In the scriptures we find the invitation for us to come unto the Lord over 90 times and most of those are personal invitations from the Lord.
The path to perfection is the covenant path and Jesus Christ is the center of that path.
A powerful king desired for his son to rule over one of his kingdoms. The prince had to learn and grow in wisdom to sit on the throne. One day, the king met with the prince and shared his plan. They agreed the prince would go to a different town and gain experiences. He would face challenges as well as enjoy many good things there. The king then sent him to the town, where the prince was expected to prove his faithfulness to the king and demonstrate that he was fit to receive the privileges and responsibilities the king had in store for him. The prince was given the liberty to choose to receive these privileges and responsibilities or not, depending on his desires and his faithfulness. I am sure you want to know what happened to the prince. Did he return to inherit the kingdom?
The Savior Himself invites us to come unto Him and take His yoke upon us that we may have rest in this tumultuous world. We come unto Christ by “exercising faith in [Him], repenting daily, making covenants with God as we receive the ordinances of salvation and exaltation, and enduring to the end by keeping those covenants.” The path to perfection is the covenant path, and Jesus Christ is the center of all ordinances and covenants.
I like that imagery.
God will not abandon His relationship with, or withhold His promised blessings of eternal life from, any faithful covenant keeper.
I would like to mention two things our Savior emphasized to help us faithfully keep covenants:
- The Holy Ghost can teach us, remind us of the Savior’s teachings, and abide with us forever. He can be our constant companion to guide us on the covenant path.
- The Savior instituted the ordinance of the sacrament that we may always remember Him and have His Spirit to be with us. Baptism opens the gate to eternal life, and the sacrament helps us to steadfastly press forward along the covenant path.
If we are not regularly partaking of the sacrament our commitment to and success at keeping other covenants will suffer over time.
When our daughter was five years old, she had a battery-powered model car and loved to drive it around the house. One evening, she came to me and said, “Daddy, my car no longer drives. Could we get some gas from your car to put in it so it can drive again? Perhaps it needs gas like your car to drive.”
I later observed that the battery power was down, so I said we would get it to drive in about an hour. With so much excitement, she said, “Yes! We will take it to the gas station.” I simply connected the battery to an electric source to charge, and after an hour she was able to drive the car, powered by the charged battery. She thereafter learned that it is important to always recharge the battery by connecting it to an electric source.
As our daughter learned the relationship between the battery and power to drive her toy car, so we learn about Jesus Christ, the sacrament, and the Spirit. We need the Spirit to help us navigate through mortality as we faithfully keep covenants, and we need the sacrament to energize our spiritual being. Renewing our baptismal covenant and partaking of the sacrament drive faithfulness to all other covenants.
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