Last updated on May 12th, 2024 at 07:52 am
General Conference Applied
S3 E3 – Sunday, May 5, 2024 | “All Will Be Well Because of Temple Covenants” by President Henry B. Eyring; April 2024 General Conference
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Introduction
Doctrine: Ordinances and Covenants: “All saving ordinances of the priesthood are accompanied by covenants. A covenant is a sacred agreement between God and man. God gives the conditions for the covenant, and we agree to do what He asks us to do. God then promises us certain blessings for our obedience.”
Principle: Eternal Marriage: “As Latter-day Saints, we are living with an eternal perspective, not just for the moment. However, we can receive blessings in this life as a result of being married for eternity. Some of those blessings are as follows:
“We know that our marriage can last forever. Death can part us from one another only temporarily. Nothing can part us forever except our own disobedience. This knowledge helps us work harder to have a happy, successful marriage.
“We know that our family relationships can continue throughout eternity. This knowledge helps us be careful in teaching and training our children. It also helps us show them greater patience and love. As a result, we should have a happier home.
“Because we have been married in God’s ordained way, we are entitled to an outpouring of the Spirit on our marriage as we remain worthy.”
Christlike Attribute: Hope: “Hope is not simply wishful thinking. Instead, it is an abiding confidence, grounded in your faith in Christ, that God will fulfill His promises to you (see Moroni 7:42). It is the expectation “of good things to come” through Christ (Hebrews 9:11). …
“As you center your hope in Christ, you have the assurance that all things will work together for your good (see Doctrine and Covenants 90:24). This assurance helps you persevere with faith when you face trials. It can also help you grow from trials and develop spiritual resilience and strength. Hope in Christ provides an anchor for your soul (see Ether 12:4).”
What is the speaker inviting me to do, and how might I consider taking action?
Invitations
1: “Give children opportunities to pray for each other. Discern quickly the beginnings of discord, and positively recognize acts of unselfish service, especially to one another.”
- This is one way we honor family covenants made in temples.
- Do I really want to spend eternity with everyone I’m sealed to? If not, what needs to happen with my relationships to change that?
- “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin: “Put simply, extreme ownership (E.O.) is how great leaders take responsibility for every aspect of their team and its mission. Taking E.O. requires you to put aside your ego and take absolute responsibility for the outcome.”
- “It is through the sealing covenants in the temple that we can receive the assurance of loving family connections that will continue after death and last for eternity. Honoring marriage and family covenants made in temples of God will provide protection from the evil of selfishness and pride.
“Consistent care of brothers and sisters for each other will come only with persistent efforts to lead your family in the Lord’s way. Give children opportunities to pray for each other. Discern quickly the beginnings of discord, and positively recognize acts of unselfish service, especially to one another. When siblings pray for each other and serve each other, hearts will be softened and turned to each other and to their parents.” -President Eyring - “Teaching Our Children to Pray“, January 1976 Ensign, Stephen R. and Sandra Covey:
- “[Sandra] As a child, the most profound experience I ever had with prayer was kneeling together with my father and older sister and brother, pleading for the life of ‘little Linda,’ one of our four-month-old twins.
“Overnight she had become ill—severely dehydrated and burning up with fever. Mother was at the hospital with the twins; Dad had come home after an all-night vigil and wearily gathered us together for prayer.
“We were all alarmed and a little insecure to see him so broken—so vulnerable—in the very depths of humility.
“I remember how he begged and pleaded with the Lord for the life of that little baby, the tears streaming down his face. I also remember feeling that the heavens were opened—those pleadings were heard and received.
“When little Linda died, I knew the Lord had said no. I didn’t understand why, but I knew somehow it would be all right.
“Now as a mother of eight children, I wonder how often our own children experience a real communication and openness with the Lord through prayer.” - “We have found some of the following ideas or types of expressions helpful in teaching our children how to pray from the heart.
“a. When we call for prayer, we are interrupting the lives of many people involved in various tasks and projects. Everyone has his mind focused on what he was doing, and we need to take a few minutes to prepare ourselves for prayer. Stephen may say to the children, ‘Let’s take a few moments to think about who we are praying to and why. Let’s quietly think about what we are doing—about the things we are grateful for.’
“We need to pause, to become calm and still inside. Otherwise we bring the rush of life into our prayers, keeping us at the mechanical level.
“b. Usually we sing a hymn before family prayer, such as ‘Sweet Hour of Prayer’ or ‘I Need Thee Every Hour’ or ‘Love at Home.’ This gives the children time to gather around mentally as well as physically. It helps to bring some unity and harmony and order to the entire situation. The family seems to enjoy this, although we sometimes omit it if time pressures are too heavy.
“c. Often we go around the prayer circle and ask each family member if he has any special needs or blessings he would like to have remembered in the prayer.
