29. Living a Consecrated Life Purifying Steps on the Path of Discipleship with Jessica Lewis
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[00:00:00] What different parts of our lives are we refusing to give up, refusing to go through the filter of consecration in our own lives so that we can come out clean at the end? It's not a scary thing to give up these bits and pieces of ourselves, but it's a purifying thing
Welcome to Grow in the Light. I am here with Jessica Lewis, and she is a mentor to me of knowing how beautiful principles of civil engineering apply to our lives as we grow and learn that there are beautiful metaphors in life, in every aspect of our lives, that we can tie in to bless people's lives and to learn and grow ourselves.
So we're gonna have a great discussion. I'm so excited. Jessica, can you tell us about yourself? Sure. My name's Jessica Lewis. I studied civil engineering at Brigham Young University and then worked as a structural engineer for a while. I live in Dayton, Ohio with my husband, Ben, and my t- three children now.
I was about to say two. Nathaniel, Liam, and Gwen. Um, this talk that I wrote that we're talking about is mostly Related to my work as a civil engineer, and specifically the projects that I did at Brigham Young University. I worked with a group called Global Engineering Outreach, which is a program BYU puts on to implement civil engineering products in different countries, things that can improve the quality of life of those living abroad with the materials and resources that they have available in their everyday lives.
I love that. Keeping it small and simple, and yet they can use them to make their lives better. So tell us about the project that you did in Peru. I worked on a project to create sand filtration water filters. We worked with a group of people living on the Uros Islands. If you haven't heard of them before, the Uros Islands are on Lake Titicaca, which is in the Puno region of Peru, near the border with Bolivia.
It's the world's highest navigable lake, sitting at 12,500 feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains. The Uros Islands are really cool and unique. They're manmade structures constructed entirely from layers of buoyant totora reeds stacked four ma- four meters deep. These springy islands require constant maintenance 'cause you have to renew the reeds every 15 to 30 days as the bottom layer rots away.
Oh my goodness. But constant- Isn't that fascinating? You're building the island that you're living on. It's a labor of love. Someone is always working on the island. They make their boats out of these reeds. They make their homes out of these reeds. It's just a very unique lifestyle in this day and age.
That's amazing. So what did you do [00:04:00] there? Yeah. So one of the struggles that they have living on these islands in the middle of the lake is finding sanitary water to use, because you're using the bathroom on one side of your island and getting your drinking water from the other side of the island. And so the contamination can spread pretty easy.
We were working with a family, um, Nelson Lujana and his wife Dora. They had a son named Emerson, and Emerson, ever since he was born, just consistently got very, very ill. Um- They were constantly taking him to the hospital to seek medical treatment 'cause he was just sick all of the time. And one of the major concerns was the water that he was drinking.
So when BYU originally went down as part of this global engineering outreach program, they implemented the first edition of the water filters across the island, and suddenly Emerson wasn't getting sick anymore. Um, so Nelson and his wife Dora have a deep love of these water filters and a testimony of the ways that they can heal you and make you better.
Oh, 'cause it healed their baby. So teach us about the filters. I love this part, about the different layers of what can make the dirty contaminated water be healthy and pure for these people. So when you make these filters, you are essentially using a five gallon Lowe's bucket. And then you drill a hole in the side, and so a little spigot for the water to come out, and then you pour the water in the top.
So as the water goes through this filter you've created, it goes through different layers of sand and gravel. And as the water travels through, the particulates are slowly obs- caught up in between the sand particles. So if you can imagine, it goes in with 100 particles, it gets down to 90 as it travels, and then 80, and then 70 as it- Each layer of those small and simple particles trap different parts of the particulate.
Exactly. And then you just get a slow drip of water coming out the end that accumulates over time. Okay, and so tell me more because it's not just the sand layer. This is the part that I love. So as you put the water through the filter, it slowly catches these particulates, but it also catches different bacteria that's traveling through.
So over a time period of about two weeks as you're putting the water through, something forms across the top. We call it a bio layer. It can also be called a schmoosh decka. I love that word. Schmoosh decka. Um, and it's a layer of bacteria along the sand on the top of the filter, and as you put water in, the good bacteria that lives In this bio layer will eat the harmful bacteria before it starts going through the different sand layers.
I love that. Okay, so now we want to take it from this concrete level of these are actual physical things that we can touch with the water and the sand and this bio layer. That's concrete, and we wanna take it to the subtle level of our understanding and experience. And that is the, the metaphor here of us living consecrated lives, our journey of discipleship.
