by President Ryan Robinson, Sunday General Session – May 22, 2022
Dear Brother and Sisters, we were blessed recently with the announcement of the Austin temple. This has generated much excitement for all of us. I wish I had more information on timing and location of the temple but unfortunately, I do not.
We can anticipate many activities surrounding the opening of the temple.
However, my thoughts today have turned to a more pertinent question: What can we do personally to prepare ourselves for the temple?
As I have pondered this question, I have felt a strong and consistent impression: To prepare ourselves for the temple, we must help each other deepen our covenant relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.
The restored gospel of Jesus Christ uniquely invites all to come unto Christ through covenants. It is my hope that we can each more fully appreciate the impact of these covenants.
Elder Gong taught powerfully of the eternal truth and blessings of our covenant relationship. He said:
“This world is full of mirage, illusion, sleight of hand. So much seems transitory and superficial. When we put aside the masks, pretense, crowd-sourced likes and dislikes, we yearn for more than fleeting veneer, ephemeral connection, or the pursuit of worldly self-interest. Gratefully, there is a way through to answers that matter.
When we come to God’s great commandments to love Him and those around us by covenant, we do so not as stranger or guest but as His child at home. … In losing our worldly self through covenant belonging, we find and become our best eternal self – free alive, real – and define our most important relationships.
Covenant belonging is to make and keep solemn promises to God and each other through sacred ordinances that invite the power of godliness to be manifest in our lives. When we covenant all we are, we can become more than we are. Covenant belonging gives us place, narrative, capacity to become. It produces faith unto life and salvation.”
Dear Brothers and Sisters, our covenants should be among our most cherished and cared for possessions!
Nephi foresaw the power of the “covenant people” – us – in the latter days:
And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.
1 Nephi 14:14
Tying us to this prophecy, President Nelson shared that one of our key identities as members of the church should be “children of the covenant”.
Elder Holland explained that
“a covenant is a binding spiritual contract, a solemn promise to God our Father that we will live and think and act in a certain way – the way of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Elder Bednar observed that covenants help us each create a personal connection with the Lord. He said:
“Living and loving covenant commitments creates a connection with the Lord that is deeply personal and spiritually powerful. As we honor the conditions of sacred covenants and ordinances, we gradually and incrementally are drawn closer to Him13 and experience the impact of His divinity and living reality in our lives. Jesus then becomes much more than the central character in scripture stories; His example and teachings influence our every desire, thought, and action.
To these (covenant) individuals, Jesus Christ indeed is a personal Savior.”
Further referencing our personal relationship with the Lord, Elder Soares said the following:
“My brothers and sisters, when we truly are in awe of Jesus Christ and His gospel, we are happier, we have more enthusiasm for God’s work, and we recognize the Lord’s hand in all things. Additionally, our study of God’s words is more meaningful; our prayers, more intentional; our worship, more reverent; our service in God’s kingdom, more diligent.”
Elder Christofferson added:
“In the end, it is the blessing of a close and abiding relationship with the Father and the Son that we seek. It makes all the difference and is everlastingly worth the cost.”
Brothers and Sisters, given the great importance of our covenants in personally binding us to God and Christ, how can we more conscientiously deepen our covenants?
There are many ways.
Elder Johnson spoke powerfully last night about the sacrament as one of those ways. May I extend to you three additional invitations for deepening our covenant relationships with the Lord.
First – Practice daily repentance with the Lord.
We often talk about the importance of being authentic with each other. As we repent, we become authentic with God and Christ as we open up to them about our sins, our struggles and our challenges.
We repent not because we are bad people but because we are good people wanting to deepen our covenant relationship with Christ and become more pure, more sanctified and more Holy.
President Nelson asked us to “discover the joy of daily repentance” as one of five things to build spiritual momentum in our lives.
An attitude of daily repentance keeps us ever humble, ever childlike, ever willing to submit to the will of God and let him prevail in our lives. Repentance is foundational to every covenant we make with God and Christ.
My second invitation is to spend time daily studying the Book of Mormon – in addition to Come Follow Me.
Why would this be important to our covenants?
The Doctrine and Covenants teaches us that the Book of Mormon contains the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and outlines the promises to the covenant people of the Lord. President Nelson has admonished us to study these promises made to the covenant children of Israel – to us!
Further Joseph Smith said that “a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”
This is a remarkable statement.
The Book of Mormon sheds greater light on Christ, his atonement, his covenants, on faith, on repentance and how to access his supernal gifts of grace and mercy more than any other book.
Deepening our study of the Book of Mormon will deepen our knowledge of and covenant relationship with Jesus Christ.
My last invitation – is for each of us to schedule regular time in the temple. For some, this can be weekly, others monthly, others quarterly but I invite each of us to prayerfully schedule a pattern of temple time in our lives.
President Nelson has announced 100 new temples since becoming our prophet – clearly establishing temple covenants as a prophetic priority. He has spoken on temples at every General Conference and on more than one occasion as said that “spending time in temples will change our lives.”
For those that cannot yet be in the temple, I invite you to also set aside scheduled time to focus on learning about, preparing for or preparing others through family history work for the temple.
The temple contains the pinnacle ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ where we make the most significant and sacred covenants related to obedience, sacrifice, the gospel, maintaining a high moral standard and giving our all in building the Kingdom.
Through these covenants and ordinances, we are promised the endowment of power, knowledge, and divine capacity. The Lord states that as we faithfully keep temple covenants, we are promised “all that the Father hath.”
There can be no greater promise!
Dear Brothers and Sisters, may we each personally prepare for the Austin temple by deepening our covenants through daily repentance, daily study of the Book of Mormon, and regularly scheduled time in the temple.
I close with the beautiful plea of Moroni in his final verses in the book of Mormon:
… aawake, and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem; yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of bZion; and cstrengthen thy dstakes and enlarge thy borders forever, that thou mayest eno more be confounded, that the covenants of the Eternal Father which he hath made unto thee, O house of Israel, may be fulfilled.
Yea, acome unto Christ, and be bperfected in him, and cdeny yourselves of all ungodliness…
… then are ye asanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the bblood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your csins, that ye become dholy, without spot.
Moroni 10:31-33
May we each deepen our covenant relationship with God and Christ and become more holy. By so doing, we will increase our readiness for the temple and receive greater personal peace and power amid life’s challenges.
In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.
