We are engaged
in the Work of Salvation. Being in the fullness of times has given us an added
responsibility to bring others unto Christ. But it helps if we are on the path
to Christ ourselves. God, to His prophet Moses, revealed His mission statement
for the work of salvation.
For behold, this
is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of
man.[1][2]
Because of Jesus
Christ and His Atoning sacrifice, immortality is available to all who ever
lived on this earth. All shall rise from the dead and put on an immortal body
in the resurrection. But eternal life is something that we have to work
towards. During the end of His ministry, Christ said:
And this is life
eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
thou hast sent.[3]
Becoming one with God through Obedience
One of the main
ways that we can come to know God is through obedience to His laws and
commandments.
And we will
prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord
their God shall command them;[4]
Through this we are
aligning our wills with God. Jesus Christ in His Sermon on the Mount told us
what kind of people we needed to be.
Be ye therefore
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.[5]
It wasn’t until
after His Resurrection and His visit to the Nephites in the Americas that He
included Himself in the lists of examples.
Therefore I
would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is
perfect.[6]
While the task
of becoming perfect is daunting and often on the minds of Latter-day Saints,
and can cause endless amounts of stress and self-doubt, the idea of perfection in
these versus is more one of completion. To become one with God that our wills
are aligned with His that we are effortlessly obedient, but also that we have completed
every needed covenant and ordinance to regain His presence. One of these
ordinances includes the resurrection, so full completion cannot be attained in
this life. But there are many covenants and ordinances that we can perform
while in mortality.
Becoming one with God through covenants and ordinances
We believe that
the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission
of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.[7]
Herein lies the
majority of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am also a firm believer that these
first principles, faith and repentance, are needed daily, but also before every
ordinance and covenant that we make with God.
The
prophet Nephi has described the ordinances of baptism and confirmation of the
Gift of the Holy Ghost to be the gateway that leads to the path to eternal
life. But he them remarks:
And
now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow
path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for ye have not
come thus far save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken faith in him,
relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save.
Wherefore,
ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect
brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall
press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold,
thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.
And
now, behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way; and there is none other way
nor name given under heaven whereby man can be saved in the kingdom of God. And
now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without
end. Amen.[8]
Making that
first step and being baptized in the Church is taking a step into a new life
with Christ at the center of it. With each covenant that we make, and as we
endure and persevere forward, we make our way closer to our Christ. It is on
this path that we can obtain eternal life and come to know God and Jesus Christ
in an incomprehensible way. We may lose sight of Him and may even start to head
the opposite direction, but I know that repentance is real and that we can turn
around and face the Son and work towards knowing Him better and coming into His
presence.
President Gordon
B. Hinckley has said,
We are a
covenant people. I have had the feeling that if we could just encourage our
people to live by three or four covenants everything else would take care of
itself; we would not have to have anything else except to go forward with our
program.
The first of
these is the covenant of the sacrament, in which we take upon ourselves the
name of the Savior and agree to keep His commandments with the promise in His
covenant that He will bless us with His spirit. If our people would go to
sacrament meeting every week and reflect as they partake of the sacrament on
the meaning of the prayers which are offered, … if they would listen to the
language of the prayers, which were given by revelation, and live by them, we
would be a better people, all of us would be. That is the importance of
sacrament meeting. The speakers are incidental. The great thing is that we
gather together and partake of the sacrament together. …[9]
This meeting has
special meaning for me. As he said, the speakers are incidental and the real
reason why we gather is to partake of the sacrament. It is a time that I can
review my week and my relationship with God and Jesus Christ and figure out how
I can improve and improve week by week.
James E. Faust
eloquently said:
Renewing our
baptismal covenants as we partake of the sacrament protects us against all
manner of evil. If we partake of the sacrament regularly and are faithful to
these covenants, the law will be in our inward parts and written on our hearts.[10]
But it is not
only our baptismal covenants that are renewed. By partaking of the sacrament we
“renew all covenants entered into with the Lord.”[11]
President Hinckley
continues:
Second, the
covenant of tithing. It is a covenant. “Why have ye robbed me? Bring ye all the
tithes into the storehouse… and prove me now herewith” (Mal. 3:10). The
commandment to us is to pay our tithing. The promise on the other side of that
contract, that covenant, is that He will stay the destroyer and open the
windows of heaven and pour down blessings that there will not be room enough to
receive them. I am one who believes in the literalness of that promise. …[12]
I have a Russian
babushka that I love so much. She was my landlady and faithful branch member
for the year that I served in that area. And her food was the best that I had
while out there. But she would often get caught up on the law of tithing. She
didn’t think that she could give the whole ten percent. I’m sure she got tired
of it, but every time we went to teach her a lesson we always found a way to
tie in tithing and the need to be obedient. During my time there my companion
and I switched apartments with her. The main furniture didn’t move, and there
were still some of her belongings in our apartment, mostly papers and stuff
like that. But we challenged her to pay her full ten percent for one month and
see how God would bless her. I would know if she did because I helped count
tithing every week. The beginning of the month came and she did pay her full
tithe. A couple weeks later she came to our apartment and came in in a panic.
She started going through drawers. She had to find certain papers in order to
continue to get her pension. As she described the papers I was able to locate
them for her. She thanked my profusely, but I made sure to take the moment to
testify of God’s hand in this and the blessings that come from paying tithing.
