- Keep your covenants
- Prepare for adversity
- Have a Christ-centered home
- Improve your prayers
- Improve your scripture study
- Improve your sacrament experience
- Participate in Missionary Work
IMPERATIVES
Keep Your Covenants
- Be a faithful, cheerful covenant keeper
- Have the courage and strength to bear one anothers burdens; invite others to share your burden; accept the invitation
- Cherish, watch over, comfort and gain instruction from one another
- Help young children to start early and stay steady in keeping covenants by helping them to make and keep simple promises.
- Expect children to keep their baptismal covenants
- Repent if you have become distracted or casual in your obedience
- Keep your covenants with a deep and devoted love
- Evaluate how much you love the Savior by measuring how joyfully you keep your covenants.
- Connect keeping covenants with the promise of the Sacrament Prayers to "always have his Spirit to be with you". Receive the gift.
- Work together to help each other "press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men" - strengthen faith
- Claim your identity as a "Covenant Keeping Daughter of God"
- Be strong, devoted, and good
- Be the "salt of the earth" and a "light to the world"
- Be a Faithful Daughter of God; a Beloved Companion; the Dearest of Friends
Family
- Bless the world with the power of a Christ-centered home:
- temple worthy;temple service; temple learning
- listen to the Holy Ghost
- understand sacred symbols
- modest dress and grooming
- study the scriptures
- family history
- make and keep covenants
- Remember "good, better, best" - best to show by example
Sacrament
- Rejoice in the privilege of partaking of the sacrament; show that gratitude:
- ALWAYS remember the Savior
- ALWAYS keep His commandments
- ALWAYS keep the Sabbath day holy
- ALWAYS have personal and family prayer
- ALWAYS have daily scripture study
- ALWAYS have weekly family home evening
- Desire to become both physically and spiritually clean
- Feel the power of the sacrament prayers by repeating in your mind, each word with great feeling
- Take personal responsibility for your Sacrament worship experience; prepare in advance to repent, renew covenants, and feel the cleansing power of the Atonement
- Believe the Savior can cleanse you weekly through the ordinance of the sacrament if you partake worthily and thoughtfully
Missionary Work
- Participate in the work of salvation
- love, watch over, strengthen, teach and serve others in small and simple ways
- Love the Lord by serving others with love, compassion and commitment- your whole life.
- Have faith in the words of the prophet concerning missionary work
- Prayerfully consider who to share the gospel with
- Save souls by winning back and warming up
Prayer
- Look unto God with firmness of mind, and pray with exceeding faith
- Rely on the strength and power of prayer; Pour out your deepest pains and desires
- Remember prayer; pray always; keep a prayer in your heart
- depend on it
- prize it
- trust it
- make it an anchor
- make it an indispensable part of you
- make it a constant source of strength
- make it the basis for your spiritual knowledge
- Ask yourself daily, "Did I think to pray?"
- Seek and yearn for peace
- Do not forget the words, "Not my will, but thine be done"
- Trust Heavenly Father to know best how and when and in what manner to provide the help you seek.
- Partner prayer with scripture study (all four standard works)
- Seek every good gift
- Believe that God is all knowing and all loving
- Rely on the power of the Atonement and your covenants while in your trials and tribulations
- When in trial, follow this pattern:
1. Identify what it is you most need and want
2. Pray specifically for those blessings
3. Recognize the Spirit giving you direction
4. Act on that direction in faith and by follow it; answers will come
5. Thank the Lord for his mercy when prayers are answered
6. Accept His peace about prayers not yet answered.
7. Bind the Lord to keep His promises by keeping your promises in faith
8. Go to the temple and claim your blessings! - When you are being self-critical, seek the Spirit and ask, "IS this what the Lord wants me to think about myself, or is Satan trying to beat me down?"
- Remember the nature of Heavenly Father
- Renew and honor your covenants so your burdens may be light and so you can continually become purified and strengthened
- Don't compare yourself to others
- Keep your sights firmly fixed on the Celestial as you navigate the Telestial
Scripture Study
- Feast upon the scriptures and words of living prophets
- Read and ponder the scriptures
- Feast upon the scriptures to draw strength, peace and knowledge
- Seek Heavenly Father through fervent, sincere prayer and earnest, dedicated scripture study.
DOCTRINAL INSIGHTS
Keep Your Covenants
- Covenant Keeping is choosing to bind yourself to God; committing to follow the Savior; trusting Him; showing gratitude for the Atonement.
- Keeping covenants is essential to true happiness
- The "manner of happiness" describe by the Nephites came from being covenant keepers.
- Christ obeyed the Father out of love; the Father sacrificed His Son out of love for us
- Keeping the commandments/covenants we made at baptism IS serving God directly; though it is manifested by service to others.
