“How Do Our Covenants Help Us Draw upon God’s Power?,” Liahona, Mar. 2025.
Covenant Women
How Do Our Covenants Help Us Draw upon God’s Power?
As covenant women, God’s power transforms us, strengthens us, and gives us confidence.
Amy Johnson (with her daughters, Dottie and Goldie) finds that keeping her covenants blesses her with peace.
Photograph by Connor Johnson
Each of us has the opportunity to make sacred covenants with the very God of heaven. We make these covenants as we participate in priesthood ordinances. As we keep these covenants, He blesses us with His power.
Recall with me President Russell M. Nelson’s prophetic direction concerning how to access power from God: “Every man and every woman who participates in priesthood ordinances and who makes and keeps covenants with God has direct access to the power of God.” This direct access to the power of God is a gift He generously shares with His children.
What does this power, which flows from keeping the covenants we make through priesthood ordinances, look like in your day-to-day life? How does a covenant woman draw upon this divine power?
I hope a personal example will help you as you do the spiritually invigorating work to learn for yourself what it means to be endowed with God’s power.
One day I received a text message from my daughter-in-law Amy: “Say a prayer for Dottie.”
My granddaughter Dottie hadn’t slept the night before. Amy had been up all night with her and said that Dottie was feverish. Amy gave her some medicine, but Dottie was still hot and restless. And my son Connor was traveling for work and not scheduled to be home for another two days.
When morning finally arrived, Amy found Dottie’s lips blue. Her hands were likewise blue and cold to the touch. Amy immediately had the impression, “Get Dottie to the pediatrician.” She heeded that prompting, called the pediatrician’s office, and was assured they would get Dottie right in.
Fortunately, the pediatrician’s office is across the street from my mom’s house. Amy felt impressed to drive by my mom’s house. My mother was working in her yard and happy to take Dottie’s four-year-old sister, Goldie, while Amy took Dottie to the pediatrician. It was an answer to Amy’s concern about needing to keep track of Goldie and attend to Dottie at the same time.
The pediatrician found that Dottie had pneumonia, likely from aspirating some bath water a few days earlier. Dottie was treated with antibiotics and spent the rest of the day in her mother’s arms, elevated to open her airways and ease her breathing.
I offered to pick up some dinner on my way home. And Amy let me, for which I was grateful. I wondered how Amy had managed after a sleepless night, the stress of having a sick toddler, and the need to attend to Goldie.
I walked in their home with the sack of take-out food and found Amy and the girls peaceful. There was a spring in Amy’s step and light in her countenance. She was calm, even facing another night alone with sick Dottie. She wasn’t afraid. She was confident. It was a peace that defied understanding. I just wanted to sit in the moment and soak it in.
Amy strives to keep her covenants with God and is blessed by His strengthening power. The Spirit had prompted her to take the actions she did to care for Dottie. And the Lord’s power enhanced her capacity to address her family’s needs in patience and love and with a calm reassurance that all would be well.
This is the blessing of God’s power, available to us through sacred covenants and because of the Savior’s atoning sacrifice. This power transforms us, strengthens us, calms us, gives us confidence, brings us peace, and increases our capacity to fulfill our divinely appointed responsibilities as women.