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“You
must focus your lives on temple worship,” Truman G. Madsen told
students in his devotional address Tuesday at Brigham Young
University-Idaho.
An
emeritus professor of philosophy at Brigham
Young University
in Provo, Utah, Madsen used a series of words
starting with the first letters of the alphabet to help teach students why
it is important to attend the temple regularly.
The
first word he used was “atonement.”
“[The
Lord] is the power of repentance, and we are able to repent through the
atonement,” he said.
He
then helped define his second word, “born again.”
“It
is one thing to have faith and another to have repentance,” he said. “But
in the house of the Lord, He requires of his children an outgoing covenant
making from the heart, and then makes promises even more inclusive than
those that come with the first principles and ordinances of the gospel.”
Joseph
Smith said: “Being born again comes by the spirit of God through
ordinances.”
His
next word was “covenant.”
“The
earlier you can give your whole heart to covenant making, the greater can
be your expectations of the Lord’s blessings,” he said
He
referred his next word, “dedication,” with the prophet coming
to Rexburg to dedicate the new temple. “In that process of dedicating
a structure, the hope is that you will dedicate yourselves, and thereafter
you will be living temples.”
He
then spoke on the “endowment.”
“The
endowment is the very powers of godliness,” he said. “How can I
live a godly life in this life with all of the struggles that pertain to
it? The answer is if you are the recipient of an increased endowment of the
spirit of God.”
“The
temple experience can be enlivening, enlightening, empowering and
vitalizing,” he said. “We need to go back and back to have that
experience.”
His
next acronym, “fullness,” referred to the fullness of truth.
“The
fullness of truth, the fullness of the Holy Ghost, the fullness of the
priesthood and the fullness of the glory of the Father are all phrases that
are in connection with the temple and can not be received anywhere else,”
he said.
“Glory”
was the last word he used and referred it to the glory of God. He said
marriage is one way we can glorify God.
“The
holiest of all achievements in this world and the next is to give your
powers of creation and procreation mutually in the sacred relationship of
marriage,” he said. “Family is glory and will be extended,
intensified and increased forever.”
Next
week’s devotional speaker will be Delia Rochon,
a former member of the Relief Society General Board of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. Devotionals are broadcast live on Tuesdays at
2 p.m. and again at 9 p.m. on KBYI, FM 100.
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