So what can you tell me about how there's a parallel between the water filtration process and consecration in our lives? The way it came into my head, um, I was attending the temple one day, and pondering the idea of consecration. When the Lord asks you to [00:08:00] give all that you are, that can feel so intimidating because you like yourself most of the time and you don't really want to give up all of the things that you love.
But as I was pondering consecration, I was thinking of all of the times that it's important to give things up, and that made me think of these water filters that this is one of those instances where it's necessary to let go of different pieces in order to come out clean at the end. And it, it was so symbolical in my mind that what different parts of our lives are we refusing to give up, and we're refusing to go through the filter of consecration in our own lives so that we can come out clean at the end?
That it's not a scary thing to give up these bits and pieces of ourselves, but it's a purifying thing. I love that. There's a beautiful quote that you shared that's from Elder Maxwell that just illustrates so well what you just said. This is from Elder Neal A. Maxwell, "So many of us are kept from eventual consecration because we mistakenly think that somehow by letting our will be swallowed up in the will of God, we lose our individuality.
What are we really worried about, of course, is not giving up self, but selfish things like our roles, our time, our preeminence, and our possessions. No wonder we're instructed by the Savior to lose ourselves. He is only asking us to lose the old self in order to find the new self. It's not a question of one's losing identity, but of finding his true identity.
Ironically, so many people already lose themselves anyway in their consuming hobbies and preoccupations, but with far, far lesser things." I love Neal A. Maxwell. I get so much resonance from everything he says. Now that we know we want to consecrate ourselves and find this, this purified, cleaner, holier tr- identity How do we do that?
In the same way that the water is filtered or cleaned or purified, consecrated, made holy- Mm-hmm ... by these filtration systems, how are we purified by a similar process, do you think? I think it's important to remember that it is a slow process, that water that you put into this five-gallon bucket takes hours to go through.
It's a, a small distance, but it takes a long time for it to slowly filter through all of these sand particles, and that's okay for it to be the same with our path of consecration. Neal A. Maxwell frequently calls it the path of discipleship, and I love that phrase, that each step we take is a footprint along the path of discipleship, that even the small and simple changes that we're making in our lives can bring us closer to our Savior and help us along the path of consecration.
So it's easy to think that we need to change drastic things in our lives, but it can be as simple as changing one small habit. We can try to improve from the good things to the better things, and the better things to the best things in our lives. I love that. So that's how the sand is these small and simple things that helps purify it.
And I also want to make the connection with the biofilm that you talked about, and this is the part that I just love, because I am a Zionist at heart, and when I read this about the biofilm, I thought, "That's the living layer. [00:12:00] That's just like the people in our lives, that we are there for each other. We are this living defense that helps each other."
It's these relationships that we have that can purify so much and protect us and help us guard ourselves and each other against that. I love that President Oaks said in his BYU devotional at the beginning of 2026 that one of the ways we grow closer in our discipleship with Christ is by turning to other people and asking for help.
Have you felt that layer of biofilm, so to speak, in your own consecrated path of discipleship? I definitely have. There are so many angels placed in our path to help guide us and give us inspiration and strength It's a blessing to each of us to have people to support us. Our, our schmutz DECA. All right, so we want to go next to how do we use this filter of consecration?
We are so busy in our lives with kids and with jobs and with other things, so should every waking moment be committed to prayer and fasting- ... in order for us to live a consecrated life? I feel like that would be very difficult to achieve. So what are some of the misconceptions we sometimes have about consecration?
Um, I feel like the common misconception is that somehow we need to spend all of our time thinking about church, thinking about the temple, and neglect the small, simple tasks we have to do every day. As a stay-at-home mom, so much of my life feels repetitive, doing dishes and- Yeah ... laundry and feeding endlessly hungry small people.
Um, but those are important tasks, and without them, life would come to a screeching halt. There's a great quote from your talk that I just loved that I want to read: "A consecrated life is full of laundry folding and going to work and school and doing taxes. After all, isn't there a laundry room in the temple?"
And I just loved that reflection, that ev- even in the Lord's house, there are mundane tasks that need to be done again and again, and that's part of what living in consecration can mean. So what is the difference, Jessica, between an ordinary life and a consecrated life? To me, the difference isn't so much in the things we do, but in the why we do them.
Mm. Tell me more. In living a consecrated life, we don't think so much about pursuing our own personal glory or our own personal happiness in the moment, but we focus on doing the will of the Lord. We think about when we're scheduling our day, "Am I worried about pleasing myself? Am I worried about pleasing others?
