I realize I have not post for a couple of weeks but I have been working non-stop. I will be back to my Book of Mormon postings within a couple of days. In the meantime, I was asked to give a talk in my sacrament meeting last Sunday. Following is the talk I gave:
I know that many of you could stand here today and do a
better job speaking about this topic. I don’t recall however, a time when the
words of a talk came to me more clearly that this one and I testify that this
talk is the talk the Lord wants me to share with you today.
I owe a profound debt of gratitude to the Lord for His love
and marvelous gospel. He has been extremely good to me throughout my life and
has given me many opportunities to learn and grow. Some of these opportunities
have been very difficult… even to the point that I didn’t know how to move on…
I’m truly grateful for these times and the way they have blessed my life. I
bear testimony to you as solemnly as I know how that He lives! He lives and
loves us.
The Lord has given us an invaluable gift to lead us back to
His presence. That gift is personal revelation. Personal revelation comes by
way of the whispering of the Holy Ghost, visions, dreams, angels,
manifestations, and pure intelligence flowing into our minds. In the process of
obtaining the blessings of heaven, the first step is learning to hear this
revelation and then obey. There is no other process. There is no other path.
We live in a dispensation of the gospel that is glorious.
Our primary objective is to build a society that is worthy to dwell in the
presence of our returning Lord. We are preparing for a time when there will no
longer be a veil between us and the Lord. It will already be parted. When we
actually understand what we are being asked to do, we will be driven to work on
it with great effort and zeal. If we have not yet caught the vision- then we
have not yet understood the enormity of the reward. Our Savior wants to bless
us with all that He has. He has given us a tremendous tool to help us along the
path, and that is the temple endowment.
When I was in my mid-thirties, I was asked to be an
ordinance worker in the Washington DC temple. I worked one shift per week for
about two years. A shift consists of about 8 hours in the temple. It is here
that I first learned that the temple ceremony contains eternal truths about our
eternal potential, masked in allegory. During those hours in the temple… when I
wasn’t rushed… I began to inquire of the Lord what the meaning was of parts of
the ceremony. I wanted to understand and I learned He is willing to share.
In April conference 4 years ago Elder Scott gave a talk
discussing his personal temple attendance. He said he attended the temple every
week, and hadn’t missed for 14 years. This entered my heart very powerfully and
has become one of the greatest blessings of my life. I was already waking early
every day to exercise. It became obvious that missing one day of running or
biking each week wasn’t going to make a lot of difference, so I began attending
the temple on Wednesday mornings. This decision, along with a long standing
commitment to have meaningful scripture study every day, and meaningful
personal prayer at least twice a day… and never missing… was one of the
greatest decisions of my life.
I would like to share with you one way temple attendance has
blessed my life. I know that the temple endowment has many meanings. I have
learned several of them myself. I of course will not discuss things here I have
covenanted not to, but the one that seems to bless my life more than any of the
others is the realization that the characters in the dialog are us. We must
indeed consider ourselves Adam and Eve. The Plan of Salvation is explained to
us in the endowment; where we came from, why we are here, and where we go after
this life. It is a story of our eternal progression. We know very little of our
pre-earth life. Some of the things we do know are that we lived with God, and
it was some kind of probationary period because coming here was a type of
reward. We lived with our Heavenly Father in a paradisiacal state. We made
covenants and promises there. We chose to come to this fallen earth to learn by
our own experience to choose good from evil. A Savior was required to allow us
to return from the fallen world. The Lord sends messengers to us to help us
find our way back; some we know, and some we do not. The Plan of Salvation is grand
and glorious. It is powerful and encompassing. It is far more majestic than the
kindergarten version we learn in our manuals. I testify that the Plan of Salvation
is taught in the temple and the Lord will teach each of us the glorious version
personally if we seek after it. I testify that we will one day feel the nail
prints in his hands—and the spear wound in His side and know that He is our
very Eternal God and Savior. He will welcome us into His presence.
The temple endowment teaches us the way back to Him. I
testify that when we learn the way to seek Him, we will discover that the way
to Him is natural and easy. We are indeed strangers here. The Savior wants us
to become like Him and will teach us how to do so if we allow Him to change our
hearts.
For the majority of my life I believed that when it came to
spiritual matters—that it was much like a pebble dropped into water and
creating ripples. I believed that the church leadership was at the center and
able to receive all knowledge, truth, and understanding—and we were on the
outer ripples—receiving lesser and lesser portions. I have since come to know
it is opposite. We are able to receive everything required for us personally
and for our families, just as they are, directly from the source, and that they
are called “general authorities” for a reason… they receive the general
information for us. As Elder Bednar stated in the opening sentences of a recent
book, “We are personally responsible to learn and live the truths of the
Savior’s restored gospel. We should not expect the church as an organization to
teach or tell us the things we need to know.” I testify that out Heavenly
Father loves each of us enough to teach us directly.
I encourage all to heed the promptings of the Lord to
recognize personal revelation and to act on it. I encourage all to make time
for temple attendance… not only to devote the day on Stake Temple Day, but to
devote more of our time to regular attendance. I encourage all to attend with
an eager heart to learn the glorious truths taught there: To go hungering and
thirsting after righteousness. I testify that as we do, the blessings of heaven
will flow into our lives.
I testify that God lives and that Jesus Christ is our
eternal Savior, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
