Delivered Because of Their Repentance

Elder Soares gave a powerful talk in the most recent general conference on Easter about the Savior and His great atoning sacrifice. One of the themes for the address was the need for each of us to repent in order to be cleansed by Him. He said, “As we genuinely repent of our sins, we allow the atoning sacrifice of Christ to become wholly effective in our life.” He highlighted how repentance brings to us the Spirit of the Lord: “When we sincerely repent of our sins and turn our hearts and will to God and His commandments, we can receive His forgiveness and feel the influence of His Holy Spirit in greater abundance.” Repentance allows the Savior to purify us and bring the Spirit more completely into our lives. Elder Soares also declared, “The gift of repentance is an expression of God’s kindness toward His children, and it is a demonstration of His incomparable power to help us overcome the sins we commit.” He reminded us of what President Nelson taught about repentance recently: it is “the key to happiness and peace of mind.” This is a key rusted and unused by most of the world, but we should not forget it: daily repentance will bring happiness and peace of mind through the Savior’s cleansing power.

               This reminds me of the key role that repentance played in the Nephite preservation when they faced the daunting enemy of the Gadianton robbers. These robbers sought to completely destroy the Nephite civilization, and the Nephite leader Lachoneus warned the people: “As the Lord liveth, except ye repent of all your iniquities, and cry unto the Lord, ye will in nowise be delivered out of the hands of those Gadianton robbers.” Repentance was the key for them to stand against their enemies. And they did indeed hearken and repent, for Mormon recorded, “They did repent of all their sins; and they did put up their prayers unto the Lord their God, that he would deliver them in the time that their enemies should come down against them to battle” (3 Nephi 3:15,25). Their subsequent battle was “great and terrible” in the numbers who were killed, “insomuch that there never was known so great a slaughter among all the people of Lehi since he left Jerusalem.” Nevertheless, the Nephites were victorious and ultimately drove the Gadianton robbers out and preserved their nation. Mormon described the righteous people at the end of the war in these words: “And their hearts were swollen with joy, unto the gushing out of many tears, because of the great goodness of God in delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; and they knew it was because of their repentance and their humility that they had been delivered from an everlasting destruction” (3 Nephi 4:11, 33). To me that is a powerful statement: their repentance is what saved them from being delivered up into the hands of their enemies.

               Surely that is a key for us when we face our own symbolic wars and Gadianton robbers. As we struggle through our challenges, instead of worrying only about the immediate problems that we are up against, perhaps our first instinct should be to repent so that we might more fully obtain the power of the Lord. No matter what difficulties that we must pass through, surely repentance will enable us overcome them more fully as the Nephites overcame these robbers. As Elder Soares put it, through repentance we will see “a demonstration of His incomparable power to help us.” Whatever help from the Lord that we need in our lives, we should seek it first by repenting daily of our sins.