Reflections on a Consecrated Life

• A consecrated life is a life of labor.
• A consecrated life is full of work, sometimes menial, sometimes repetitive . . .
• Wholesome leisure is the steadying companion of consecrated work
• A consecrated Life is a life of integrity

Life offers you two precious gifts – one is time, the other freedom of choice, the freedom to buy with your time what you will. You are free to exchange your allotment of time for thrills. You may trade it for base desires. You may invest it in greed. . . .

Yours is the freedom to choose. But these are no bargains, for in them you find no lasting satisfaction.

Every day, every hour, every minute of your span of mortal years must sometime be accounted for. And it is in this life that you walk by faith and prove yourself able to choose good over evil, right over wrong, enduring happiness over mere amusement. And your eternal reward will be according to your choosing.

A prophet of God has said: ‘Men are that they might have joy’ – a joy that includes a fullness of life, a life dedicated to service, to love and harmony in the home, and the fruits of honest toil – an acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – of its requirements and commandments.

Only in these will you find true happiness, the happiness which doesn’t fade with the lights and the music and the crowds. (spoken by Richard L. Evans on Man’s Search for Happiness)

Five of the elements of a consecrated life:

• purity
• While Jesus is the only one to have led a sinless life, those who come unto Him and take His yoke upon them have claim on His grace, which will make them as He is, guiltless and spotless.
• Stubbornness, rebellion, and rationalization must be abandoned, and in their place submission, a desire for correction, and acceptance of all that the Lord may require.
• Elder B.?H. Roberts once expressed the process in these words: “The man who so walks in the light and wisdom and power of God, will at the last, by the very force of association, make the light and wisdom and power of God his own – weaving those bright rays into a chain divine, linking himself forever to God and God to him.”
• work
• God Himself is glorified by His work of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of His children. We naturally desire to participate with Him in His work, and in so doing, we ought to recognize that all honest work is the work of God.
• By work we sustain and enrich life. It enables us to survive the disappointments and tragedies of the mortal experience.
• Hard-earned achievement brings a sense of self-worth. Work builds and refines character, creates beauty, and is the instrument of our service to one another and to God.
• A consecrated life is filled with work, sometimes repetitive, sometimes menial, sometimes unappreciated but always work that improves, orders, sustains, lifts, ministers, aspires.
• Having spoken in praise of labor, I must also add a kind word for leisure. Just as honest toil gives rest its sweetness, wholesome recreation is the friend and steadying companion of work.
• Music, literature, art, dance, drama, athletics – all can provide entertainment to enrich one’s life and further consecrate it.
• {Sadly} much of what passes for entertainment today is coarse, degrading, violent, mind-numbing, and time wasting.
• Ironically, it sometimes takes hard work to find wholesome leisure.
• When entertainment turns from virtue to vice, it becomes a destroyer of the consecrated life.
• respect for one’s physical body
• A central purpose of the mortal experience is that each spirit should receive such a body and learn to exercise moral agency in a tabernacle of flesh.
• A physical body is also essential for exaltation, which comes only in the perfect combination of the physical and the spiritual, as we see in our beloved, resurrected Lord.
• In this fallen world, some lives will be painfully brief; some bodies will be malformed, broken, or barely adequate to maintain life; yet life will be long enough for each spirit, and each body will qualify for resurrection.
• Those who believe that our bodies are nothing more than the result of evolutionary chance will feel no accountability to God or anyone else for what they do with or to their body. We who have a witness of the broader reality of premortal, mortal, and postmortal eternity, however, must acknowledge that we have a duty to God with respect to this crowning achievement of His physical creation.
• We would certainly not deface our body, as with tattoos; or debilitate it, as with drugs; or defile it, as with fornication, adultery, or immodesty.
• As our body is the instrument of our spirit, it is vital that we care for it as best we can. We should consecrate its powers to serve and further the work of Christ.
• service
• Those who quietly and thoughtfully go about doing good offer a model of consecration.
• integrity
• We see integrity in the husband and wife who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. We see it in the father and mother whose demonstrated first priority is to nourish their marriage and ensure the physical and spiritual welfare of their children. We see it in those who are honest.
• Integrity is not na?vet?. What is naive is to suppose that we are not accountable to God.
• The Savior’s sternest rebukes were to hypocrites. Hypocrisy is terribly destructive, not only to the hypocrite but also to those who observe or know of his or her conduct, especially children. It is faith destroying, whereas honor is the rich soil in which the seed of faith thrives.

A consecrated life is a beautiful thing. Its strength and serenity are as a very fruitful tree which is planted in a goodly land, by a pure stream, that yieldeth much precious fruit.

May we consecrate ourselves as sons and daughters of God, “that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope” I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.