Faith and the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood

My thoughts on President Eyring's talk "Faith and the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood"

Elder Eyring is a powerful speaker!

“First, the very fact that you have been offered the oath and covenant is evidence that God has chosen you, knowing your power and capacity. He has known you since you were with Him in the spirit world. With His foreknowledge of your strength, he has allowed you to find the true Church of Jesus Christ and to be offered the priesthood. You can feel confidence because you have evidence of His confidence in you.”

I don’t hold the Priesthood, but I’ve often felt I was so lucky to be born into the church because I’m not sure I would have ever recognized the truth if I stumbled upon it. I want to believe I would have. A statement like the one above tells me that I truly was a beloved daughter in the spirit world. YEAH! It also means the same thing for my children.

“Second, as you will try to keep the covenants, the Savior has promised His personal help. He has said that as you go forward in honoring the priesthood: ‘There I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.’”

I personally have felt him go before me. There have been challenges in my life where I know *I* didn’t go through them alone. I would have buckled, succumbed to the pressure, but someone was there with me, surrounding me and helping me through it. I know I don’t have the Priesthood, but I have the power to call upon it through my temple covenants as well as living righteously.

“Priesthood service will prepare you for living in eternal families.” What a bold statement! As a mother I see that. Priesthood service is all about someone else—you can’t bless yourself—and being a part of an eternal family is all about the other people; not you. But even deeper, priesthood service is about love and that is all about family. When I see the priesthood in action—truly in action—it is because of LOVE, the pure love of Christ. We as Relief Society sisters think we have the market cornered on charity, but when men use the power of the priesthood it is because of love.

Just recently I have witnessed this in a way I hoped I would never. Friday, July 25th at 7:30 a.m. I got the call I never wanted to get: my mother had just had a massive heart attack. An hour later we were at the breakfast table when I had to tell my children. Before I finished my wonderful husband asked if I wanted a blessing of comfort. Of course! I wish I would have thought of that. I left town around 3 that afternoon and just as I was getting gas the brothers who were at her bedside got the siblings who weren’t there on the phone and I was able to listen to my brother anoint and bless my mother. Those words must have been the hardest they had ever spoken, but it was a beautiful prayer. Two days later I asked my brothers to anoint me for an upcoming surgery I had planned. The blessing was so wonderful. They then turned around and said another one on my mother. Words, beautiful words of comfort and releasing her to heaven were spoken. No miracles happened then, well no biblical type, but the peace only the gospel, the priesthood can give swept over the family. Those men would have loved to have said, “arrive and walk beloved mother,” but that wasn’t said. The words said in all those blessings were words of charity—pure words from our Heavenly Father to those mortal imperfect bodies here on earth and pure words of love to the spirits that inhabit those bodies.

Love is another word for pure priesthood.