How to Bring a Family Member Back to the Covenant Path Lds
Viewpoint: Stay on—or Return to—the Covenant Path
Contributed By the Church News
"Your commitment to follow the Savior by making covenants with Him and then keeping those covenants volition open up the door to every spiritual privilege and blessing bachelor to men, women, and children everywhere." —President Russell M. Nelson
In a memorable object lesson, President Russell M. Nelson selected the waiting room of the Table salt Lake Temple equally the location for his starting time public address as Church President to the membership at large.
In the January xvi televised address at which the new Start Presidency was appear, the new Church President made articulate the reason for that choice.
"Equally a new presidency, nosotros want to begin with the cease in listen," he explained. "For this reason, we are speaking to you today from a temple. The finish for which each of us strives is to be endowed with power in a house of the Lord, sealed every bit families, faithful to the covenants made in a temple that qualify the states for the greatest souvenir of God, that of eternal life."
The ability to be found in making sacred covenants was reflected in President Nelson's address when he uttered what, since and so, is already becoming something of a catchphrase around the Church: "Keep on the covenant path."
He declared, "Your commitment to follow the Savior by making covenants with Him and then keeping those covenants volition open the door to every spiritual privilege and approving available to men, women, and children everywhere."
Those who worship God and strive to obey and honor Him are known every bit His covenant people. Covenant making has been an essential part of His dealings with men and women from the days of Adam and Eve and their posterity on downward through the ages.
A covenant, of class, is "a sacred agreement or common promise between God and a person or a group of people" (run across Gospel Principles, p. 81). In making such a covenant, nosotros pledge to obey sure commandments; in return, He promises one or more blessings.
Though people can and often do violate covenants they take made, God will never go dorsum on His promises. He has declared, "I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say, merely when ye do non what I say, ye take no promise" (D&C 82:10).
From the fourth dimension nosotros embrace the gospel and are baptized—as early every bit age 8—we enter into covenants.
Each week equally we listen to the sacrament prayers we are reminded of the covenants nosotros take made: We have promised to take upon ourselves the name of Christ, to always recall Him, and to keep His commandments. In return, God promises that we volition always have His Spirit to exist with us.
Then much is contemplated in the actions of taking His name upon united states and keeping His commandments!
The prophet Alma, when he taught and baptized his followers at the waters of Mormon, gave didactics about covenant making in words that are merely as applicable to us in this latter-solar day gospel dispensation.
Get-go with poesy 8 in Mosiah 18, we acquire that the covenant of baptism entails these elements:
- Nosotros enter into the fold of God and are willing to be called His people.
- We bear one another's burdens that they may be light.
- We mourn with and condolement those who are afflicted.
- We stand equally witnesses of God at all times and places for as long every bit we live.
- We serve Him and keep His commandments.
The blessings promised to us for keeping this covenant are that nosotros will be "redeemed of God," that we will "be numbered with those of the first resurrection," that we will accept eternal life and that the Lord volition pour out His Spirit more abundantly upon us (see verses ix and 10).
In fulfilling the covenants made at baptism, nosotros eventually qualify to enter the house of the Lord, His holy temple. There, nosotros make further covenants. These covenants encompass the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and include the ordinance of eternal union and endless sealing to our posterity, a welding link that connects generations across time.
"The ordinances of the temple and the covenants yous make there," President Nelson said in his January 16 address, "are fundamental to strengthening your life, your union and family, and your power to resist the attacks of the adversary. Your worship in the temple and your service there for your ancestors will anoint you lot with increased personal revelation and peace and will fortify your delivery to stay on the covenant path."
We read from the account in Mosiah that these waters of Mormon were "beautiful … to the eyes of them who at that place came to the knowledge of their Redeemer" (verse 30). Likewise, we can cherish the temple as the place where we entered into sacred covenants and received saving ordinances.
Even our youth, though not yet old enough to receive their own endowment, tin experience the sacredness and beauty of the temple as they participate more frequently and fully than always in the performance of baptisms for the dead.
In urging us to stay on the covenant path, President Nelson was mindful of those who have strayed from it.
"If you have stepped off the path," he said, "may I invite you, with all the hope in my eye, to please come dorsum! Whatever your concerns, whatever your challenges, at that place is a place for you in this, the Lord's Church building. Yous and generations yet unborn will be blest by your actions now to return to the covenant path."
Allow this historic occasion exist a time of renewal for each of us: a reinvigorated decision to stay on the covenant path or, if need be, to return to it.
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Source: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/viewpoint-stay-on-or-return-to-the-covenant-path?lang=eng