Videos
Endure to the
End of Your Marriage Covenant
Enduring in our
marriage covenants and commitments is essential in obtaining an eternal
marriage. Note the following statements:
Russell
M. Nelson Quorum
of the Twelve Apostles
Marriage—especially
temple marriage—and family ties involve covenant relationships. They
cannot be regarded casually. With divorce rates escalating throughout
the world today, it is apparent that many spouses are failing to endure
to the end of their commitments to each other. (“Endure and Be
Lifted
Up,” Ensign, May 1997, p. 71)
Temple marriages
are conditional marriages. Each temple marriage must eventually
be sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise. Not the following:
Hugh
B. Brown (1883-1975)
First Presidency
The
religious sanctity and sanction of the marriage relationship is greatly
enhanced and appreciated where the couple, before marriage—and they
must, necessarily, be of the same faith—start with the same goal in
mind. They must prepare and be worthy to receive the sacred ordinance
in edifices where only the worthy may enter. Here they receive
instruction, make covenants, and then at the altar pledge eternal love
and fidelity, each for the other, in the presence of God and of angels.
Surely such a concept and practice, with its accompanying obligations,
makes for the permanence of the home, the glorifying of the institution
of marriage, and the salvation of the souls of men.
Such marriage is essentially an
act of faith, solemnized in the presence of a divine partner. There
must be faith and courage to see it through, to endure to the end,
despite the difficulties, trials, disappointments, and occasional
bereavements. (“The LDS Concept of Marriage,” Ensign, June 2011, pp. 52-55; reprint of Ensign, Jan. 1972, 62–63; emphasis added)
Richard G. Scott Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
What to me
has
become a vitally important part of remembering the blessings that come
from the temple is that I love my wife more each day. I recognize that my sealing to my
wife is in a sense not yet eternally conferred. We have lived
the commandments. We have obtained the blessings of the ordinances in
the temple. We have honored those commandments, but she and I both must
be found worthy beyond the veil so that those ordinances can be sealed
by the Holy Spirit of Promise.
The
requirement that it be sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise is how
Father in Heaven and the Savior assure that no one will gain those
blessings unworthily. An individual may be able to deceive mortals by
appearing to be righteous, but there can be no such deception with the
Holy Ghost. (“To
Have Peace and Happiness” CES Fireside for Young Adults, September
12, 2010, Brigham Young University)
Bruce R. McConkie (1915-85) Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles
One of our
revelations speaks of “the Holy Spirit of promise, which the Father
sheds forth upon all those who are just and true” (D&C 76:53),
meaning that every person who walks uprightly, does the best that he
can, overcomes the world, rises above carnality, and walks in paths of
righteousness will have his acts and his deeds sealed and approved by
the Holy Spirit. ...
In order to
get a
proper marriage one must do this:
first,
search for and seek out celestial marriage—find the right
ordinance;
second,
look for a legal administrator, someone who holds the sealing power—and
that power is exercised only in the temples that the Lord has had built
by the tithing and sacrifice of his people in our day;
and third,
so live in righteousness, uprightness, integrity, virtue, and morality
that he is entitled to have the Holy Spirit of God ratify and seal and
justify and approve, and in that event his marriage is sealed by the
Holy Spirit of promise and is binding in time and in eternity.
So we
Latter-day
Saints struggle
and labor and work to be worthy to get a recommend to go to the
temple, for the Spirit will not dwell in an unclean tabernacle. We struggle and labor
to get our tabernacles clean, to be pure and refined and cultured, to
have the Spirit as our companion; and when we get in that state, our
bishop and our stake president give us a “recommend” to go to the
temple. We go there and make solemn and sober covenants, and having so
done we then labor
and struggle and work with all our power to continue in the
light of the Spirit so that
the agreement we have made will not be broken. If we do that, we
have the assurance of eternal life. We do not need to tremble and
fear; we do not need to have anxiety or worry if we are laboring and
working and struggling to the best of our abilities. Though we do not become perfect,
though we do not overcome all things, if our hearts are right and we
are charting a course to eternal life in the manner I indicate, our
marriages will continue in the realms that are ahead. We shall get into
the paradise of God, and we shall be husband and wife. We shall
come up in the resurrection, and we shall be husband and wife.
