Two BYU professors spoke about the daily sacrifice required in keeping covenants at this year's Women's Conference.

"What is sacrifice?" asked Kaye T. Hanson, member of the Young Women General Board of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Making covenants and then spending the rest of our lives pitting ourselves against [things that come our way]."

She and Elaine S. Marshall, dean and professor of the BYU College of Nursing, both have pioneer ancestry and know their forebears' sacrifices.

"Consecration requires commitment and constant abandon," Marshall said.

Hanson, assistant professor of management communication at BYU, told of when Lehi's family was leaving Jerusalem and Nephi asked Zoram to make a covenant.

"Just by promising, just by covenanting, just by giving his word, Nephi's fears were satisfied," she said. A covenant brought him peace.

Relating covenant power to all, Hanson said, "Making and keeping covenants is the very basis of our integrity; it is who we are."

Hanson also told how the validity of Abraham's covenant was "challenged" not only in his test between Isaac and an innumerable posterity, but between his homeland, where he was forced to leave by famine, and a land God promised to give him.

"Surely, sometime during those lonely desert years, Sarah and Abraham must have questioned," she said.

Hanson said we can choose to follow our own way or to follow Christ, but that, markedly, "Choosing the Savior's way involves making and keeping sacred covenants."

She said the Nauvoo pioneer sisters' "courage and their stamina came from covenant blessings," a "'power from on high' (D&C 38:32; 95:8)." Today, she said such covenants allow saints to call on the Lord to endure.

"It was 31 years before [the Nauvoo saints] had a temple again for the renewing of their covenants," she said. "What a blessing...that temples dot the earth so that we can review our covenants often!"

Hanson said, "Just as faith precedes the miracle, so does the keeping of the covenant precede the blessings."

"The real step is when we clamber onto the altar ourselves..., sacrificing to the Lord whatever the Lord has in mind for us," Hanson said.

Marshall furthermore described consecration. First, she said it requires the faithful keeping of covenants.

Second, Marshall said it "is the act of making our gifts holy."

"Consecration is not simply being busy....Consecration is not weariness; consecration is done by love and peace," she said.

Even referencing two of her favorite past-times, working and worrying, she said, "We must find a place for the Spirit."

Third, Marshall said that in order to consecrate oneself to God, one really needs to know that He is true.

Fourth, Marshall described consecration as something that brings people together over generations.

Last, Marshall said, "Sacrifice is a gift that...brings us closer to the divine."

"What am I willing to let go?" she asked.

Marshall ended with the theme scripture, "[A]ll among them who...are willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice - yea, every sacrifice which I, the Lord, shall command -they are accepted of me."



Copyright Brigham Young University 5 May 2003