83 9-9-24

 

This week we had our Stake Conference with a visiting General Authority Seventy, Elder Jorge M Alvarado. One of the things that the Spirit emphasized and impressed to me, and that I wanted to share with you this week, is the importance of “REMEMBERING”.

 

Invitation: In your personal study this week, here is an activity I invite you to do. It’s not math but it does have a coordinate grid. :) The x-axis will mark time and the y-axis will mark spirituality. 

o    On a piece of paper make a timeline. On the left, place a date and time you felt at a spiritual high in your life. It doesn’t matter how long ago it was, just a time you felt in a great place spiritually.

o    Above this mark place a corresponding mark at the top of the y-axis indicating this spiritual high.

o    Now go out and place a mark at the end of the time line indicating today, and a corresponding mark of how you feel spiritually.

o    In between these two marks on your timeline mark times or events that indicate ups and downs you have felt spiritually. Maybe list why that may have been the case. There can be as many dots in between as you want. 

 

What you’ll likely find is the same thing we all find, highs and lows. Better know as real life. It’s impossible for any of us to maintain a constant spiritual high. There has to be “opposition (and room to improve) in all things”, and that includes our personal fight against the “natural man” in each of us. Our goal should be to strive to have less dramatic ups and downs in our spiritual journey, and to to make our spiritual projection line increase over time. God’s design for us to REMEMBER His Son provides the help we need to increase our spiritual climb heavenward.

 

I have such a strong testimony of the Plan of Salvation. It makes so much sense to me as a father. I love you kids more than you can comprehend. More than I can comprehend. I want you to have every joy and happiness that I have ever experienced. I want your lives to be prosperous and purposeful beyond what you can even imagine for yourselves. 

The beautiful thing is that this love is patterned after the same kind of love our Heavenly Parents have for each one of us. Our Heavenly Father wants every joy and blessing He enjoys, for each of us. What good parent wouldn’t?  But He can’t force it on us. He can’t give us something we aren’t capable of receiving, or prepared to receive.

So in His perfect Plan where He desires to give us “all that He has” (Abrahamic Covenant), and without affecting our agency, He has through His prophets, in His infinite wisdom, placed His Plan squarely in front of us. Designed in this Plan are opportunities for us never to forget what is at stake, but to REMEMBER!  REMEMBER that through the offering of His Son Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father is able to give, and we are able to receive, all His promised blessings.

 

How has God designed to help us REMEMBER Him along our spiritual journey? Helping us to strive to “smooth” out the highs and lows, and the waxing and waning of personal spirituality? By Covenant!

 

The scriptures teach us that the power of Godliness (to be like God, to have what He has), is manifested (clear or obvious to the eye or mind) in the Ordinances of the Gospel. Think about that. In every Ordinance of the Gospel, we make Covenants with God. Our promise is to do as He would have us do. His promise is to bless us with the Holy Ghost, and with all that He has! Because He loves us as a Heavenly parent, we can be confident in these promises as we REMEMBER them and live them.

 

Elder Sores recently taught us about this “Covenant Confidence” He said, “How do we gain such confidence through Jesus Christ? It comes through humility, centering our lives on the Savior, living by the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, receiving the ordinances of salvation and exaltation, and honoring the covenants we make with God in His holy house.”

 

Two of the ways our Heavenly Father would have us REMEMBER His Son, and His Plan are so perfectly interwoven into the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

First is the weekly partaking of the Sacrament. A weekly personal witness we each make to Always REMEMBER Jesus Christ! To REMEMBER His body, and His blood, and His infinite offering to each of us. An offering of His grace, mercy, and power. To REMEMBER that obedience is required to obtain access to His greatest gift we can receive in mortality, the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

Each time we take the Sacrament, we renew every covenant we have personally made with God. A chance to grow line upon line and become a more disciplined Covenant Keeper. What a design!

 

Second are the Garments of the Holy Priesthood. Another perfectly designed way to REMEMBER His promises to us, and ours to Him. Think of your own endowment (an offering of God’s power to you and me). We learn in the temple that when our first parents discovered their nakedness (natural man tendencies) they were given the garment to cover themselves. It’s easy to think of this as covering their physical bodies, but of greater significance is how it covers and protects them and us spiritually. They covers us by helping us REMEMBER our sacred promises. They cover and protect us from the natural tendency we each have to be proud, self-centered, and misguided in our choices.

Think of the words in the temple used to described how our garments help us REMEMBER. Words like “suggesting to the mind”, and “a constant reminder”.  They help us REMEMBER what is at stake, and how we are to gain our “eternal reward” promised to us by our loving Heavenly Father.

 

Heavenly Father knows that if we will constantly and earnestly REMEMBER His promised blessings, we will do all in our power to obtain them! And that is His Plan, all by perfect design to bring us home. 

 

The question that was asked at Stake Conference this past weekend by Elder Alvarado was,  What does wearing the garment mean to you? As I think about my Heavenly Father’s Plan, my answer to that question is, They mean everything! They allow me the opportunity to REMEMBER the Savior in all that I do. All day, and every day. They give greater meaning to, “I need Thee Every Hour”, as I reflect on my weaknesses  and natural man tendencies. They prepare me to be worth to receive blessings from God.

 

I will end this with a recent teaching of President Oaks. “Persons who have been endowed in a temple are responsible to wear a temple garment … It reminds endowed members of the sacred covenants they have made and the blessings they have been promised in the holy temple. To achieve those holy purposes, we are instructed to wear temple garments continuously, with the only exceptions being those obviously necessary. Because covenants do not “take a day off,” to remove one’s garments can be understood as a disclaimer of the covenant responsibilities and blessings to which they relate. In contrast, persons who wear their garments faithfully and keep their temple covenants continually affirm their role as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

I am thankful for these perfectly designed and constant reminders in my life. I know that they are given to me by my Heavenly Father who loves me. They remind me constantly that through my Savior Jesus Christ  I am provided access to all of God’s eternal promises. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

 

Love,

 

Dad