UNIT 3: Celestial Marriage.

“A covenant is an agreement between God and man, an accord whose terms are set by God. In these divine agreements, God binds Himself to sustain sanctify, and exalt us in return for our commitment to serve Him and keep His commandments.” –Elder D. Todd. Christofferson. In this blog post, I am going to talk about the covenant of celestial marriage. Recently, I have agreed to marry my best friend. I have discovered a lot of things about marriage and how much it is going to mean and what it means for my fiancé and I. This isn’t going to be a civil marriage between just him and me. But it is going to be a covenant, a binding lasting covenant, between God, Reece, and I. We don’t get to set the standards or the agreements, everything is set by God and if we want to be able to have the blessings that come from this, we will have to agree to the standards set by God. The greatest blessing we can have if we obey the covenants we make is, eternal life in the celestial kingdom with our family. We also can have all the divine possibilities God can give us.

In order to make the covenants though, we must first be worthy to enter into the temple. The temple is the House of the Lord, so it is really important that we are able and willing to go to the temple frequently. Right now I am taking what Elder David A. Bendar stated about making temple preparation the most important part of what we do, very seriously. I am going to the temple at the end of February, so I have a bit of time, but it is a very daunting thing, to be honest. Entering the temple is a huge deal and taken very seriously. One of the biggest things that we need to do to be prepared to enter into the temple is to take the sacrament willingly and every week. Elder Dallin H Oaks explained that by partaking of the sacrament we are renewing our baptismal covenants, and when we do that we are willing to take upon us the name of Christ. For me, that is so hard, to realize the magnitude that this means for us. Elder Bendar tells us “As we stand in the waters of baptism. As we partake of the sacrament, we look to the temple. We pledge to always remember the Savior and to keep His commandments as preparation in participate in the sacred ordinances of the temple and receive the highest blessings available through his name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.” I think this is an amazing quote because it tells us how important this is. Even at the age of 8 we should be preparing to go through the temple and the magnitude of it. Within all of these ordinances, the power of Godliness is manifest unto us.

Even in marriage, there are still problems. Sometimes, the only way out is divorce. Elder Oaks speaks about divorce. His first statement tells us that he only speaks of concern, but also he speaks with hope. We know that a sealing is not the same as a civil marriage. Today, it is pretty easy to get a divorce, and a first marriage is even referred to as a starter marriage. The only time you should end a marriage is if the marriage is dead and has no hope of being resurrected. After sufficient therapy and trying to become better as a couple. To help with this we are advised not to bring up past wrong doings. We are also told that it is not an all-purpose solution and often causes too much heart ache to even handle. When we get married it should be for time and all eternity and with God’s standards.