I’ve been blessed to live within a 30-minute drive to a temple for almost my entire adult life, and I dutifully attended the temple with my husband nearly every month for the first 13 years of our marriage, stopping only when the pandemic forced temples to close. Once they reopened, I strove to resume my habit of going once a month, and even though I wasn’t attending on quite as consistent a schedule as before, I still considered myself good when it came to temple attendance.
However, when Elder Gerrit W. Gong spoke at the last general conference, I realized that having good temple attendance wasn’t what I wanted anymore.
Why going to the temple is no longer my goal
Elder Gong said that “holiness to the Lord in everyday life includes coming more often to the Lord in His holy house.” When I took the time to really study his phrasing, it struck me as profound. I’d previously thought about going more often to the temple, to God’s holy house, as if that was the final goal—to simply make the time to get inside the temple with greater frequency. But Elder Gong helped me realize that I shouldn’t be striving to simply go to the temple, but rather to go to the Lord in His temple.
Whenever I find myself thinking, “I’m going to the temple today,” I try and correct myself and say, “I’m going to the Lord today.” That simple shift in perspective changes the way I approach everything I do and everyone I talk to in the temple. Scanning my recommend at the front desk is no longer about simply being allowed to enter other parts of the building. It’s about me being “recommended to the Lord,” and I now hear the words “Welcome to the temple” as if they were being said by the Lord himself, accepting the recommendation and inviting me to enter.
Bishop Waddell taught, “Each time we attend the temple—in all that we hear, do, and say; in every ordinance in which we participate; and in every covenant that we make—we are pointed to Jesus Christ.”
When I think in terms of going to the Lord instead of simply going to the temple, it is easier to find Christ in all aspects of the temple experience. And finding Him in everything—from a worker stationed in a hallway, waiting to guide and direct anyone who feels lost to the officiator bringing in folding chair after folding chair so that everyone would know there was room for them in the Lord’s house—has transformed my temple attendance into temple worship.
I’m not perfect in my temple worship yet. My mind still wanders at times, and I have to keep bringing my attention back to Christ, to finding Him in everything around me. But reframing my thoughts in this way has drastically improved my focus from what it was before, and when I leave the temple grounds now, I feel more changed by the experience than I used to. Because I didn’t just experience the temple—I experienced Him.
And I can’t wait to go back and do it again.
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