Covered in His Glory: Offering Our Whole Souls to God

What does God truly want from us?

Does He primarily want our time? Our obedience? Our prayers? Our possessions? Our talents?

All these things matter, but the scriptures point toward something deeper. God does not merely ask us to give Him selected pieces of our lives. He invites us to give Him our whole souls.

Amaleki concludes his record with this invitation:

“Come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him” (Omni 1:26).

This invitation reveals a profound relationship between consecration, grace, sanctification, and the glory of God. As we surrender our whole soul—our spirit, body, heart, mind, desires, and will—to Jesus Christ, His grace changes us. Through that grace we are forgiven, strengthened, purified, sanctified, and eventually prepared to enter God’s presence.

This is what happened to Moses. It happened to the brother of Jared. It happened to Stephen. It happened to Joseph Smith. Each was enabled by divine power to behold heavenly glory.

Their experiences point toward the ultimate promise of the gospel: through Jesus Christ, ordinary fallen people can be prepared to enter the presence of God and see His face.

What Is the Whole Soul?

Modern revelation gives a remarkably concrete definition:

“The spirit and the body are the soul of man” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:15).

Our soul is not only an invisible spirit temporarily trapped inside a disposable body. The complete soul is the spirit and body united. God’s plan is not merely to save our spirits from our bodies. Through Christ, He redeems and resurrects the whole person.

To offer God our whole soul therefore means offering Him everything:

• Our thoughts and desires
• Our appetites and physical conduct
• Our time, energy, and abilities
• Our relationships and possessions
• Our fears, wounds, weaknesses, and sins
• Our ambitions, plans, and personal will
• Our spirit and our body

Paul expressed the same principle when he pleaded with the Saints to present their bodies as “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God” (Romans 12:1). He also taught that we should glorify God in both our body and our spirit because both belong to Him (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

Consecration is not the destruction of our identity. God does not ask us to stop being individuals. He asks us to place our entire identity into His hands so He can redeem, purify, enlarge, and glorify it.

We do not lose our true selves in Christ. We finally discover what our true selves were created to become.

What Is the Glory of God?

In scripture, the word glory carries several interconnected meanings.

It can describe God’s brilliant light and visible presence. It can mean majesty, power, holiness, honor, and praise. It can also describe a resurrected condition of eternal life—a kingdom and degree of glory.

Modern revelation brings these meanings together:

“The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:36).

God’s glory is not merely bright light surrounding Him. That radiance is the outward manifestation of what He is inwardly: a Being filled with perfect truth, intelligence, holiness, love, justice, mercy, power, and life.

His glory is perfect truth completely understood, perfectly loved, and perfectly embodied.

That is why God’s glory cannot be separated from His character. King Benjamin connected the glory of God with His goodness, wisdom, patience, long-suffering, love, justice, truth, and atoning mercy (Mosiah 4:6, 11–12).

God’s glory is everything He knows, everything He is, and everything He righteously has power to do.

Most beautifully, God uses His glory to give life to others:

“This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).

God’s glory is not selfish. It creates, enlightens, liberates, redeems, sanctifies, resurrects, and exalts.

We Cannot Endure God’s Presence on Our Own

When Moses was caught up into an exceedingly high mountain, “the glory of God was upon Moses,” allowing him to endure God’s presence (Moses 1:1–2).

This detail is essential.

Moses did not behold God through ordinary mortal ability. God placed His glory upon Moses, temporarily transforming or transfiguring him so he could survive the encounter.

After God’s presence withdrew, Moses fell to the earth and remained without natural strength for many hours. He then declared:

“Mine own eyes have beheld God; but not my natural, but my spiritual eyes” (Moses 1:11).

The experience teaches a foundational truth: fallen humanity cannot casually walk into the fulness of God’s glory. We must be changed.

But we cannot accomplish that transformation by ourselves.

No amount of determination, discipline, intellectual knowledge, or outward religious performance can independently make a fallen person capable of enduring God’s presence. That transformation comes through the grace of Jesus Christ.