Or am I worried about pleasing God?" And in making that distinction as we're planning and going through our day, we can make those small and simple subtle changes that will bring us closer to our Savior and help us along the path of discipleship. And I love that thought because it doesn't mean that we can only focus on pleasing God at the expense of the other two.
But I think as we put the first commandment first and put God's will there, it, it puts us in alignment within our souls, and we can then do those things that are most helpful and most loving to love and serve others and to strengthen and nourish ourselves because we're aligned, we're oriented, we're resourced in a divine way that makes everything fit in better, if you will.
When we understand that God's whole purpose is bringing us happiness and joy and helping us find eternal life, then [00:16:00] when we're in alignment with Him we're gonna get those other things. We're going to find happiness in our own lives, and we're gonna bring happiness and joy into the lives of those around us.
We don't just consecrate to the Lord our strengths and all of the good parts of us. We also consecrate to the Lord our humanness and our weakness, don't you think? There- Are times when our failures sometimes are blessings in the lives of others and not even failures, but things we don't feel necessarily are productive.
I remember a time on my mission when we had an investigator we contacted and then we could just never find them again. They were just never home. But anytime we were in the area, we'd drop by and leave a pass-along card with a note on their door. And then when we finally contacted them again four or five months later, they said that every single time that they stopped and asked the Lord what the next step should be in their life and what they should be doing, one of our pass-along cards showed up the next day.
So sometimes you aren't getting the immediate release of knowing that something you're doing is blessing someone's life. But by just trying, you are being a blessing in someone's life. Consecration is not outcome-based and it's not time-based like we think it should be. It's in the Lord's time and in the Lord's way that he's building something great.
I think of Doctrine and Covenants 64, 32, and 33 that says, All things must come to pass in their time, wherefore be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work, and out of small things proceedeth that which is great. So that goes back to so many of the principles we talked about, that it's the small things, it's those small particulates, those small acts that are purifying us, and that the big picture of consecration, of building Zion, of being like our heavenly parents, is going to come to pass in its time.
And we can't see that, we can't create that, but we can just keep trusting it little by little. It's easy to want our first attempt at everything to be perfection, but often our attempts are more about perfecting us than perfecting the journey. I think it's important to remember as we strive to make these small changes, that the power behind these changes is the atonement of our Savior.
That we can look for these small changes, but He is really the impetus and the desire powering us through these changes as we repent and we have faith in Him, and we strive to follow our commitments and our covenants with Him. That the more we rely on Him, the more His atonement can power these changes in our lives.
I love that. Here's another quote from Elder Maxwell, who you love. "Consecration is thus both a principle and a process. It's not tied to a single moment. Instead, it is freely given, drop by drop, until the cup of consecration brims and finally runs over." And I love what you're saying about it being the power of Christ.
Christ, who is the living water, right, is that drop by drop that's gonna run over into our lives to feed us, to feed others, to feed our family. So Jessica, why do we sometimes resist consecration? Because it sounds scary I think it's easy to think of consecration and immediately think of the early pioneers when you had to sign over your house, and your cow [00:20:00] And your barn.
Um, but even that was something that so many people were joyfully able to do at the time. Consecration can seem scary. It can seem like you're giving up so much of yourself to the Lord. In reality, that is our whole goal and purpose, is to turn ourselves over to the Lord. He can ask us to do things like a new calling, but in reality, that calling is just steps along the pathway of discipleship.
It's him giving us a little bit of the roadmap that we need to get to where we want to be. I love that. As we give up little parts of ourself, he illuminates the path. There's a great quote of yours that I want to share: "Consecration was never about giving things up, but about trading our tattered life for something celestial.
If we ask, God will show us the tiny changes we need to make. He will provide the filter for our souls, one particulate at a time. He will make weak things strong unto us. He will guide our vision to match his own." Are there any examples, Jessica, that you can think of from your life of times when he guided your vision to match his?
One of the, um, times of my life that I felt most aligned with my Savior was when I had the means and opportunity to attend the temple multiple times a week for a long time. And it just changes the way you see the world around you when your mind is constantly brought to the Savior. I remember sitting in a hydraulics lab and creating a gospel connection, and, like, it was a weird connection, but it brought me so much meaning at the time, um, that of course the way the water flows in this way can be connected to the way the Savior interacts with me.
