So I had the chance to take out my own endowments at the temple today. Now for those of you who aren’t members or haven’t had the experience to go through the temple yet, I’ll do my best to explain. We have a church building where on Sundays we go through and take our weekly devotional services. This building is also generally used for the youth group program sometime during the week, a seminary course, and sometimes place where you can go and vote. However, we have another building we call a temple which is treated more sacredly. We go there and make sacred promises and covenants. Now a covenant is a promise, but I like to say it’s a promise with an ultimatum. Russel M. Nelson, an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, explains covenants a little better than I just briefly did in a talk he gave at the October 2011 General Conference.
“One of the most important concepts of revealed religion is that of a sacred covenant. In legal language, a covenant generally denotes an agreement between two or more parties. But in a religious context, a covenant is much more significant. It is a sacred promise with God. He fixes the terms. Each person may choose to accept those terms. If one accepts the terms of the covenant and obeys God’s law, he or she receives the blessings associated with the covenant. We know that “when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated”
For example, the covenant of baptism. We are promised that if we take upon the name of Jesus Christ, keep His commandments, and serve Him to the end we will gain the companionship of the Holy Ghost in our daily life to help us discern between good and evil, comfort us in times of need, and impress us to act upon the Lord's works.
I know I cannot go into a whole lot of detail about the sacred covenants that preside in the temple. However, I will do my best to describe my impressions about the experience. I'd like to start off by saying I don't think I can ever recall a time where the spirit was stronger and more prevalent. There is nothing else that compares to the experience of making sacred covenants to your Heavenly Father. I feel blessed that a few members of my family and even some of my leaders were able to share that same beautiful experience. The comfort that those covenants bring, help me on a day to day basis. The peace that temple brings me doesn’t reside just in the temple, but I tend to find that the peace lingers with me for weeks after. If you have the opportunity to visit the temple, I encourage you to do so regularly. If you cannot, I encourage you to get to a point where you can visit the temple. The temple is truly a House of the Lord and has changed my life forever.