Dedicating our whole self to God

Dear friend

When a building is constructed as a place for serving and worshipping God, it is common for a special ceremony or service to take place. This is often called a Dedication Service. Such an event is to signify that, unlike other buildings, this particular building has a devout divine designation. It is given over to spiritual affairs and activities. While other properties may be assigned for use in commerce, or as workplaces, or educational venues or leisure facilities, those especially sacred spaces are wholly committed to God's work.

An obvious example is the dedication of a temple, as in the Old Testament, 1 Kings 8:63.

63 And Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered unto the Lord, two and twenty thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord.

Although there is not currently a requirement to incorporate ritual sacrificing in our ceremonies, the principles underpinning dedication are the same in modern times; unreserved commitment of the entire edifice to Godly goals. The object remains the same down the ages. It is the setting apart from other constructions those special buildings consecrated to God for His work and glory.

Central to the ceremony is the Dedicatory Prayer. King Solomon himself offered that prayer (prior to the demise of the oxen and sheep). In this dispensation the Prophet Joseph Smith offered such a prayer at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, including this verse from Doctrine and Covenants 109:78.

78 O hear, O hear, O hear us, O Lord! And answer these petitions, and accept the dedication of this house unto thee, the work of our hands, which we have built unto thy name;

But often the dedication of a place can be extended to include the dedication of a people, especially those people who will work and worship within the walls. So how is the dedicating of the disciple achieved? I think one of the best summaries describing dedicatory desire comes from Doctrine and Covenants 4:2.

2 Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day.

"Heart, might, mind and strength"; surely that means everything. All our desire and passions, all our power, all our intellect, and all our capacities, literally everything. Yes it is a "big ask", but it is a little ask alongside the "big give" of the Atonement. And it doesn't mean we have an excuse to stop regular life activities such as work or schooling to be exclusively engaged in Church work. Rather, we do our divine dedicating while doing our daily do; "in the world but not of the world".

I hope we can be a person/place that is increasingly dedicated to the glory of God. I pray we are determined to get better each day; better by giving over just a bit more of ourselves to the Lord. It takes dedication to achieve dedication.

Samuel.