Anyone who
comes up
in the resurrection in the marriage state has the absolute guarantee of
eternal life, but he will
not then be a possessor and inheritor of all things—there is a great
deal of progress and advancement to be made after the grave and after
the resurrection. But
he will be in the course where he will go on in the schooling and
preparing processes until eventually he knows all things and becomes
like God our Heavenly Father, meaning that he becomes an inheritor of
eternal life.
In a manner of speaking
we have, here and now, probationary families, even though we have been
married in the temple, because our marriage in the temple is conditional.
It is conditioned
upon our subsequent compliance with the laws, the terms, the conditions
of the covenant that we then make. And so when I get married in
the temple, I am put in a position where I can strive and labor
and learn to love my wife with the perfection that must exist if I am
going to have a fulness of the glory that attends this covenant in
eternity, and it puts her in a position to learn to love me in the same
way. It puts both of us in a position to bring up our children in light
and truth and to school and prepare them to be members of an eternal
family unit, and it puts us as children of our parents in a position
where we honor our parents and do what is necessary to have these
eternal ties go from one generation to the next and the next.
Eventually there will be a great patriarchal chain of exalted beings
from Adam to the last man, with any links left out being individuals
who are not qualified and worthy to inherit, possess, and receive along
the indicated line. ("Celestial Marriage," New Era, June 1978, pp. 16-17;
italics and underlining added)
In
the preceding quote, Elder McConkie used such words as struggle, labor,
and strive to describe enduring to the end in the marriage
covenant. Elder Bruce C. Hafen of the Seventy spoke of the
difference between a marriage based on a covenant rather than one based
on a contract:
Bruce C. Hafen of
the Seventy
Three
summers ago, I watched a new bride and groom, Tracy and Tom, emerge
from a sacred temple. They laughed and held hands as family and friends
gathered to take pictures. I saw happiness and promise in their faces
as they greeted their reception guests, who celebrated publicly the
creation of a new family. I wondered that night how long it would be
until these two faced the opposition that tests every marriage. Only
then would they discover whether their marriage was based on a contract
or a covenant.
Another bride sighed blissfully on her
wedding day, “Mom, I’m at the end of all my troubles!” “Yes,” replied
her mother, “but at which end?” When troubles come, the parties to a
contractual marriage seek happiness by walking away. They marry to
obtain benefits and will stay only as long as they’re receiving what
they bargained for. But when troubles come to a covenant marriage, the
husband and wife work them through. They marry to give and to grow,
bound by covenants to each other, to the community, and to God.
Contract companions each give 50 percent; covenant companions each give
100 percent (see Bruce C. and Marie K. Hafen, The Belonging Heart) [1994], 255–65;
Marriage is by nature a covenant, not
just a private contract one may cancel at will. Jesus taught about
contractual attitudes when he described the “hireling,” who performs
his conditional promise of care only when he receives something in
return. When the hireling “seeth the wolf coming,” he “leaveth the
sheep, and fleeth … because he … careth not for the sheep.” By
contrast, the Savior said, “I am the good shepherd, … and I lay down my
life for the sheep” (John 10:12–15). Many people today marry as
hirelings. And when the wolf comes, they flee. This idea is wrong. It
curses the earth, turning parents’ hearts away from their children and
from each other (D&C 2).
Before their marriage, Tom and Tracy
received an eternal perspective on covenants and wolves [through the
temple endowment where they were told the story of Adam and Eve and
their fall into the lone and dreary world]. ...
