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Are you searching for greater peace, meaning, and fulfillment in your life? This is the place for you.
This channel is for anyone who wants to learn how to live a life with greater intention and spiritual depth. We'll show you how embracing this principle can lead to a more peaceful and resilient life, filled with incredible blessings. Through personal insights and inspiring interviews, we’ll share the stories of people who have found their greatest happiness by dedicating their lives to the Lord. Whether you're a member of the Church or simply exploring principles of faith and living a more meaningful life, you will find something here to lift and inspire you.
In your minds, using your imagination, I invite you to join with me in a journey back in time to the year 1845. The place is the assembly room of the original Nauvoo temple. There, we have gathered with other members of the Church for October general conference.
The assembly room is packed with people, all anxious to hear from their leaders about plans to evacuate Nauvoo to escape a growing threat of mob violence in the wake of the martyrdom of Joseph Smith.
On the stand in front of us are Brigham Young, as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and other apostles and leaders of the Church.
The plan leaders discuss with us is to travel west, across hundreds of miles of plains, hills, and even mountains, through hardships we can anticipate, but cannot yet fully imagine.
The objective is for us to reach a place none of us have ever been to before, a place where we can build homes, communities, and worship God and live our religion in peace.
There are no railroads to the west yet, so those of us who own wagons or can afford to buy or build them and buy teams of oxen to pull them will make the journey in wagon trains, with the first to leave in just four months in the dead of winter.
But, what of those less fortunate who lack the money or means to buy wagons or teams? How can they make the journey? Will they be left behind?
In answer, Brigham Young steps to the podium and proposes that we enter into a covenant that no one will be left behind and to that end we consecrate “to the extent of our ability” “our influence and property.” All of us present raise our hands in unanimous agreement.
President Young then promises, “If you will be faithful to your covenant, I will now prophesy that the great God will shower down means upon this people, to accomplish it to the very letter.”
Four months after that conference, in February during the dead of winter, Brigham Young leads the first major movement of wagons across the frozen Mississippi to travel across Iowa to establish a gathering place called Winter Quarters, near present-day Omaha, Nebraska.
Over the next few months over 11,000 members of the Church follow in a great exodus from Nauvoo.
By August, Nauvoo is almost empty—except for 600 or more members who are too destitute or ill to leave, in some cases lacking ability to even obtain food for the day.
Then the next month, as the winter of 1846 is approaching, armed mobs invade Nauvoo and force the remaining members of the Church—those who are most impoverished and vulnerable—out of town across the river.
There, on the Iowa side of the river, in the cold, the refugees set up scattered tent camps—for those who had tents or even blankets.
People in those camps are dying of disease and starvation with no means of making the journey west to be with the rest of the members of the Church.
When word of the plight of those in the refugee camps reaches Brigham Young at Winter Quarters, he writes a letter to Church leaders there, urging them even in their own near-destitute condition to organize a large relief party to head back to rescue all those who remain behind.
We can feel the fire in President Young’s call to action as he says: "Now is the time for labor. Let the fire of the covenant which you made in the House of the Lord burn in your hearts, like flame unquenchable."
What follows is a great organized effort to live the Nauvoo Temple covenant by bringing relief and rescue to those too poor or too infirm to travel west without such help.
Now, let us return to this time and this place in our gathering today.
The covenant of consecration made by those early Church members in the Nauvoo Temple reflects a pattern of covenants we still make in our temples today.
In the endowment ordinance administered in the temple, we commit ourselves by sacred covenant with God to obey five laws: the laws of obedience, sacrifice, the gospel of Jesus Christ, chastity, and consecration.
As I think of living the laws of sacrifice, the gospel law of love, and consecration, I think back to the covenant made in the Nauvoo Temple to leave no member of the Church behind.
In what ways today are some of our members at risk of being left behind, or feeling left behind? And, what can we who have resources to offer do to provide support they need?
Today, when members require Church assistance to have food to eat or adequate shelter we all contribute support through paying generous fast offerings, every dollar of which goes to supporting those in need, first locally and, if there is excess, then elsewhere. Making generous fast offerings is a form of consecration.
But, are there poverties other than financial that leave many of our members in danger of being left behind?
Mother Teresa of Calcutta observed of such poverties:
"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat."
[As I read those words as I was preparing this presentation, unexpectedly the Spirit moved upon me and I started to sob. I wondered if this is what Christ feels, or felt.]
Mother Teresa also said:
"In every country there are poor. … [But on] certain continents poverty is more spiritual than material, a poverty that consists of loneliness, discouragement, and the lack of meaning in life."
• I think of the recently divorced sister who sits alone in the back each Sunday, fearing she is being judged.
• The young adult struggling with faith questions who stops attending.
• The new convert who doesn’t yet understand our cultural language and wonders if they belong.
• The teenager battling depression or being bullied who feels no one notices or cares.
• Those who lack a car to get to church.
These people and others like them must not be left behind as the rest of us move on with our lives. Maybe we even go to the temple and promise to live the laws of love and consecration, but do we think deeply about what that means, about how we can and should get outside ourselves to live those laws.
In living the law of consecration, we consecrate all we have and are to God and His service, including our time, talents, and resources.
Consecration means all in. It means we let go of “mine” and make it “thine” for God to use as He sees fit.
In return, God gives us stewardship—a sacred trust—over the time and resources with which He blesses us.
Those who are faithful stewards in how they use the talents and resources with which God has blessed them are magnified in God’s service and used by God to do His work in service to others.
In that and other ways, we experience Christ as we do what He would do unto others.
To God it makes no difference how much or how little you have to offer when you lay your all on the altar of service to God and your neighbors. What matters is that you do what you can, when and where you can.
For some, that may be as simple as sending text messages of love and friendship to people who would otherwise feel alone or unwanted.
It may mean making it a point to greet and sit next to someone seated alone at church or who is visiting for the first time.
On trips to the temple, it may mean filling those extra seats in your car or van with people who would otherwise be unable to make that 120 or 150 mile journey each way, or would travel alone.
It may mean accepting a call to serve in the Primary, even though it means missing out on priesthood, Relief Society, or Sunday School meetings.
It may mean consecrating ourselves to service in the temple or full time mission service.
It may be as simple as inviting a friend to dinner.
It means recognizing that consecrating all we have and are to the service of God and His children is a sacred trust with which we are endowed in making temple covenants.
I promise you that if you are faithful to your temple covenants—and if you let that fire burn unquenchable in your hearts—God will magnify you and use you to help rescue and elevate those suffering from temporal, emotional, social, or spiritual poverty so they are not left behind or feel left behind.
And in rescuing others, the very work itself will rescue you.