Ordinances and actions

When I was preparing to be baptized, I remember practicing in the living room with my dad.

I also remember him teaching me that when I was dunked under the water, it was as if I was being buried and then coming back to life, just like Jesus.

I thought that was pretty cool, because it’s as if we were acting out what was happening!

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that a lot of ordinances are accompanied with physical actions.

Like when we take the bread and water for the sacrament!

But I’ve also learned that the action itself isn’t what causes me to make a covenant.

Just eating bread and water itself isn’t what’s renewing my covenants each week.

Yes, ordinances are formal acts that are super important.

But we also have to make sure our mind is engaged with what we are actually promising!

Our heart and our mind have to be involved with some level of intention.

When Moses was instructing the children of Israel on how to perform the Passover to avoid their firstborn sons dying, he referred to the act of painting their door frames with lamb’s blood as an “ordinance”.

So the Passover was an ordinance for the children of Israel!

The physical act of what they did was so important… but so was what their hearts were doing at the same time.

Look at what they were thinking about as they reflected on this ordinance:

“It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt… And the people bowed the head and worshipped.” (Exodus 12:27)

They worshipped.

I think it is so cool that so many ordinances have physical acts associated with them that can help us ponder even deeper on the covenants being made.

But I also know that just “going through the motions” isn’t what saved the firstborns during the Passover.

And “going through the motions” isn’t what will help our hearts become molded to what the Lord wants them to be.

The sacred action + engaging our minds = true worship and lasting change!

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black