Temple Blessings

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.

Blessed are the Pure in Heart

My head has been whirling for the past several days about a topic I could blog about. I am currently reading “The Book of Mormon” as well as “The Promised Messiah” and a great book titled “Bonds That Make us Free”. I have had some really amazing insights from all three books and I will write about each of them but the topic I would like to discuss today comes from my reading of the Book of Mormon.

As I have mentioned before, I am reading the Book of Mormon this time with journal in hand. This is in response to Elder Scotts talk in conference that explained how to better receive inspiration. He said “I believe that you can leave the most precious, personal direction of the Spirit unheard because you do not respond to, record, and apply the first promptings that come to you.” I am trying to do this. I must admit that I pay much closer attention to what I am reading and I really try to understand what each verse is saying. As I go back and read the notes I have written, a flood of emotion comes over me as I realize the amazing insights found in the Book of Mormon.

This morning as I was reading in Jacob 3, I was impressed by verses 1-3 that talk about the pure in heart. I quote “1 BUT behold, I, Jacob, would speak unto you that are pure in heart. Look unto God with firmness of mind, and pray unto him with exceeding faith, and he will console you in your afflictions, and he will plead your cause, and send down justice upon those who seek your destruction.
2 O all ye that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever.
3 But, wo, wo, unto you that are not pure in heart, that are filthy this day before God; for except ye repent the land is cursed for your sakes;

The topic of being pure in heart has been on my mind quite a bit lately. It started a couple of years ago when Elder Bednar gave a conference address that was titled “Clean Hands and a Pure Heart”. I will address that talk in a minute, but more recently I was in the Mesa Arizona Temple, where above one of the doors leading into the endowment room was the inscription “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”. This inscription went straight to my heart. Being pure in heart is a difficult process but something I really want in my own life.

In October of 2007, Elder Bednar gave the talk I referenced above. I listened to it over and over again, really listening to what its message was. I encourage all to read it but I will do my best to summarize it.

Elder Bednar starts out by reminiscing about learning the stories of the Book of Mormon as a child from his mother. One of his favorites was the story of Christ appearing to the Nephites at the temple in Bountiful. Elder Bednar says “As the Savior’s time with the people was drawing to a close, He succinctly summarized the fundamental principles of His gospel.

Said He, “Now this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day” (3 Nephi 27:20).


The gate of baptism leads to the strait and narrow path and to the destination of putting off the natural man and becoming a saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord (see Mosiah 3:19). The purpose of our mortal journey is not merely to see the sights on earth or to expend our allotment of time on self-centered pursuits; rather, we are to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4), to become sanctified by yielding our hearts unto God (see Helaman 3:35), and to obtain “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).

We are commanded and instructed to so live that our fallen nature is changed through the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost. President Marion G. Romney taught that the baptism of fire by the Holy Ghost “converts [us] from carnality to spirituality. It cleanses, heals, and purifies the soul. . . . Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, and water baptism are all preliminary and prerequisite to it, but [the baptism of fire] is the consummation. To receive [this baptism of fire] is to have one’s garments washed in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ” (Learning for the Eternities, comp. George J. Romney [1977], 133; see also 3 Nephi 27:19–20).
Hence, as we are born again and strive to always have His Spirit to be with us, the Holy Ghost sanctifies and refines our souls as if by fire (see 2 Nephi 31:13–14, 17). Ultimately, we are to stand spotless before God.

The gospel of Jesus Christ encompasses much more than avoiding, overcoming, and being cleansed from sin and the bad influences in our lives; it also essentially entails doing good, being good, and becoming better. Repenting of our sins and seeking forgiveness are spiritually necessary, and we must always do so. But remission of sin is not the only or even the ultimate purpose of the gospel. To have our hearts changed by the Holy Spirit such that “we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2), as did King Benjamin’s people, is the covenant responsibility we have accepted. This mighty change is not simply the result of working harder or developing greater individual discipline. Rather, it is the consequence of a fundamental change in our desires, our motives, and our natures made possible through the Atonement of Christ the Lord. Our spiritual purpose is to overcome both sin and the desire to sin, both the taint and the tyranny of sin.
Prophets throughout the ages have emphasized the dual requirements of (1) avoiding and overcoming bad and (2) doing good and becoming better. Consider the penetrating questions posed by the Psalmist:

“Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?
“He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully” (Psalm 24:3–4).

Brothers and sisters, it is possible for us to have clean hands but not have a pure heart. Please notice that both clean hands and a pure heart are required to ascend into the hill of the Lord and to stand in His holy place.”

There are some amazing doctrines taught in these few paragraphs. We should ponder and pray about all of them. However, I spent hours and hours pondering the words “Brothers and sisters, it is possible for us to have clean hands but not have a pure heart.” I went through my life over and over again asking myself what this means to me. I concluded that we can indeed have clean hands… and not a pure heart. We can refrain from various forms of sin but in our hearts or in our minds still “wish” we could participate. This is a form of clean hands but not a pure heart. I have really made an effort to invite the Holy Spirit into my life to purify my heart. This is a life-long process.

Elder Bednar continues “Some who hear or read this message may think the spiritual progress I am describing is not attainable in their lives. We may believe these truths apply to others but not to us.

We will not attain a state of perfection in this life, but we can and should press forward with faith in Christ along the strait and narrow path and make steady progress toward our eternal destiny. The Lord’s pattern for spiritual development is “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little” (2 Nephi 28:30). Small, steady, incremental spiritual improvements are the steps the Lord would have us take. Preparing to walk guiltless before God is one of the primary purposes of mortality and the pursuit of a lifetime; it does not result from sporadic spurts of intense spiritual activity.

I witness that the Savior will strengthen and assist us to make sustained, paced progress. The example in the Book of Mormon of “many, exceedingly great many” (Alma 13:12) in the ancient Church who were pure and spotless before God is a source of encouragement and comfort to me. I suspect those members of the ancient Church were ordinary men and women just like you and me. These individuals could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence, and they “were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God” (v. 12). And these principles and this process of spiritual progress apply to each of us equally and always.

Elder Bednar concludes with this thought and his testimony “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ. . . .

“And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot” (Moroni 10:32–33;

I add my testimony that these principles are true. I have had confirmation of them through the Holy Spirit. It is a constant battle to put off the natural man; We all fail and all make mistakes, but as we continually strive to do what is right, the Lord will make up the difference!