Grace Is More Than Being Excused

We sometimes speak about grace primarily as God overlooking our failures. Christ’s grace certainly provides forgiveness, but it does far more.

Grace is the divine help and power flowing from Jesus Christ through His Atonement. It not only pardons us; it changes us. It gives us strength beyond our natural capacity. It heals what sin and mortality have damaged. It purifies our desires and gradually makes us holy.

Moroni described the process:

“Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him.”

He then connects loving God with all our “might, mind and strength” to Christ’s grace becoming sufficient for us. Through that grace, we are perfected in Christ and sanctified through His blood (Moroni 10:32–33).

Notice the relationship:

1. Christ invites us to come.
2. We respond by offering our whole selves.
3. His grace becomes operative within that covenant relationship.
4. Grace forgives, strengthens, purifies, and sanctifies us.
5. We gradually become capable of receiving greater light and glory.

Our offering does not purchase grace. We do not earn Christ’s blood by being sufficiently committed. Grace is already present, inviting and enabling us to come.

Even our ability to surrender is supported by grace.

But Christ does not use grace to force transformation upon us. We must willingly place our hearts in His hands. Grace is a gift, but a gift must be received.

Grace Covers Us by Cleansing Us

To be covered by Christ’s grace does not mean that God simply hides our unchanged corruption beneath a legal declaration.

Christ covers us by cleansing us.

The Book of Mormon repeatedly uses the image of garments being washed white through the blood of the Lamb. At judgment, the righteous will be clothed with purity and with “the robe of righteousness” (2 Nephi 9:14).

Christ does not merely stand between us and God so the Father cannot see who we truly are. Christ transforms who we truly are.

His grace reaches into our hearts. It changes what we love. It teaches us to desire goodness and reject sin. It reconciles us to God until we can stand before Him with confidence, not because we have never fallen, but because Christ has washed, healed, and remade us.

The people of Helaman experienced this inward sanctification as they yielded their hearts to God:

“Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts” (Helaman 3:35).

They did not sanctify themselves independently. Their fasting, prayer, humility, and faith represented the offering of their souls. The sanctification itself came because they yielded their hearts to God.

The Brother of Jared Was Brought Back into God’s Presence

The brother of Jared provides one of scripture’s clearest examples of faith piercing the veil.

Because of his exceeding faith, the Lord could no longer remain hidden from him. Christ showed Himself and declared:

“Because thou knowest these things ye are redeemed from the fall; therefore ye are brought back into my presence” (Ether 3:13).

This is the entire plan of redemption summarized in one statement.

The Fall removed humanity from God’s presence. The Atonement of Jesus Christ brings us back.

The brother of Jared was not brought into Christ’s presence because he had become impressive enough to demand an audience. He came with faith, humility, repentance, and complete reliance upon the Lord. Christ’s redemptive power opened what mortal weakness could never open.

Faith did not replace grace. His faith allowed him to receive grace.

Joseph Smith Was Enveloped in Divine Light

Joseph Smith’s First Vision follows a similar pattern.

As a fourteen-year-old boy, Joseph entered the grove with a sincere desire to know God’s will. He knelt, offered the desires of his heart, and called upon God.

He was first attacked by darkness. Then, as he exerted all his power to call upon God for deliverance, he saw a pillar of light descending above him. He wrote:

“When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description” (Joseph Smith—History 1:16–17).

Joseph did not climb into heaven through his own strength. Heaven descended to him.

He was delivered from darkness, surrounded by light, and enabled to stand in the presence of the Father and the Son. Like Moses, he was enveloped in divine glory so he could endure a heavenly manifestation.

The same pattern appears again:

• A person turns wholly toward God.
• Mortal weakness is exposed.
• Divine grace intervenes.
• Darkness is overcome.
• God’s light rests upon the person.
• The veil is opened according to God’s wisdom.

God Promises That the Pure in Heart Will See Him

The experiences of Moses, the brother of Jared, Stephen, and Joseph Smith were extraordinary, but the underlying promise is extended to all of God’s faithful children.