But you don't see those connections unless you immerse yourself in the Savior and the way that he sees the world. And while we can't all attend the temple multiple times a week, we can strive to do that as we study our scriptures and pray and do the small and simple things to align ourselves with him.
And as we seek it, as we ask, as we are looking for those connections between our concrete worlds and the subtle way, symbolic way that the Lord wants us to see and understand and experience his truth, our capacity to do that increases. And it's a wonderful example to me that you took that opportunity while you had it.
I'm guessing that that was before you had children. It was. So I think it totally is representative of we have different times and seasons of our lives, and we can't expect ourselves to do all those things in every season. During that season, consecration meant something different. You consecrated time to go be in the temple, and in this season of your life, you are consecrating your time and your effort and your sleep-
to those three little ones that are your stewardship for right now. So what would you say to other individuals who are struggling to find what consecration means for them in a new or different season of their life? I'd say that as you look at the pathway of discipleship, don't try to run a marathon.
Don't try to just sprint down it, but to just find the next footstep, the [00:24:00] next thing you can do to bring yourself closer to our Savior. Um, there are so many times we all come short of the glory of God, but we can strive to become just a little bit more like our Savior as we make these small tweaks, that God's grace flows to all those who love Him and strive to follow His commandments.
Um, Neal A. Maxwell often speaks of those who are so valiantly trying to close the gap between them and the Savior that it's not so much what we've done, but what we've left undone that is amiss. That if the valiant could only touch others deeply instead of just being remembered pleasantly, that it would make such a difference in the way we interact with each other and the way we support each other in coming closer to our Savior.
Ooh, that is powerful. So what does it mean to touch each other deeply instead of just being remembered pleasantly? I think- It's so easy to go to the store or the doctor's office and to have a pleasant conversation with the receptionist or the person checking you out, and that's lovely. It's so good to smile at people and to make them feel happy and joyful.
But what more can we do for those closest in our lives to bring in the deep connections, to really help them to find their own pathway of discipleship, to be a blessing in their lives? And to build Zion together. We are striving to build Zion, to prepare the Earth for the second coming of our Savior, and in order to do that, we have to do things differently than we've been doing them.
We have to embrace this higher law that our leaders are guiding us to do, let go of the familiar traditions, and teach our brains a higher and holier way. And sometimes that is the deeper work that we're doing together, being able to not just say the thing that is going to avoid conflict, but to sit there together and say, "You know what?
That didn't work." How can we look at it together and assess what didn't work and how we can do it in a more Christ-like way, or with an eye more single to the glory of God so that we can refine out those particulates in ourselves and in our relationships that may be making our relationships sick? Just because it's a familiar pattern doesn't mean it's healthy.
I want to share this verse that I love in Ephesians 4:15 through 16 that I think is relevant here. "We will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of His body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts to grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love."
And I think about your water filter, that for that water to become healthy and growing and full of love, it needs those unpure parts filtered out, and that as we speak the truth in love, not trying to just please each other or avoid conflict. Sometimes the truth is a little bit difficult. Sometimes it challenges the ego.
But as we speak the truth in love, we are purifying the parts out that are making our relationships or making our Zion community not be as powerful as it [00:28:00] can be. I love that. And that's the beautiful part of consecration, is that it's line upon line being able to do repeated activity after repeated activity.
If a conversation doesn't go well with my son, guess what? I, as a mom, am going to get to have that conversation again and practice that. Have you felt that in your life where an iterative process allows you to grow in a relationship? Isn't it a blessing that we have that opportunity to try again? If the first time doesn't work out so well, you get another opportunity to do it.
Yeah. I am, I'm grateful for those opportunities in life. And it takes humility and meekness, doesn't it? To, to let go of those things, no matter how attached we were to them, how familiar they may be, to let go of those particulates that aren't a part of the pureness of the Zion that the Lord wants us to create together.
And it's possible as we walk this path of discipleship that sometimes we're gonna take a step backwards, and that's okay, and we can regroup, and we can press forward again. I think it's important to remember that our path of discipleship does not match anyone else's, that sometimes our next step forward is not anyone else's next step forward.
And as we especially are trying to support and encourage others along the pathway of discipleship, that not every opportunity will be exactly tailored to our path of discipleship. And as we give Leaders opportunities to include different groups of people and different opportunities that maybe something won't be ideally tailored to us, and that's okay.
That might not be the perfect next step for us, but it might be for somebody else. Yes. And we can learn to create those and hold space for those. That's what I love about this verse that as each part does its own special work, which means the part that you bring to it is different than what I bring to it, is the different than what a young woman's leader brings to it.
