My life,” Dallin replied, “is in the hands of the Lord, and my career is in the hands of His servants.”

Dallin now knew what the Lord wanted him to do, but it was not at all what he had expected. “Throughout the remainder of your life,” he asked himself, “will you be a judge and lawyer who has been called to be an Apostle, or will you be an Apostle who used to be a lawyer and a judge?”

“The most important parts of my calling”—in fact, “the only parts that are really unique in the service of the Lord,” he recognized—“were those parts that I knew nothing about—those parts where I would have to start all over at the beginning. I knew that if I concentrated my time on the things that came naturally and the things that I felt qualified to do, I would never be an Apostle. I would always be a former lawyer and judge. I made up my mind that was not for me. I decided that I would focus my efforts on what I had been called to do, not on what I was qualified to do. I determined that instead of trying to shape my calling to my credentials, I would try to shape myself to my calling.”