Change

“People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules, I’ll reward you, and if you don’t, I’ll do other things.’ I do not think that this is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature.”

CS Lewis  |  Mere Christianity

Topics: , , , , ,

5+

“Men and women who turn their lives over to God will find out that he can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace.”

Ezra Taft Benson  |  The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p. 361

Topics: , , , ,

4+

“When we’re tempted to give up, we must remember God is long-suffering, change is a process, and repentance is a pattern in our lives.”

Brad Wilcox  |  The Continuous Atonement

Topics: , , ,

3+
Elder Jeffery R. Holland of the LDS church
“You can change! You can be anything you want to be in righteousness. If there is one lament I cannot abide, it is the poor, withered cry, ‘Well, that’s just the way that I am.’ I’ve heard it from too many people who want to sin and call it psychology. You can change anything you want to change, and you can do it very fast. Another satanic sucker punch is that it takes years and years and eons and eons to repent. That’s just not true. It takes exactly as long to repent as it takes you to say, ‘Ill change’ and mean it. Of course, there will be problems to work out and restitutions to make…but change, growth, renewal , and repentance can come to you as instantaneously as for Alma.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland  |  For Times of Trouble

Topics: , , , ,

3+
“God cares a lot more about who we are and about who we are becoming, than about who we once were.”

Elder Dale G. Renlund  |  "Latter-day Saints Keep on Trying"

Topics: , , , , ,

2+

“I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A [mathematical] sum [incorrectly worked] can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and [then] working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound.”

CS Lewis  |  The Great Divorce (1946), viii.

Topics: , ,

2+

“The Atonement of Jesus Christ does not just provide a way to clean up messes; it provides the purpose and desire to avoid making more messes. The Atonement doesn’t allow us to ignore our appetites or pretend they don’t matter, but to educate and elevate them.”

Brad Wilcox  |  The Continuous Atonement

Topics: , ,

1+

“Without the Redeemer, … repentance becomes simply miserable behavior modification.”

Elder Dale G. Renlund

Topics: ,

1+

“Do not throw away a man or a woman, old or young. If they commit an evil today and another tomorrow, but wish to be Saints and to be forgiven, do you forgive them, not only seven times, but seventy times seven in a day, if their hearts are fully set to do right. Let us make it a point to pass over their weaknesses and say, “God bless you in trying to be better in time to come,” and act as wise stewards in the kingdom of God.”

Brigham Young  |  Journal of Discourses, 8:368

Topics: , ,

1+

“It is hard to know when we have done enough for the Atonement to change our natures and so qualify us for eternal life. And we don’t know how many days we will have to give the service necessary for that mighty change to come. But we know that we will have days enough if only we don’t waste them.”

Elder Henry B. Eyring  |  "This Day," Conference April 2007

Topics: , , ,

1+