“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the master of his passions.”
Repentance
LDS Quotes on Repentance
“Be merciful and you shall find mercy. Seek to help save souls, not to destroy them: for verily you know, that ‘there is more joy in heaven, over one sinner that repents, than there is over ninety and nine just persons [who] need no repentance.’”
| Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 77.
“What we call self-mastery is the necessary price for the things upon which our hearts are set.”
It is hard to understand all the reasons why some people take another path. The best we can do in these circumstances is just to love and embrace them, pray for their well-being, and seek for the Lord’s help to know what to do and say. Sincerely rejoice with them in their successes; be their friends and look for the good in them. We should never give up on them but preserve our relationships. Never reject or misjudge them. Just love them!
“Never must we allow supposed mercy to the unrepentant sinner to rob the justice by which the true repentance from sinful practices is predicated.”
| Strengthening the Home, 1973, p. 5.
As we think of the things He did for us, we will not only come to know more about Him, but we will come to know Him; we will not only want to live more like Him, but we will also learn how to do so. Through introspection and self-analysis, we can come to know what we have done that needs to be repented of and learn what we can do to improve spiritually in some way.
“God uses no magic wand to simply wave bad things into nonexistence. The sins that he remits, he remits by making them his own and suffering them. The pain and heartaches that he relieves, he relieves by suffering them himself. These things can be shared and absorbed, but they cannot be simply wished or waved away. They must be suffered.”
| Believing Christ: The Parable of the Bicycle and Other Good News
We are always progressing as long as we are striving to follow the Lord.
| An Especially Noble Calling - General Conference 2020
“God and Christ are omniscient, and yet the promise is: ‘He who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.’ Our Lord is like the mother of Wendell Berry’s poem, whose forgiveness is ‘so complete that I wonder sometimes if it did not precede my wrong.’ He purposely forgives our sins, to extirpate our shame. The act is sublime.”
“Keep your eyes on your dreams, however distant and far away. Live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, of trust and divine love that will transform your life today, tomorrow, and forever. That is a New Year’s resolution I ask you to keep.”
| The Best Is Yet to Be