In April of 1970, the United States of America sent a rocket into space carrying three astronauts. Early in their journey, an explosion disabled the spacecraft leaving serious questions about their ability to make it home alive.
Experts determined that the astronauts had sufficient food and water to last several days and systems able to generate the oxygen they needed to breathe. However, they were short of one precious thing: power.
The days that followed were full of heroic efforts to find power, preserve power, and use that power to bring the astronauts safely home.
Accessing Spiritual Power
In a similar way, we need spiritual power to meet the challenges of our day and help us return safely to our heavenly home. President Russell M. Nelson has repeatedly cautioned that difficult times are coming and that we will need spiritual power for the days ahead.[1]
The question is, “How can we access the spiritual power we need?”
While we may be able to find it in many places, there are few places, if any, that provide the consistent flow of spiritual power available to us in the temple. In temples we perform ordinances that are available nowhere else. As a result, in temples we make covenants and access power that is only available to us there.
Power from Covenants
In the Doctrine and Covenants we learn of a time when Moses sought to sanctify the hearts of his people. To do so, he taught them about the authority of the priesthood and the importance of priesthood ordinances.
We learn “In the ordinances [of the priesthood] the power of godliness is manifest. And without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh.”[2]
“Ordinances bind us to [Jesus Christ] through sacred priesthood covenants. Then, as we keep our covenants, He endows us with His healing, strengthening power.”
President Russell M. Nelson
President Nelson explained it this way, “Ordinances bind us to [Jesus Christ] through sacred priesthood covenants. Then, as we keep our covenants, He endows us with His healing, strengthening power.”[3]
When we participate in ordinances, we make covenants. As we prepare to make those covenants, as we make them, and as we strive to keep them, we live better, more righteous lives. And when we do, spiritual power flows into our souls. Perhaps that is one reason President Nelson so often encourages us to “Get on the covenant path and stay there.”[4]
Our covenants can give us power to navigate challenges in our lives. I know a man who was invited to an official dinner at an embassy in Russia. When the dinner ended, the host instructed his staff to serve alcohol to his guests. Everyone at the dinner received a glass, and everyone drank except for this one man.
It was an awkward and difficult moment in which the host was greatly offended. The man might have thought that taking a drink would be excused given the serious nature of the situation. But when he remembered his covenants, he knew what he should do, and as he sought to live his covenants, he found the power to do it.
It can be the same for us. When we are tempted to do a thing that we should not do, or be less than we should be, if we hold to our covenants, we will find the power we need to meet the challenges that come our way.
Power from Temple Covenants
While we may be able to find spiritual power in many places, there are few places, if any, that provide the consistent flow of spiritual power available to us in the temple. In temples we perform ordinances that are available nowhere else. As a result, in temples we make covenants and access power that is only available to us there.
I know this to be true because I have seen it in the lives of my family and have experienced it in my own.
If you have not yet been to the temple, I invite you to prepare now to go. If you have been to the temple, I invite you to return as soon and as often as you can. If you live far from a temple or other constraints prohibit your attendance, President Nelson has encouraged you to “set a regular time to rehearse in your mind the covenants you have made.”[5]
I promise that when you do these things, spiritual power will flow into your soul.
[1] Russell M. Nelson, “The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation,” Liahona, Nov 2021, 94.
[2] See Doctrine and Covenants 84: 23, 18-21.
[3] Russell M. Nelson, “The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation,” Liahona, Nov 2021, 94.
[4] Russell M. Nelson, “The Power of Spiritual Momentum,” Liahona, May 2022, 98.
[5] Russell M. Nelson, “The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation,” Liahona, Nov 2021, 95.