That experience
has strengthened my testimony in the power of paying tithing. The blessings may
not come as we expect, but if we are faithful in paying it, there will be so
many blessings that we will not have room to receive them.
President
Hinckley finishes with:
Three, the
covenant of the temple: Sacrifice, the willingness to sacrifice for this the
Lord’s work— and inherent in that law of sacrifice is the very essence of the
Atonement, the ultimate sacrifice made by Son of God in behalf of each of us.
Consecration, which is associated with it, a willingness to give everything, if
need be, to help in the on-rolling of this great work. And a covenant of love
and loyalty one to another in the bonds of marriage, fidelity, chastity,
morality. [13]
I was able to go
to the temple yesterday morning. I am sad to say that it had been a while since
I have been, but I love the feeling that I get by going. It is like coming
home. It is also good to be reminded of the covenants that I have made there.
These are included in the covenants that I renew each Sabbath during the
Sacrament.
I would like to
extend an invitation given by Boyd K. Packer in his book The Holy Temple.
To all of you I
say, “Come to the temple.” If not now, come [when ready]. Pray fervently, set
your lives in order, save whatever you can in hopes that that day may come.
Start now that very difficult and sometimes discouraging journey of repentance.
… I urge you all to keep the faith and your hope and determine that you will
come—that you will be worthy and that you will come to the temple.
It has been my
observation that the temple transforms the individual and makes abundantly
worthwhile any efforts made to get there.[14]
President Hinckley
concludes his comments by saying:
If our people
could only learn to live by the covenants, everything else would take care of
itself, I am satisfied. We would not have to worry about sacrament meeting
attendance. We would not have to worry about the willingness to serve missions.
We would not have to worry about divorce and the many requests for cancellation
of temple sealings. We would not have to worry about any of those things.[15]
That we may live
by our covenants and remember them and be worthy of the blessings that
accompany them is one of my many prayers.
It won’t be
popular to be a covenant keeping member of the Church, but I know that we will
be blessed for doing so.
Elder Neal A.
Maxwell has pointed out:
My beloved young
friends, you are the vanguard of the righteous spirits to be infused into the
Church in the last days. Back beyond time, it was so determined, and you were
prepared—before the foundations of the world—to help save others in the
latter-day world. You cannot keep the resplendent rendezvous if you become like
the world! Make your righteous marks on the world instead of being spotted by
the world.[16]
By making and
keeping covenants with God, we will received an added protection from the
world. We will be able to align our wills with God and live His laws and be in
the world but not of the world. But that requires us to move from where we are
to where God and His Christ are.
Invitation to Come
In his final words, the Prophet Moroni
gave a final invitation and promise:
Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in
him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of
all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is
his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ;
and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the
power of God.
And again, if ye by the grace of God are
perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by
the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the
covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy,
without spot.[17]
By giving
ourselves up and giving us to God is the work of a lifetime. God is on our
side. The devil only wants to steal, kill, and destroy.
C. S. Lewis put
it so plainly when he said:
He wants them to
learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand; and if only the will to
walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles.[18]
We have to prove
[ourselves] herewith, to see if [we] will do all things whatsoever the Lord [our]
God shall command [us].[19] This takes time, but is
worth it. God’s hands are always open to us. He is willing to help us in any
way He can.
Priscilla Shirer
has remarked:
Listen, there are over 8,000 promises in
the Word of God for believers of Jesus Christ… These are things that are just
available to us…Because He’s a good God and likes to give good gifts. He just
passed on all these promises to us, my friend. But listen, most of them He did
not place within our hand, He placed them in our reach.[20]
We must being willing to work towards
being worthy of the blessings that we receive in this life. There are many ways
that we can do this, but making and keeping covenants helps us to come to know
our God and His Christ. We must work together as a kith and help each other.
Even though these covenants is on a personal level, we need to be a support to
each other. It doesn’t help to argle-bargle. Be an encouragement to those
around you. Be willing to make the next step and work towards the next covenant
that you can make with God. I know that we will be blessed for doing so.
God Bless! Until Next Time!
[1]
Moses 1:39
[2]
While I was studying this scripture in seminary, I thought that man meant
mankind. It wasn’t until I read this verse in Russian that I discovered that it
is for the individual. God is aware of us individual on works with us on a one
on one level.
[3]
John 17:3
[4]
Abraham 3:25
[5]
Matthew 5:48
[6]
3 Nephi 12:48
[7]Articles
of Faith 4
[8]
2 Nephi 31: 19-21
[9]
President Gordon B. Hinckley, Meeting with General Authorities and Wives, April
10, 1996
[10]
James E. Faust, in Church News, April
11, 1998.
[11]
Delbert L. Stapley, Conference Report, Oct. 1965, p. 14
[12]
President Gordon B. Hinckley, Meeting with General Authorities and Wives, April
10, 1996
[13]
President Gordon B. Hinckley, Meeting with General Authorities and Wives, April
10, 1996
[14]
Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple, p. 21
[15]
President Gordon B. Hinckley, Meeting with General Authorities and Wives, April
10, 1996
[16]
Neal A.
Maxwell, Ensign `, February 1986, p. 20
[17]
Moroni 10: 32-33
[18]
C. S. Lewis
[19]
Abraham 3:25
[20]
Priscilla Shirer
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