Jesus taught:

“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

The Lord gave a similar promise in modern revelation:

“Every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:1).

This should not be turned into a formula demanding a dramatic vision on our timetable. Sacred manifestations occur according to God’s wisdom, purposes, and will. For many faithful disciples, the literal fulfilment may come after this mortal life.

Nevertheless, the promise is real.

God’s ultimate purpose is not to remain eternally hidden from His children. He wants to bring us home. He wants us to enter His rest, which is “the fulness of his glory” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:24).

The covenant path is therefore a journey into God’s presence.

An Eye Single to the Glory of God

The Lord tells us how to begin:

“Sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God, and the days will come that you shall see him” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:68).

A mind single to God is not divided between discipleship and the desire for worldly glory. It does not say, “Lord, I will give You everything except this habit, this ambition, this resentment, this relationship, this appetite, or this hidden part of my life.”

An eye single to God says:

“Father, everything I am belongs to You. Show me what needs to change. Through Christ, give me the power to change it.”

That does not mean we instantly become perfect. Offering our whole souls is both a decisive covenant and a lifelong practice. Whenever we discover another part of ourselves that remains resistant to God, we place that part upon the altar too.

We give Him our sins through repentance.

We give Him our weakness through humility.

We give Him our bodies through purity and service.

We give Him our minds through truth and learning.

We give Him our hearts through love.

We give Him our wills through obedience and covenant.

And He gives us something infinitely greater in return: the grace of Jesus Christ.

From Grace to Grace and Glory to Glory

Jesus Christ Himself showed the pattern of eternal progression. During His mortal experience, He “received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace” until He received a fulness of the Father’s glory (Doctrine and Covenants 93:12–16).

The revelation then promises that faithful disciples may also receive “grace for grace” and eventually receive of the Father’s fulness (Doctrine and Covenants 93:19–20).

Paul described this transformation as being changed into Christ’s image “from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

This is what grace is accomplishing within us.

Grace leads us from darkness into light, from falsehood into truth, from selfishness into consecration, from corruption into holiness, from fear into confidence before God, and ultimately from mortality into immortal glory.

We are not merely trying to get into heaven while remaining exactly as we are. Through Christ, we are learning to become heavenly.

The Invitation

God does not ask for your whole soul because He wants to diminish you. He asks for it because only He can make your soul whole.

If we hold parts of ourselves back, those parts remain outside His transforming influence. But when we bring our entire soul to Christ—including the parts of which we are ashamed—His grace begins its redemptive work.

We offer Him weakness; He gives strength.

We offer Him sin; He gives forgiveness.

We offer Him brokenness; He gives healing.

We offer Him confusion; He gives light and truth.

We offer Him our mortal bodies; He promises resurrection.

We offer Him our whole souls; He prepares those souls to receive His glory.

One day, because of Jesus Christ, the faithful will no longer need to experience God through a veil. They will stand in His presence, behold His face, receive a fulness of joy, and know Him as they are known.

That is where the invitation of Omni ultimately leads:

Come unto Christ.

Partake of His redemption.

Offer your whole soul to Him.

Receive His grace.

Be sanctified through His blood.

Become filled with His light.

And through Jesus Christ, be prepared to enter the presence of God and behold His glory.

Questions for Reflection

• Is there any part of my life I am still withholding from God?
• Do I think of grace merely as forgiveness, or also as Christ’s power to transform me?
• What desire, fear, habit, or ambition do I need to place before the Lord?
• Is my eye becoming more single to God’s glory or to the approval of the world?
• What would offering my whole soul to Christ look like today?

A Personal Invitation

Find a quiet place and speak honestly with Heavenly Father. Ask Him to show you what part of your soul you have not yet fully placed in His hands.

Then offer it to Him.

Do not wait until you feel worthy of grace. Grace is what will help make you worthy to stand in God’s presence. Come as you are—but come willing to be changed.

Through the grace of Jesus Christ, the veil between who you are now and who God knows you can become can gradually be removed.

And one day, clothed in Christ’s righteousness and filled with His glory, you may enter the presence of your Father and see His face.