LDS Quotes About Covenants
“The Latter-day Saints are a covenant people. From the day of baptism through the spiritual milestones of our lives, we make promises with God and He makes promises with us. He always keeps His promises offered through His authorized servants, but it is the crucial test of our lives to see if we will make and keep our covenants with Him.”
| “Witnesses for God,” Ensign, November 1996, p. 30
“We go to the temple to make covenants, but we go home to keep the covenants that we have made. The home is the testing ground. The home is the place where we learn to be more Christlike. The home is the place where we learn to overcome selfishness and give ourselves in service to others.”
| Ensign, May 1995, p. 12
“As to the question of authority, nearly everything depends upon it. No ordinance can be performed to the acceptance of God without divine authority. No matter how fervently men may believe or pray, unless they are endowed with divine authority they can only act in their own name, and not legally nor acceptably in the name of Jesus Christ, in whose name all these things must be done.”
| Gospel Doctrine, 102.
“A periodic review of the covenants we have made with the Lord will help us with our priorities and with balance in our lives. This review will help us see where we need to repent and change our lives to ensure that we are worthy of the promises that accompany our covenants and sacred ordinances. Working out our own salvation requires good planning and a deliberate, valiant effort.”
| “Keeping Life’s Demands in Balance,” Ensign, May 1987, 14.
A half-hearted commitment to our covenants will not guarantee us anything. We may be tempted to equivocate, throw our old ways in calm water, or bury our weapons of rebellion with the handles sticking out.
| Unwavering Commitment to Jesus Christ
“Covenants with God are serious and solemn. A man should prepare for, learn about, and enter such covenants with the intent to honor them. A covenant becomes a pledge of self. Paraphrasing the English playwright Robert Bolt, a man makes a covenant only when he wants to commit himself quite exceptionally to a promise. He makes an identity between the truth of the promise and his own virtue. When a man makes a covenant, he is holding himself, like water, in his cupped hands. And if he opens his fingers, he need not hope to find himself again. A covenant-breaker no longer has a self to commit or a guarantee to offer.”
| The Priesthood and the Savior’s Atoning Power
Keeping promises is not a habit; it is a characteristic of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
| Standing by Our Promises and Covenants
“All the sacrifice that the Lord asks of his people is strict obedience to our own covenants that we have made with our God, and that is to serve him with an undivided heart.”
| Journal of Discourses, 18:246
“Endowed members of the Church wear the garment as a reminder of the sacred covenants they have made with the Lord and also as a protection against temptation and evil. How it is worn is an outward expression of an inward commitment to follow the Savior”
| (First Presidency letter, 10 Oct. 1988).
“The ordinary soul, struggling against temptation, failing and repenting, and failing again and repenting, but always determined to keep his covenants – can still expect to one day hear ‘Well done thou good and faithful servant.'”
“We can observe that Word of Wisdom. We receive numerous letters inquiring whether this item or that item is proscribed by the Word of Wisdom. If we will avoid those things which are definitely and specifically defined, and beyond this observe the spirit of that great revelation, it will not involve a burden. It will, rather, bring a blessing. Do not forget: it is the Lord who has made the promise.”
| Ensign, November 1985, p. 85
“An eternal perspective helps us maintain complete fidelity to the covenants we make. President Packer emphasized that “ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into [God’s] presence. To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality.”
| “Prepare for Blessings of the Temple,” Ensign, March 2002, p. 22
“True worship goes on seven days a week. Sacraments and vows and covenants of renewal ascend to heaven daily in personal prayer.”
| A New Witness for the Articles of Faith
“When you look on the dictionary for the most important word, do you know what it is? It could be ‘remember.’ Because all of you have made covenants – to know what to do and you know how to do it – our greatest need is to remember. That is why everyone goes to sacrament meeting every Sabbath day.”
“Because God has been faithful and kept his promises in the past, we can hope with confidence that God will keep His promises to us in the present and in the future.”
“A covenant made with God should be regarded not as restrictive but as protective.”
| “Prepare for Blessings of the Temple,” Ensign, March 2002, pp. 21-22
“You will listen best when you feel, “Father, thy will, not mine, be done.” You will have a feeling of “I want what you want.” Then, the still small voice will seem as if it pierces you…You will act after you have listened because when you hear his voice by the Spirit you will always feel that you are impelled to do something. You mustn’t be surprised if the instruction seems accompanied with what you feel as a rebuke.You might prefer that God simply tell you how well you are doing. But he loves you, wants you to be with him, and knows you must have a mighty change in your heart, through faith on the Lord Jesus Christ, humble repentance, and the making and keeping of sacred covenants.”
| “To Draw Closer to God,” Ensign, May 1991, 67.
