On the outside of the Salt Lake Temple is a carving of two people shaking hands, symbolizing the temple as a place where we make sacred covenants with God. But what are those holy promises, and what do they have to do with becoming endowed with spiritual power in our everyday lives?

In The Holy Covenants, religion professor Anthony Sweat helps us better understand the major covenants of the temple endowment as a pattern of divine living. He explains with clarity and perspective how the temple presentation, clothing, garment ordinances, and covenants invite us to become part of a holy order, patterned after the Son of God. As we understand and live our holy temple covenants, we can gain spiritual capacity, become endowed with heavenly power, and progress toward our divine potential as "priests and kings [and queens and priestesses], who have received of his fulness" (D&C 76:56).