“Cynthia may ask for a clear, alert mind in preparing for an exam in school; Maria might request that she be blessed to play well at a piano recital that evening; Stephen may need help in passing off a merit badge for Scouting; Michael Sean and David might ask that they give their best efforts in their Little League baseball game that day; Catherine could ask us to pray for our dog’s injured leg; and Colleen may want us to remember her chicken pox. Sandra might need guidance in preparing her Relief Society lesson and Stephen, inspiration in his Church assignment. This process helps us to be aware of everyone’s needs and to pray specifically.” - “We have concluded that it is supremely important to have both personal and husband-wife prayers before greeting the children in the morning. In those prayers we seek to get our own spirits in tune with the Lord’s Spirit so that we are at peace within ourselves and between ourselves. Once we feel the Spirit, we then attempt to walk through our day in our mind’s eye. We determine our attitudes and responses to unpleasant situations or a difficult child. To use computer language, we try to “program ourselves” with true principles and commitments while under the divine influence of the Holy Spirit. …
“Children’s first source of knowledge of God is human—their parents. The second source is divine—revelation from God. (Study Joseph Smith’s Second Lecture on Faith.) We have observed from missionaries, students, and investigators that if the first source is distorted (unkind, hypocritical), so also will be the concept of God in the minds of the people. They will then pray with this wrong conception of God. If they are fearful to be open and honest with their parents because of receiving overreacting, angry responses, they will learn to not be open and honest in prayer to God. Their divine communications will likely be as mechanical and protective and manipulative as their human communications.
“We are persuaded that children’s divine conceptions are largely a product of how their parents treat them, particularly under conditions of stress. Teaching by example and unconditional love, reinforced by precept, is again the key.
“Children are constantly investigating our lives to see if the gospel is true.”
- “[Sandra] As a child, the most profound experience I ever had with prayer was kneeling together with my father and older sister and brother, pleading for the life of ‘little Linda,’ one of our four-month-old twins.
2: “There is nothing more important than honoring the covenants you have made or may make in the temple. No matter where you are on the covenant path, I urge you to qualify and become eligible to attend the temple. Visit as frequently as circumstances will allow. Make and keep sacred covenants with God.”
- Christian cousins, cloud of witnesses, and “this is how all of God’s children feel who don’t know about Me.”
- “In recent conference addresses, President Russell M. Nelson taught:
“‘The safest place to be spiritually is living inside your temple covenants!’
“‘Everything we believe and every promise God has made to His covenant people come together in the temple.’
“‘Each person who makes covenants … in temples—and keeps them—has increased access to the power of Jesus Christ.’
“He also taught that ‘once we make a covenant with God, we leave neutral ground forever. God will not abandon His relationship with those who have forged such a bond with Him. In fact, all those who have made a covenant with God have access to a special kind of love and mercy.’
“Under President Nelson’s inspired leadership, the Lord has accelerated, and will continue to accelerate, the building of temples across the world. This will allow all of God’s children the opportunity to receive the ordinances of salvation and exaltation and to make and keep sacred covenants. Qualifying to make sacred covenants is not a one-time effort but a lifetime pattern. The Lord has said it will take our full heart, might, mind, and strength.
“Frequent participation in the ordinances of the temple can create a pattern of devotion to the Lord. When you keep your temple covenants and remember them, you invite the companionship of the Holy Ghost to both strengthen and purify you.
“You may then experience a feeling of light and hope testifying that the promises are true. You will come to know that every covenant with God is an opportunity to draw closer to Him, which will then create a desire in your heart to keep temple covenants.
“We have been promised, ‘Because of our covenant with God, He will never tire in His efforts to help us, and we will never exhaust His merciful patience with us.'” -President Eyring - “Doors of Death“, April 1992 General Conference, Elder Russell M. Nelson: “Loving relationships continue beyond the doors of death and judgment. Family ties endure because of sealings in the temple. Their importance cannot be overstated.
“I remember vividly an experience I had as a passenger in a small two-propeller airplane. One of its engines suddenly burst open and caught on fire. The propeller of the flaming engine was starkly stilled. As we plummeted in a steep spiral dive toward the earth, I expected to die. Some of the passengers screamed in hysterical panic. Miraculously, the precipitous dive extinguished the flames. Then, by starting up the other engine, the pilot was able to stabilize the plane and bring us down safely.
“Throughout that ordeal, though I ‘knew’ death was coming, my paramount feeling was that I was not afraid to die. I remember a sense of returning home to meet ancestors for whom I had done temple work. I remember my deep sense of gratitude that my sweetheart and I had been sealed eternally to each other and to our children, born and reared in the covenant. I realized that our marriage in the temple was my most important accomplishment. Honors bestowed upon me by men could not approach the inner peace provided by sealings performed in the house of the Lord.
“That harrowing experience consumed but a few minutes, yet my entire life flashed before my mind. Having had such rapid recall when facing death, I do not doubt the scriptural promise of “perfect remembrance” when facing judgment. (Alma 5:18; see also Alma 11:43.)” - “I can assure you of the same truth I shared with Kathy in the middle of the night nearly five decades ago in an Idaho Falls motel room: ‘No matter the outcome, all will be well because of temple covenants.'” -President Eyring
- Take your experience in the house of the Lord home with you (see General Conference Applied season 3 episode 2)
- “Rejoice in the Gift of Priesthood Keys“, April 2024 General Conference, President Russell M. Nelson: “My dear brothers and sisters, here is my promise. Nothing will help you more to hold fast to the iron rod than worshipping in the temple as regularly as your circumstances permit. Nothing will protect you more as you encounter the world’s mists of darkness. Nothing will bolster your testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement or help you understand God’s magnificent plan more. Nothing will soothe your spirit more during times of pain. Nothing will open the heavens more. Nothing!”
Take Action
How will you take action on the invitations extended in this General Conference address?
Tags
Covenants | Ordinances | Peace | Sealings | Spiritual Growth | Temples
Additional Content
Previous Podcast Episode (“Covenants and Responsibilities” by President Dallin H. Oaks)
Next Podcast Episode (“Motions of a Hidden Fire” by President Jeffrey R. Holland)