By keeping our covenants with God, we open the doors to a shared community of belonging with God and with each other.
In an increasingly individualized society, it may be difficult to see how any of us can truly connect with and understand one another. However, we can create a Zion community by being unified in Christ and making and keeping sacred covenants.
In his general conference address “Covenant Belonging,” Elder Gerrit W. Gong outlines how we can build such a community. He notes that when we make Christ the focus of our daily living, study the Book of Mormon as evidence of covenant belonging, and follow the living prophet as we take part in our own sacred promises, we are laying the groundwork for a community where we may all belong by covenant.
Photo by LDS Media Library
Building this community begins with ourselves. As we make and keep covenants with God—by partaking of the sacrament, by being baptized, by entering into the holy temple—we draw closer to God and follow Christ’s example. Becoming more like Christ allows us to treat those in our community as Christ would.
This isn’t to say that building a covenant-keeping community will be easy. We are all mortal, and we therefore fall short of perfect unity. However, as we strive to keep our covenants, we are promised great blessings. “In losing our worldly self through covenant belonging,” Elder Gong teaches, “we…define our most important relationships.” When we strive to keep our covenants, we enter into belonging not just with God, but also with our mortal communities.
Discover how you can find your relationship to covenants and community in Elder Gerrit W. Gong’s talk “Covenant Belonging.”
Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org
—Alyssa Anderson, Latter-day Saint Insights
FEATURE IMAGE BY LDS MEDIA LIBRARY
Find more insights
Read more about the covenants we make in the temple in Madeline Paskett Hunter’s Latter-day Saint Insights article “The Temple Altar and Other Sealing Ceremony Symbols.”
Learn about how you belong with Christ in Maddy Abadillo’s Latter-day Saint Insights article “In My Name Shall They Be Called, and They Are Mine.”
Thank you for sharing this message! With the emphasis of the Church’s leaders on building Zion and encouraging unity, I found your article to be perfectly timed and helpful: we each have a responsibility to do our part in strengthening relationships with each other and with God.