Every marriage is
tested repeatedly by three kinds of wolves. The first wolf is
natural adversity. After asking God for years to give them a
first
child, David and Fran had a baby with a serious heart defect. Following
a three-week struggle, they buried their newborn son. Like Adam and Eve
before them, they mourned together, brokenhearted, in faith before the
Lord (see Moses 5:27).
Second, the wolf of
their own imperfections will test them. One woman told me
through her
tears how her husband’s constant criticism finally destroyed not only
their marriage but her entire sense of self-worth. He first complained
about her cooking and housecleaning, and then about how she used her
time, how she talked, looked, and reasoned. Eventually she felt utterly
inept and dysfunctional. My heart ached for her, and for him.
Contrast her with a young woman who
had little self-confidence when she first married. Then her husband
found so much to praise in her that she gradually began to believe she
was a good person and that her opinions mattered. His belief in her
rekindled her innate self-worth.
The third wolf
is the excessive
individualism that has spawned today’s contractual
attitudes. A seven-year-old girl came home from school crying, “Mom,
don’t I belong to you? Our teacher said today that nobody belongs to anybody—children don’t
belong to parents, husbands don’t belong to wives. I am yours, aren’t I, Mom?” Her mother
held her close and whispered, “Of course you’re mine—and I’m yours,
too.” Surely marriage partners must respect one another’s individual
identity, and family members are neither slaves nor inanimate objects.
But this teacher’s fear, shared today by many, is that the bonds of
kinship and marriage are not valuable ties that bind, but are, instead,
sheer bondage. Ours is the age of the waning of belonging.
The adversary has long cultivated this
overemphasis on personal autonomy, and now he feverishly exploits it.
Our deepest God-given instinct is to run to the arms of those who need
us and sustain us. But he drives us away from each other today with
wedges of distrust and suspicion. He exaggerates the need for having
space, getting out, and being left alone. Some people believe him—and
then they wonder why they feel left alone. And despite admirable
exceptions, children in America’s growing number of single-parent
families are clearly more at risk than children in two-parent
families. Further, the rates of divorce and births outside
marriage are now so high that we may be witnessing “the collapse of
marriage.” (“Covenant
Marriage,” Ensign, Nov. 1996, pp. 26-27)
The
following are helpful articles regarding enduring through trials
and hardships in marriage:
Facing Death
Harold B. Lee
(1899-1973) President
Death of a loved one is
life's most severe test. Having gone through some similar experiences
in losing loved ones in death, I speak from personal experience when I
say to you who mourn, do not try to live too many days ahead. The
all-important thing is not that tragedies and sorrows come into our
lives, but what we do with them. Death of a loved one is the most
severe test that you will ever face, and if you can rise above your
griefs and if you will trust in God, then you will be able to surmount
any other difficulty with which you may be faced. (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, ed.
Clyde J. Williams [1993], p.53)
Resources
for the Study of the Doctrine of Death:
Perfection
Joseph Fielding Smith
Salvation
does not come all at once; we are commanded to be perfect even as our
Father in heaven is perfect. It will take us ages to accomplish this
end, for there will be greater progress beyond the grave, and it will
be there that the faithful will overcome all things, and receive all
things, even the fulness of the Father's glory.
I believe the Lord meant just what he said: that we should be perfect,
as our Father in heaven is perfect. That will not come all at once, but
line upon line, and precept upon precept, example upon example, and
even then not as long as we live in this mortal life, for we will have
to go even beyond the grave before we reach that perfection and shall
be like God.
But here we lay the foundation. Here is where we are taught these
simple truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ, in this probationary
state, to prepare us for that perfection. It is our duty to be better
today than we were yesterday, and better tomorrow than we are today.
Why? Because we are on that road, if we are keeping the commandments of
the Lord, we are on that road to perfection, and that can only come
through obedience and the desire in our hearts to overcome the world. (Doctrines
of Salvation, Vol.2, pp.18-19)
Resources for the
study of Perfection: