“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.”
| The Continuous Atonement
Repentance
LDS Quotes on Repentance
“God would not have commanded us to forgive seventy times seven if he were not prepared to extend the same mathematical generosity.”
“Elder Neal A. Maxwell suggests that the prime reason the Savior personally acts as the gatekeeper of the celestial kingdom is not to exclude people, but to personally welcome and embrace those who have made it back home.”
| The Infinite Atonement
The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can go home but that—miraculously—we can feel at home there. If Heavenly Father and His Son did not require faith and repentance, then there would be no desire to change.
Think of your friends and family members who have chosen to live without faith and without repentance. They don’t want to change. They are not trying to abandon sin and become comfortable with God. Rather, they are trying to abandon God and become comfortable with sin.
If the Father and the Son did not require covenants and bestow the gift of the Holy Ghost, then there would be no way to change. We would be left forever with only willpower, with no access to His power. If Heavenly Father and His Son did not require endurance to the end, then there would be no internalization of those changes over time. They would forever be surface and cosmetic rather than sinking inside us and becoming part of us—part of who we are. Put simply, if Jesus didn’t require practice, then we would never become Saints.
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
| Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
We obtain a remission of our sins by pleading to God, who compassionately responds, but we retain a remission of our sins by compassionately responding to the poor who plead to us.
“The experience of sin is not an unalterable state we inhabit; it is a felt disharmony. The unhappiness of sin is nothing more than our spirit rebelling against a condition alien to its true nature. We have fallen out of alignment with God. The separation from God is not punishment inflicted by God, but the consequence of an existential reality of our own making.”
“Satan doesn’t win when he can get us to cross the line but when he convinces us that there is no way back.”
| The Continuous Atonement
“When we pray, we are not conveying any information to God that he does not already have. Nor, when we confess our sins before him, is it news to him that we have misbehaved. More than we realize, being honest with God in our prayers helps us to be more honest with ourselves.”
“There is someone I love, even though I don’t approve of what he does. There is someone I accept, though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me. There is someone I forgive, though he hurts the people I love the most. That person is me.”