“An invitation to bear one another’s burdens is an invitation to keep our covenants. Lucy Mack Smith’s counsel to the first Relief Society sisters is more relevant today than ever before: “We must cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one another and gain instruction, that we may all sit down in heaven together.” This is covenant keeping and visiting teaching at its finest!”
“Many today trade away their integrity for a very small price tag. A person who shoplifts for a candy bar, or makeup, or jewelry trades priceless integrity for a meager gain. A person who falsifies a tax return by not reporting income or claiming invalid deductions compromises valued integrity for a pittance of unpaid income tax. One who avoids paying bills promptly for goods or services received exchanges cherished integrity for a perceived temporary advantage. Husbands or wives who are unfaithful to their spouses trade their prized integrity for a fleeting moment of mirth. Integrity is so precious that it is beyond price; it is invaluable.
| “Personal Integrity,” Ensign, May 1990, 30–31.
“Personal integrity implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility that we are incapable of being false to a trust or covenant.”
| “Personal Integrity,” Ensign, May 1990, 30–31.
“Divine covenants make strong Christians. I urge each one to qualify for and receive all the priesthood ordinances you can and then faithfully keep the promises you have made by covenant. In times of distress, let your covenants be paramount and let your obedience be exact. Then you can ask in faith, nothing wavering, according to your need, and God will answer. He will sustain you as you work and watch. In His own time and way He will stretch forth his hand to you, saying, “Here am I.”
| “The Power of Covenants,” Ensign, May 2009, p. 22
“The extension of mercy will not be automatic. It will be through covenant with Him. It will be on His terms, His generous terms.”
| “The Mediator,” Ensign, May 1977, 56.
A half-hearted commitment to our covenants will not guarantee us anything. We may be tempted to equivocate, throw our old ways in calm water, or bury our weapons of rebellion with the handles sticking out.
| Unwavering Commitment to Jesus Christ
“From the day of baptism through the spiritual milestones of our lives we make promises with God and He makes promises with us. He always keeps His promises offered through His authorized servants, but it is the crucial test of our lives to see if we will make and keep our covenants with Him.”
| Ensign, November 1996
The assurance that the resurrection will include an opportunity to be with our family members – husband, wife, parents, brothers and sisters, children, and grandchildren – is a powerful encouragement for us to fulfill our family responsibilities in mortality. It helps us live together in love in this life in anticipation of joyful reunions and associations in the next. – and, finally – The assurance of immortality also helps us bear the mortal separations involved in the death of our loved ones. Every one of us has wept at a death, grieved through a funeral, or stood in pain at a graveside. I am surely one who has. We should all praise God for the assured resurrection that makes our mortal separations temporary and gives us the hope and strength to carry on.
| “Resurrection,” General Conference, April 1, 2000
“I have strong feelings about what is not provocation for breaking the sacred covenants of marriage. Surely it is not simply ‘mental distress’ or ‘personality differences’ or having ‘grown apart’ or having ‘fallen out of love.’ This is especially so where there are children.”
| Conference Report, Apr. 1993, 46; or Ensign, May 1993, 36–37
“I pity the man who at one time looked into the eyes of a beautiful young woman and held her hand across the altar in the house of the Lord as they made sacred and everlasting promises one to another, but who, lacking in self-discipline, fails to cultivate his better nature, sinks to coarseness and evil, and destroys the relationship which the Lord has provided for him”
| “Walking in the Light of the Lord,” Ensign, Nov. 1998, 99)
“Think of the promises that are made to you in the beautiful and glorious ceremony that is used in the marriage covenant in the temple. When two Latter-day Saints are united together in marriage, promises are made to them concerning their offspring, that reach from eternity to eternity. They are promised that they shall have the power and the right to govern and control and administer salvation and exaltation and glory to their offspring worlds without end. And what offspring they do not have here, undoubtedly there will be opportunities to have them hereafter. What else could man wish? A man and a woman in the other life, having celestial bodies, free from sickness and disease, glorified and beautified beyond description, standing in the midst of their posterity, governing and controlling them, administering life, exaltation, and glory, worlds without end”
| Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, 138
“Each ordinance and requirement given to man for the purpose of bringing to pass his salvation and exaltation is a covenant.”
| Doctrines of Salvation
“The most fundamental thing we can discuss in the gospel plan, because only covenant-makers and covenant-keepers can claim the ultimate blessings of the celestial kingdom. Yes, when we talk about covenant keeping, we are talking about the heart and soul of our purpose in mortality.”
| “Making and Keeping Covenants”
“Marriage was ordained of God. It is a righteous principle when in holiness it is received and practiced. If men and women today would enter into this covenant in the spirit of humility, love and faith, as they are commanded to do, walking righteously in the ways of eternal life, there would be no divorce, no broken homes; but a happiness, a joy, beyond expression.”