The 3rd Paragraph

The third paragraph of The Family: A Proclamation to the World states:

"In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny as heirs of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally."

Elder Bruce R. McConkie in his talk, Celestial Marriage, said:

"When we as Latter-day Saints talk about marriage, we are talking about a holy, celestial order.  We are talking about a system out of which can grow the greatest love, joy, peace, happiness, and serenity known to humankind. We are talking about creating a family unit that has the potential of being everlasting and eternal, a family unit where a man and a wife can go on in that relationship to all eternity, and where mother and daughter and father and son are bound by eternal ties that will never be severed. We are talking about creating a unit more important that the Church, more important than any organization that exists on earth or in heaven, a unit out of which exaltation and eternal life grow; and when we talk about eternal life, we are talking about the kind of life that God our Heavenly Father lives."

How awesome is that?!  Why settle for a marriage that only lasts during this lifetime, when you could have one the lasts forever?  This kind of marriage can only take place inside our holy temples.  To do this you must make and keep sacred ordinances and covenants.

Elder Boyd K. Packer in his talk, Covenants, said:

"No matter what citizenship or race, whether male or female, no matter what occupation, no matter your education, regardless of the generation in which one lives, life is a homeward journey for all of us, back to the presence of God in his celestial kingdom.

"Ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into His presence.  To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality."

Making those ordinances and covenants are important, but it's keeping them that is a challenge.  Satan does not want us to do what is good, so he works overtime in tempting our natural man.  We can't let our natural man escape our guard when it comes to the ordinances and covenants we made.  That is why we are put into family units.  Our family was created to be our support group and our cheerleaders.  It's up to each member of the family unit to make sure we all make it back to our Heavenly home--back to our Father.

Knowing this, it's important that we have good relationships with our family members.  Colossians 3:8-14 is a great scripture to help us maintain good relationships.  It reads:

"8: But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

"9: Lie not one to another, seeing that ye had put off the old man with his deeds;

"10: And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:

"11: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision,  Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.

"12: Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;

"13: Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any; even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

"14: And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness."

From that scripture I'd like to point our "forgiving."  We are all humans and therefore we make mistakes.  We can not hold a grudge against those that hurt us, we must forgive them.  If we can work on following this scripture, then we can easily keep those ordinances and covenants that we make in the temple of God.