Trusting with our whole souls
Faith Matters resources to accompany your Come Follow Me study: July 13 - 19
I can stay true to the Lord when my faith is challenged.
All things are in the Lord’s hands.
The scriptures can turn my heart to the Lord.
The point of Scripture is not to tell us something. The point of Scripture is to do something. The point of Scripture is to introduce us to God and invite us to participate with God in the revelation of who and what he is. —Adam Miller
Scripture is this site where we can go, where God’s presence infuses the words, and if we put ourselves there and spend enough time there and open ourselves to it, then we too through the Spirit can experience some of that divine presence. —Rosalynde Welch
These are the stories of real people who led real lives. As we read things in the scriptures that are difficult or cause concern, we can use those lessons to be “more wise” than they had been (Mormon 9:31). Yet when these stories do not yield to easy lessons, we can also remember that life itself does not always yield to easy lessons. There is value in working out lessons from complex life circumstances, whether in the scriptures or in our own lives.
—Avram R. Shannon, “Lessons from Life’s Complex Stories”
Scripture is more than a set of propositions, or the record of past reactions to a set of propositions. Scripture must be the occasion for our own encounter with a living Christ. That is the principal function and majesty of scripture. Any reduction to historical artifact or a data stream makes of scripture just one more historical chronicle. And any substitution of the text for Christ himself is idolatry. Scripture—and perhaps this is what Joseph was reaching toward in the book of Moses with relating a pure language to priesthood—scripture is not a series of symbols we subject to textual decoding. Scripture is, ideally, the erasure of distance, a revelatory holy of holies in which we encounter the presence of God like a burning bush.
—Teryl Givens, “Love, Language, and Presence”
A covenant is a whole-souled commitment between me and the Lord.
Find everything we’ve published in Wayfare about covenants here
Adding onto the traditional reading of Enos, I focus on how he pours out his “whole soul” as a latter-day scripture example of kenosis. Coming from the Greek text of Philippians 2, kenosis means to empty out one’s self, as Christ “emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature” (Phil. 2:7). Kenosis is not just humility, though. It is something only someone in power can do; they give up their power to empower others. Jesus condescends to earth and saves us. Even more than praying for our enemies, which Jesus commands us to do, kenosis is the idea that if we have the upper hand over anyone, we empty ourselves for their benefit.
—Shannon Harris, “The Widening Circle”
Our covenants quickly help us to understand just how much God’s ways are not our ways. We begin to sense the gulf between where we are and where God wants with all his heart for us to be. We feel how little our shortsighted accumulation of social esteem really matters to him. This recognition should start to change us—to worry and unravel the stubborn knots of our lesser, human desires. Recognizing the numerous ways we fall short heaps cognitive dissonance on top of us until we can no longer bear it and hopefully start trying to understand God’s mercies instead. If or when we finally ask, our covenants provide the built infrastructure for God to send down grace in far greater proportion than we could otherwise receive. The psalmist wrote: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God” (Ps. 42:1). Isaiah promises, as if in response, that “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:9).
—Jon Ogden, “I Do Not Know, But I Trust”
Could it be that this was the essence of covenant? Fundamentally, it’s not about reciprocal duties, but rather, reciprocal relationship?
And could it be that at the heart of every covenant we make is this one same truth? It’s not just separate and distinct agreements made at baptism, during the sacrament, and in the temple. It’s not a legal contract with pages of clauses. It’s one promise. It’s one choice. It’s saying yes to gracing. Fundamentally, it’s not making covenants (plural), it’s living in covenant (singular). It’s living in Christ.
—Hannah Crowther, “Dancing With Christ” (an excerpt from Gracing)