Akron Ohio Stake News

Consecrate Thy Performance

President Coburn well taught us the importance of centering our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in his last newsletter message. If I may hitch a ride and sail downstream to the next dock, I’d like to share some thoughts on work, which follows faith (James 2:18).

Indeed, faith being a principle of action, true faith in Christ cannot help itself but yield good works and efforts and performances. 

But like faith, work can be centered in ourselves and in our own strength and wisdom (Helaman 16:15). Nephi counseled…no, enjoined that a disciple’s works should also be grounded in the Lord: “…ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul” (2 Nephi 32:9). 

In the Bible, depending on which Hebrew form of the word is used, to consecrate means to dedicate, separate, set apart, make holy, make perfect, make new.

Curiously, for a performance to receive the distinguished designation of consecrated, Nephi posed no requirement that it be precious to God or significant to men. He didn’t even ask us to pray for the success of the undertaking. He only told us to pray that God would consecrate it.

Perhaps God is more interested in our calling on Him to consecrate than what we call on Him to consecrate, in our pleading Him to be part of our doings than the doings, in our desire to have our endeavors made holy than the endeavors?

Having our performance consecrated invokes some ready effects. For one, it negates our vanity (from “all glory be mine” or “me performing against others” to “I do my best unto the Lord”) and nullifies our acting in vain (for nothing is in vain after the Lord has touched it). It also heightens our sensitivity to not the worth of the venture but the worthiness of the venture (worthy to be touched by the Lord). Contrast the man who accumulated great “net worth,” who “layeth up treasure for himself…” (Luke 12:21).

As the Lord God Omnipotent stoops to bless a petty performance of ours, the importance of the success or failure of our project also fades. Because, on one hand, God can make even failures work for the welfare of our soul; on the other, it wasn’t, for example, the successful performance of turning stones into shining objects that took the Brother of Jared’s breath away, it was the finger of the Lord that touched the stones. Truly, while performances are an object of worship for some, consecrated performances are an instrument of worship for us.

No doubt the Consecrator would sanctify such efforts as our temple work, missionary labor, ministering, search for an eternal companion, but how about our daily toil to provide for ourselves and our family, our helping a customer or boss, our cleaning the house, our painting a work of beauty, our attempting a good deed that would likely fail? He who would consecrate our prayers (2 Nephi 33:4) and afflictions (2 Nephi 2:2) and accept our crying over our flock and crops (Alma 34:20,24) would probably indulge.

Perhaps Nephi called us to consecrate our life’s manifold performances to help us consecrate our one life. How else do we consecrate our life if we leave out our work, career, or what occupies the bulk of our waking hours? Consecration, after all, is not keeping back a part (Acts 5:2) from God but setting apart all to God.

Even more profoundly, “con” meaning together, and “secrate” meaning sacred, and God being the Holy One, consecrating one’s performance is really joining one’s work with God. Now, if expressions like that sound anything familiar, it’s because we’ve heard the divine sentiment behind such joining, even “…that they may be one in us,” as Christ prayed to the Father (John 17:23). Hence, the meaning and nature and, for that matter, the joy of an act of consecration may just be “at-one-ment.”

And performance-consecrating, as Nephi taught us, would serve well as a schoolmaster (Galatians 3:24) to our coming to know the atoning (as in, again, at-one) law of consecration, which is still in effect (Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, p.639) and part of our Temple covenants. For it is the law that is lived in the exalted, celestial society where all we have and do are the Lord’s. And, through the unfathomable grace of God, vice versa.