- What will matter most is how well you have kept your covenants and how much you have tried to follow the example of our Savior.
- Mothers have a vital role in the work of salvation as they nurture, teach, and prepare children to progress along the covenant path.
- Active participation in the work of salvation is loving, watching over, and serving others, even if it is small and simple.
- The Lord keeps a perfect record of your saving work
- Jacob's words were preserved specifically for our day
- “Look unto God with firmness of mind, and pray unto him with exceeding faith, and he will console you in your afflictions.
- The Lord has a plan for each of our lives. Nothing that happens is a shock or a surprise to Him. He is all-knowing and all-loving. He is eager to help us, to comfort us, and to ease our pain.
- The trials and tribulation we experience may be the very things that guide us to come unto Him and cling to our covenants
- You will one day stand aside and look at your difficult times, and you will realize that He was always there beside you.
- Relief Society was organized by inspiration and is a vital part of the Lord’s Church here upon the earth.
- Struggles and challenges, common to all, come because we live in a mortal world with all manner of individuals
- You were not placed here on earth to walk alone
- God knows us better than we know ourselves; sees the larger picture; knows the end from the beginning
- Heavenly Father loves you. That love never changes. It is not influenced by your appearance, by your possessions, or by the amount of money you have in your bank account. It is not changed by your talents and abilities. It is simply there.
- To receive the scriptures is to feast on God's love
PROMISES
Keep Your Covenants
- Covenant Keeping strengthens, empowers and protects
- Fully appreciate your blessings through the Atonement and you will feel to obey ALL the Lord's commands promptly and willingly
- When you love the Savior and Heavenly Father (by keeping your covenants) they will love you and the Savior will manifest himself to you.
- When you keep your covenants, you will have the Spirit to be with you - always...every time...that is the promise.
- As you renew and honor your covenants, your burdens can be lightened and you can continually become purified and strengthened.
- When you keep your covenants and exercise your faith, you bind the Lord to keep His promises.
Family
- Faithful parents are entitled to know how to best teach and meet the needs of their children.
- As you seek and act on personal revelation, counsel together as parents, minister, and teach simple principles of the gospel, you will have power to strengthen and protect your family.
- The Savior has the ability to completely cleanse you every week as you worthily and thoughtfully partake of the sacrament.
- If you repent of your sins and are washed clean through the blood of Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Atonement promise you that at the end of your life you can go through the veil into the presence of God.
Missionary Work
- The power to fulfill your vital role in the work of salvation will come as you honor and keep your covenants.
- When you act in faith the Lord will show you how to strengthen His Church in the wards and branches in which you live. He will be with you and will become an active partner in your missionary labors
- Do not fear: an invitation that is born of your love for others and for the Lord Jesus Christ … will never be seen as offensive or judgmental.”
- As you act on promptings, the Spirit will confirm that your offering is acceptable to the Lord
- In God's strength we can do all things!
- Great blessings are bestowed on you for participating in the saving of souls.
Prayer
- Let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus
- He will be there for you to provide help if you but ask.
- Pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good
- As you seek your Heavenly Father through fervent, sincere prayer and earnest, dedicated scripture study, your testimony will become strong and deeply rooted. You will know of God’s love for you. You will understand that you do not ever walk alone.
- “Look unto God with firmness of mind, and pray unto him with exceeding faith, and he will console you in your afflictions."
- "For after much tribulation come the blessings. Wherefore the day cometh when ye shall be crowned with much glory."
- I promise you that you will one day stand aside and look at your difficult times, and you will realize that He was always there beside you.
Scripture Study
- Receive the pleasing word of God (scriptures/prophets) and you will feast on his love and receive answers
- The Lord stands with open arms, eagerly inviting you to come to Him. He is building your life into a magnificent temple where His Spirit can dwell eternally.
- As you read and ponder the scriptures you will:
- experience the sweet whisperings of the Spirit
- find answers to your questions
- learn of blessings that come through keeping the commandments
- receive guidance that will point the way to eternal perfection
- gain a sure testimony of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and their love for you
- know of a certainty that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true
- As you remember prayer and take time to turn to the scriptures, your life will be infinitely more blessed and your burdens will be made lighter.
WARNINGS
Keep Your Covenants
- It is the crucial test of your life to see if you will make and keep your covenants.
- Covenant breaking can bring great adversity and heartache into the lives of your loved ones
- The Lord allows us to be tried and tested, sometimes to our maximum capacity
- There will be times when you will walk a path strewn with thorns and marked by struggle. There may be times when you feel detached—even isolated—from the Giver of every good gift. You worry that you walk alone. Fear replaces faith
- Reverses may be coming in your life
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