A new book is now available from Cedar Fort Publishing about the covenants members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make inside of temples. “Covenant Power: Transform Fear into Faith through the Power of Jesus Christ” is Sharla Goettl’s second book.
Goettl told BYU-Idaho Radio she was a little nervous about writing a book about something she holds so sacred, but she felt it was important to write this book to follow up with her first book, called “Spiritual Resilience: Leading our Youth to Go and Do.”
"We need those irrevocable guarantees given to us through Jesus Christ in the temple of God in order to have a firm foundation for spiritual resilience to grow and thrive and develop,” Goettl said. “So, I felt that the conversation wasn't done unless I described how I felt about those covenants and how I gain security through those covenants."
“Covenant Power” begins with some background to temple covenants. She describes the Abrahamic Covenant and talks about the Creation before getting into the covenants made in the endowment ceremony.
To write the book, Goettl says she volunteered extensively in the Portland Oregon Temple. She was also a seminary teacher. She could learn from the temple and from her scriptures. She says she wanted to bridge the gap between temple learning and learning from the scriptures.
"Often in our minds, and I did this for many years, I considered the temple experience as an addition to what we learn in the scriptures,” Goettl said. “And this process has really taught me to flip that relationship. Our scriptures are actually the handbook to our covenants. Our covenants came first."
Each chapter also includes a narrative from the point of view of a character found in the scriptures. For example, the first chapter about the Abrahamic Covenant is written from the point of view of Jacob, the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham. The story is about his night when he wrestled with an angel.
“I present a story, my theory of how this might have played out. And it really is an imagination,” Goettl said, “but I hope that these stories encourage a reader to think about how would they tell that story?”
“Covenant Power” is available at Amazon.com or on the Cedar Fort Publishing website.