Appendix: Chapter Synopses

Chapter One- The quest of our lifetime must be to come closer and closer to God the Father and to knowing and understanding His consummate attributes, His virtue, and His character. This, so that we can trust Him. Run to Him. Depend on Him. So that during a life of veil and trouble, we can ground our faith in His love, His availability, His attentiveness, and His absolute power to do anything with perfection. As we understand God the Father, we learn more about ourselves and our potential. 

Chapter Two- It is generous and loving of our Father in Heaven to allow men and women access to His power. This is possible through continual, penitent, repentant cleansing through the Atonement of Christ, and then by a magnifying of our capacity through the Gift of the Holy Ghost. For all those who are willing to make and keep covenants and perform ordinances, there is capacity and power available from the God of the Universe.           

Chapter Three- These examples are just a few that show a divine pattern-- access to God’s total priesthood power is shared with us, His children, through the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost magnifies and enhances our natural abilities to see and do and know. The source for men and women is always God the Father, and the powerline is always The Spirit. The Holy Ghost is the channel through which the Almighty reveals Himself to men and women, and the way He works through us.  This is amazing and empowering.           

Chapter Four- We are effective and inspired in the work of family and the Church, when we access God the Father’s total priesthood power and authority through the Holy Ghost and His gifts. This is how we are equal to the enormous responsibility that we have to one another. The next chapters discuss in depth God’s tools for helping His children return to Him-- the family, marriage, fathers, mothers, the Church, ordinances, Melchizedek priesthood, and God’s service organizations (the priesthood quorum and the Relief Society) He has prepared every detail. If we are to help God, we must become a more and more spiritually powerful individual. Then play our roles in the family and the Church well. In every one of these efforts, we need the guidance and enhancement of the Holy Ghost. Let’s get busy doing His work. 

Chapter Five- The Lord saves and exalts us, one by one. That pattern is divinely effective. We all need a family. Adults need a marriage partner, children need a mother and father. The Family Proclamation calls on parents to “come home” in their hearts and minds, in body and in soul, and see their greatest contribution to society as the work that they do within their individual families. And to see themselves as a tool in God’s work of salvation for the small audience of ones’ own family. 

Chapter Six- Marriage was designed by God to ensure that men and women would never be alone. Like parenting, it is a custodial relationship. A husband adores and serves and a wife adores and serves. Together, united, and armed with their divine propensities, they can build a marriage and family that assists in God’s saving work. They use God’s power through the Holy Ghost as their guide and comfort to make earthly marriages into celestial marriages. 

Chapter Seven- A terrible modern-day miss is in not seeing that a woman's greatest power to influence comes from within family relationships. After gifting a child a little body that will be theirs forever, mothers spend the rest of their mortal lives creating a home and leading those children back to God. This heavenly effort is worth all of a woman's resources because the time, talent and energy spent therein go forward into eternity. A child is an investment in something that is completely unbound by the world. Mothering is influence that never ends. 

Chapter Eight- Sometimes we talk about the Melchizedek Priesthood callings in the Church as though they are the highest noblest thing that men can do. It is true that they offer a man opportunities to serve and teach and love, but they are secondary. The work that a man does inside his family is work only he can do and is a man’s number one responsibility and opportunity. A godly father who provides spiritually and temporally, presides in love and righteousness, and protects his wife and children. 

Chapter Nine- The Church’s mission is to bring the spiritual blessings of ordinances and covenants to the children of God through authorized Melchizedek priesthood channels. Instead of the co-equal horizontal leadership of husband and wife, the Church is organized vertically with authority to perform essential ordinances under strict command (through ordination) and key holders guarding and protecting the ordinances. 

Chapter Ten- Ordinances are our passage to eternal life with our Heavenly Father. Covenants show us the path to walk and endow us with blessings along the way. And because the promises are essential and guaranteed by God, they need to be performed with proper authority or they are not efficacious. It is serious business to administer saving ordinances that bind people to covenants. For this purpose, Jesus Christ, through God the Father, has authorized men on earth to have the power and authority, or priesthood, to bring humankind the ordinances. This happens within the safety of Christ’s Church, and priesthood is administered in a way that protects conferral and use. The protection that God has prescribed is done by Melchizedek Priesthood key holders.

Chapter Eleven- In God the Father’s perfect divvying up or allocation of assignments, it is righteous men on this earth who have been given the direct responsibilities of the Melchizedek Priesthood. By premortal appointment (26), it is their obligation to make available to all of mankind the blessings of ordinances and covenants, and to administer the Church which houses them. A righteous, humble, consecrated priesthood holder is promised that he will have the opportunity to bring the ordinances of salvation to mankind, in the similitude of Moses and Aaron. (48) This is his scriptural duty. This service is the reason for his ordination. This delegated power and authority on the earth today blesses all of mankind. 

Chapter Twelve- The work of the Church of Jesus Christ is so great and all members have a art in it. To share the gospel with the world, offer saving ordinances, and minister to others spiritually and temporally is a huge task that is accomplished by a mighty battalion of workers with willing hands. Men and women serve in callings with priesthood power and authority under the direction of Melchizedek Priesthood key holders. They are effective in those callings by accessing God the Father’s capacity through the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Chapter Thirteen- Even in a wicked world, there are righteous men and women of the Church of Jesus Christ in nearly every corner of the globe! Men and women who have made covenants and feel bound to nourish, minister, lift, and love. It is so wonderful to have the Relief Society and priesthood quorums serving under the direction of Melchizedek Priesthood keys in order to coordinate this work. It is also generous and beautiful that men and women can be inspired and magnified in the work by God the Father through the Holy Ghost.