“The repenting sinner must suffer for his sins, but this suffering has a different purpose than punishment or payment. Its purpose is to change.”
Repentance
LDS Quotes on Repentance
“We can change our behavior. Our very desires can change. How? There is only one way. True change—permanent change—can come only through the healing, cleansing, and enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. He loves you—each of you! He allows you to access His power as you keep His commandments, eagerly, earnestly, and exactly. It is that simple and certain. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of change!”
| Decisions for Eternity
“Humility is the essence of repentance. Humility is selfless, not selfish. It doesn’t demand its own way or speak with moral superiority. Instead, humility answers softly and listens kindly for understanding, not vindication. Humility recognizes that no one can change someone else, but with faith, effort, and the help of God, we can undergo our own mighty change of heart. (See Alma 5:11-12, 26-31.) Experiencing the mighty change of heart causes us to treat others, especially our spouses, with meekness. (See Moroni 7:43-48; 8:25-26.) Humility means that both husbands and wives seek to bless, help, and lift each other, putting the other first in every decision. Watch and learn: repentance and humility build happy marriages.”
God doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go.
“Who is righteous? Anyone who is repenting. No matter how bad he has been, if he is repenting he is a righteous man. There is hope for him. And no matter how good he has been all his life, if he is not repenting, he is a wicked man. The difference is which way you are facing. The man on the top of the stairs facing down if much worse off than the man on the bottom step who is facing up. The direction we are facing, that is repentance; and that is what determines whether we are good or bad.”
| "Funeral Address"
“Perhaps we feel we have stepped beyond that reach of the Atonement by knowingly repeating a previously forsaken sin. We understand that God and Jesus were willing to forgive the first time, but we wonder how many more times they will be willing to watch us bumble along before finally roll their eyes and declare, ‘Enough already!’ We struggle so much to forgive ourselves that we wrongly assume God must be having the same struggle.”
| The Continuious Atonement
“If we fail to forgive ourselves when God has done so, we make ourselves a higher judge than Him.”
“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.”
“God cares a lot more about who we are and about who we are becoming, than about who we once were.”
| "Latter-day Saints Keep on Trying"
“No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give up.”