It's different than a primary president brings to it. It's different than what the bishop brings to it. That we're all doing our own special work, and that we fit together perfectly so that the whole can be healthy and growing and filled with love. So the holding space for each person in that collective to be able to speak uniquely what is the part of the whole that God is bringing through them.
So creating a place where everybody can bring and speak from their strengths and be heard and work together. We together are creating that biofilm, that top layer, right? Is it just one bacteria that creates that biofilm layer? Oh, there are so many. There are a wide variety of different bacteria working together to clean the water and purify it.
I want to read a quote from you as well, another one that I love. "If this journey is about becoming more like our heavenly parents, we have to learn what it feels like to live more completely for them, just as they live completely for us." Tell me what that means to you Returning to the thought that we are the Lord's work and His glory, that all of His time and energy and talents are blessing His children and helping them progress, that can we give any less than He gives?
Can we strive to focus our time and our [00:32:00] talents and our energy? We won't be perfect, but we can try towards our eternal progression and the eternal progression of those around us, especially those over whom we have stewardship and a special sacred responsibility, such as our children and the different callings that we're placed in, that God has called upon us to give our hard work in these areas, and to be a blessing to others.
And He doesn't call us to the stewardships because we're great at it. He calls us to the stewardship so that we can learn through struggling with it and growing with it how to become more like them, to embody that. It's easy the first time you get called into a leadership position to think, "Oh man, I'm so wonderful."
But by the third time you're like, "What am I missing? How have I failed to learn whatever it is I need to learn to be able to sleep in Sunday mornings?" I love that. It's so much about building their kingdom, and that means stretching outside of our comfort zone. It means growth in a higher and holier way if we're gonna be ready to meet the Savior, to learn to be more like them as individuals, as a collective, to grow in that way more and more like Christ, right?
I'm so grateful to be a part of a collective, and I'm so grateful that there is a beautiful plan in place, these covenants that we have to live, this opportunity to work out consecration together with individuals with God and in collective relationships with each other to learn what that means. There's a song that you shared that your family loves.
Can you tell me about that song? My children sing primary songs every night before we go to bed, and That is a generous statement. My husband and I sing primary songs and hope that they will join us. Um, but they grow more enthusiastic about certain songs, and for months, the song I Will Walk with Jesus was one of their top favorites.
And it makes me think of this pathway of discipleship, that as we're walking with our Savior along this pathway of discipleship, it reads, "As I walk with Jesus to my home above, He will bless me with His Spirit and fill me with His love. Change my heart forever and help me clearly see, I will walk with Jesus and He will walk with me."
I know that as we strive to make these small and simple changes in our lives, that the Lord will help us, and that He will bless us and assist us, that He will be with us in that filtration process- Mm-hmm ... helping us take those particles of debris and particulates out of our lives, and identifying them for us, and helping us gain the gumption and the desire to remove them from our lives.
Yeah, that desire and the ability, through His power, to be able to do that. It makes me think of another song, the song Holy Places. That's one of our new hymns. And the chorus talks about, "I will stand in holy places, with a heart that's firm and true, until Christ appears and makes all things holy, clean, and new."
And I think that's a beautiful song to represent what you were saying. You made the water clean so that Emerson could be healthy, and grow and prosper in a way he was sick before. And as we live consecration, Christ transforms us and [00:36:00] can make our lives, and our relationships, and our communities holy, and clean, and new.
Like something we haven't seen or done before. I think that's a beautiful promise. Jessica, thank you for being with us, and for sharing your engineering knowledge and your experience there in Peru with us in this gospel principle kind of way. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure to ponder the ways the Lord influences our lives.
A powerful takeaway for me from this conversation with Jessica was that consecration is both a principle and a process. It happens in my life drop by drop, day by day, choice by choice. I'm also enriched, and grow, and am sanctified, and increase my impact for good as I interact with the shmooze stecka, or the living, connected communities in my life.
Consecration won't always be easy. It means giving up parts of ourselves so that we can grow in higher and holier ways. But this process has such beautiful results in creating clean, purified, sanctified, connected, and meaningful lives and communities. So what was your takeaway? What is something the Spirit is nudging you to press forward and do or be today that will help you strengthen your light and the influence you have for good on those around you?
And who is someone that would benefit from you sharing so they can listen to this podcast as well? It's by sharing the light that we make the world brighter, one ray of light at a time.
