Speakers Remorse: The Temple

I am very blessed for the opportunity to speak quite a bit in my calling. The last 2 weeks I have spoken 3 times and I am speaking again next week. I really enjoy studying the subject and expanding my knowledge and testimony. I am a HUGE believer in teaching by the Spirit, hence you will very rarely catch me reading points from a paper for my talk or I stand up with no paper and speak from the heart.

Do you ever have that moment after you have given a talk where you say "Oh! I forgot to say that!! I totally blanked that thought." Etc, etc...

It happens to me all the time and I call it the Speakers Remorse.

Last night I gave a talk about the temple. Today, I have had a bucket load of speakers remorse and sadly it is not a talk I will give again anytime soon. So, I will share here what I totally left out of my talk yesterday intermixed with the things I did say.

You do not get to the temple by chance. The pathway may be strait and narrow, but it is a very clear path that can be followed. If you lived your life that maybe you will go to the temple, most likely you will not. With today's pressures and influences of the world, chances will take you anywhere but the temple.

The temple is the House of the Lord. Holiness to the Lord. We go to the temple to take out our endowments so that we can make sacred covenants with Him. With those covenants, we become His people and are annointed and are holy. Covenants means more blessings, but also greater responsibility. Everything we are, have, own, our time, talents are now His. We are mearly stewards over them and we are to use these gifts to help build the kingdom of God.

In the temple we feel peace, safety, comfort, and joy! There is nothing in the world that can compete with this eternal feeling. It is a place of refuge and is not influenced by the world outside. With the spirit there, everything is in "high definition" for learning, understanding, listening and praying.

Making it to the temple is not about a date that you go. It is the beginning of a Celestial life style or at least striving for that Celestial lifestyle. We learn the plan of salvation, how to be more like God and how to pattern our lives to return home to our Heavenly Father. We don't live like this for a day, it is a lifetime of remembering the promises we made and living by them.

One cannot expect to live the opposite of the temple standards and expect to freely walk into the temple the next day. You live your life in preparation for it to earn those priveledges to take upon yourself to actually live it. These are clear decisions made everyday. In the way we dress, the way we act, the way we treat others, our obedience, our daily and Sunday worship and truly living the desires of your spiritual heart. If we prepare, we are better at actually living the covenants we make.

I love the temple! With all my heart, it is my favorite place in the entire world. We go once a week to be rejuvenated and cleansed. To get grounded and remember the clearer perspective. I know who I am in the temple and I know that the spirit is there all the time. How lucky I am that I live in a valley of 4 temples.

My life is so blessed because of my temple life and marriage. Every day, Brian and I work on our temple marriage. It started as a set date of May 27, 1999 but it has been 11 years, everyday of working on my temple marriage. And every Sunday we take the sacrament, we renew our vows and it gives me the same butterfly feelings the first day we were married.