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CREATING A SANCTUARY
The Sanctuary is a room set apart within your home and consecrated to God. It is designed and intended specifically for the purpose of experiencing the divine and creating sacred moments.
Your Sanctuary should be a place of holiness, a sacred place. If you do not believe your Sanctuary is sacred, and treat it accordingly, then your Heavenly Parents will not believe it is sacred.
It is a place where all the elements of faith, prayer, meditation, solitude and fellowship are forged together to empower your spiritual identity, purpose, and priesthood. It is in the Sanctuary where the peace of God is experienced, and the mind of God is revealed.
The sanctuary of the home is more important to the spiritual life of the family than any church building or temple.
~Basic Beliefs #19
Your Sanctuary should be a protected place. Those who scorn, ridicule, or hold in contempt the teachings of the Song of God should not be allowed to enter your Sanctuary. Allow no one to disrespect your Sanctuary.
This most special room should have two furnishings: an altar and a mercy seat.
The altar symbolizes the place of covenants: where you and God meet upon your sacred word of honor. The altar is also where you keep a journal of your experiences with God (Wisdom 29:28). A small table, or drawer chest can be utilized as an altar.
The mercy seat is not a chair, but an elevated podium-like structure from which the will and grace of the divine is revealed. It should be situated in a corner of, or on, the room’s east wall. The mercy seat may take some architectural ingenuity, but don’t let it discourage or delay your progress in creating your Sanctuary.
Everyone has the right to have a Sanctuary, regardless of their religious affiliation (or non-affiliation). If you don’t have a room, do your best with what you have. Set apart and establish a sacred space that is elegant, meaningful, and beautiful.
You do not need permission to use the priesthood that you were born with. Connect with your Heavenly Parents and your higher Self. Create sacred moments, and reflect the peace and love of God into the world.
Prescriptions for the Sanctuary:
• Should be the most well-appointed and beautiful room in the home
• Should never be in a basement
• Should have a special door that designates the Sanctuary from other rooms
• Should have an altar
• Should have a mercy seat established on, or in a corner of, the east wall
The Sanctuary falls under the purview of the Matriarchy, and thus, should be established and maintained by the mother or wife of the household when the situation allows (1st Endowment 10:49).
Notes/References
Why, therefore, have you gone seeking beyond yourselves, ever hoping that perchance you might find God? Did you not know that you, even every one of you, whether male or female, are a part of God and that God is a part of you?
24 Thus in the Song of God shall you always find me, and in another also; for in the Sanctuary of your home shall I come and there abide, if it so be that the Sanctuary be made most holy. For the holiest place in all the world is the Sanctuary of the home, and this do you alone create.
25 For in your hand is found a power: to create on earth a bit of Heaven where God might be revealed, a place within your very home where the holy and sacred meet, to bind on earth the things of God through the living of your life.
26 Build therefore a Sanctuary in your home, to be for you and all your house a Holy of Holies, having in itself both the altar and mercy seat, and let this prove the sacred place where you and God confer through the moving of the Spirit.
27 For all that is holy and come from God is first made manifest in the Sanctuary of the home, and from there shall the Spirit of God move into the life of the family, which Spirit is carried into the Tabernacle of God’s Peace to bless the community in which you live.
28 Let then the Sanctuary of your home be that very fount from which all good things do flow forth into the world; flowing from the life you live to touch and empower both the Tabernacle and Temple together, creating within the garden places, the hush of sacred things filled with joy and hope and peace.
Shall the Lord cast away the righteous for the wicked’s sake? Therefore I will establish in the homes of the faithful a sanctuary which shall not be forsaken. For I will place therein both altar and mercy seat, that as many as will might receive both blessing and instruction from my hand.
Seek daily to enrich your home both within and without, that in such a domain as you create, even Heaven itself might be found and fully imitated; to gather in the sanctuary even your whole family where they might learn of God, to worship both the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Mother.
Let then your sanctuaries be richly adorned and filled with light and music, for in your own sanctuary shall God come forth to bless and instruct, teaching through the whisperings of your soul the way you ought to go, to walk in peace and rich fulfillment throughout the sum of all your days.
Thus, my son, did I find it expedient that the woman should establish in the midst of her home a sanctuary wherein a portion of my spirit might dwell upon the earth; that there might flow outward unto all who dwell therein, the very heart and mind of God the Father and the Mother.
4 Consider then that sacred power which lies most deep within you, a power which is born of God, a power wrapped in priesthood; for this priesthood was given you at the moment of your birth, waiting quietly deep within, eager that you should use it.
5 What then is this priesthood which waits to be revealed? What is the power within your soul that would make you one with God? How must you live, how must you speak, how must you rightly act, to awaken within you the Light of God and fill the world with hope?
6 For the priesthood of God can no man give, neither is it appointed that any church should guard it or bind it with restrictions; for the priesthood which comes from God is found in you already and lies most deep within, a hidden treasure within the soul which waits upon your faith.
7 This then is the power of priesthood that you should be enabled to create some sacred moment for the sake of those you love, which sacred moment proves the power which draws forth the presence of God the Mother and the Father.
8 For the power of priesthood does not command but loves instead, neither does it seek to judge or punish, but to heal and quick restore; proving itself not as something exclusive but rather as that which quick includes even all who would embrace the things which come from God.
9 Think not therefore that the priesthood of God is bound by law, neither can any church constrain it, to keep it in their power; for that which has its birth in God is yours by right of birth, becoming itself the tie which binds you closely unto God, having as its only mandate the creation of sacred moments.
10 For the world needs most that sacred moment where God is deeply felt, to be themselves inspired by goodness, to be themselves uplifted and to feel themselves as blest, a sacred moment where God draws near to touch the heart and mind.
11 Such then is made the priesthood which comes from God above, not come from men nor come from church as others quick would tell you, but comes instead from deep within where the heart and soul do meet, lying there within yourself for you to quick take hold and draw to you the heart of God through the making of sacred moments.
12 If then you would awaken the priesthood of your soul then take you now this Song of God and learn it deeply well, committing to your memory the words of life and joy, becoming yourself as one made holy by seizing hold of God.
Altar and Mercy Seat