Restored through heavenly messengers in the early days of the Church, it can be powerful… or not, in the life and to the blessing of all families and individuals who call upon God and accept the terms and conditions God has mandated. The weekly emblems of the Lord’s atoning sacrifice, so very sacred, are administered by young and adult men holding the Priesthood.
Phillips Brooks, an Episcopalian minister who lived in the mid 1800’s said: “The light cannot come, except through purity and righteousness; lust and iniquity are surely darkness…. Oh, that there could thrill through the being of our young men some electrical sense that they are God’s sons, that they might… live the life and attain the nature that are rightly theirs.”
Elder Russell M. Nelson, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke of that power and its majesty in the lives of those so ordained and living correct principles (see [i] ‘The Price of the Priesthood’, https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/04/the-price-of-priesthood-power?lang=eng He said during the Priesthood Session of April 2016 General Conference:
“I worry about all who are impure in their thoughts, feelings, or actions or who demean their wives or children, thereby cutting off priesthood power.
I fear that too many have sadly surrendered their agency to the adversary and are saying by their conduct, “I care more about satisfying my own desires than I do about bearing the Savior’s power to bless others.”
I fear, brethren, that some among us may one day wake up and realize what power in the priesthood really is and face the deep regret that they spent far more time seeking power over others or power at work than learning to exercise fully the power of God.[ii] D&C 121:36, https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/121.36?lang=eng#35 President George Albert Smith taught that “we are not here to while away the hours of this life and then pass to a sphere of exaltation; but we are here to qualify ourselves day by day for the positions that our Father expects us to fill hereafter.”
Why would any man waste his days and settle for Esau’s mess of pottage when he has been entrusted with the possibility of receiving all of the blessings of Abraham?” [iii] Genesis 25: 29-34 https://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/gen/25.29-34?lang=eng#28
Distractions from our covenants (including Priesthood covenants) will be there today and are the adversary’s tools to keep us from blessing others, families and ourselves, through the Lord’s power and empowerment.
So… a question for me, you, all who through agency could be empowered to draw closer to God this day: What distraction(s) might hamper prospective blessings that could be ours following Christ’s example and keeping sacred covenants? kdm
