The Joy of Daily Repentance

To my daughter, 

                In the most recent general conference President Nelson talked about spiritual momentum, and he gave us five invitations. One of those was to “discover the joy of daily repentance.” He said this: “How important is repentance? Alma taught that we should ‘preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord.’ Repentance is required of every accountable person who desires eternal glory. There are no exceptions. In a revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Lord chastised early Church leaders for not teaching the gospel to their children. Repenting is the key to progress. Pure faith keeps us moving forward on the covenant path. Please do not fear or delay repenting. Satan delights in your misery. Cut it short. Cast his influence out of your life! Start today to experience the joy of putting off the natural man. The Savior loves us always but especially when we repent.” Repentance means that each day we look to recognize what we have done wrong, apologize to others as needed, and most importantly ask our Father in Heaven in prayer for forgiveness. Then we commit to being better the next day, and as we do that we indeed will have joy in becoming better each day. When I was growing up people often talked about the “R’s of repentance,” with a list something like this: recognition, remorse, restitution, reformation, and resolution. We recognize our sins, we feel remorse for what we have done, we make restitution by trying to fix the wrong, we seek to reform and be better, and we resolve to not do that thing again.

That kind of list can help us in our repentance, but the Lord’s list is much simpler that He gave us in the Doctrine and Covenants: “By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them.” To repent we confess them in true humility to the Lord, and we forsake them. In other words, to repent we must turn to God for help and through the atonement of Jesus Christ we seek to make permanent change. I think we can summarize the essence of repentance with just these two R's: Righteousness and Redeemer. To repent is to come unto the Savior and seek His power to change us and make us clean again, and then through His help we work to live in righteousness. His promise is amazing: “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.” If we come to Him humbly and seek His help to change each time we do wrong, He will not only help us but He chooses to not even remember our sins that we have repented of. I want to encourage you today to strive to follow President Nelson’s invitation and take time each day—perhaps in your nightly prayers—to repent. Think of one thing you did or said or thought that you wish you hadn’t, and pray to your Father in Heaven and ask for forgiveness in the name of the Savior. Think of how Jesus paid the price of those sins through His atonement and promise Him that you will seek to do better the next day. As you do that with “full purpose of heart” I know that you will find joy in “[putting] off the natural man” and “[becoming] a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord” (Mosiah 3:19). I want you to know that there is more happiness in truly repenting than there is in fun or food or friends or anything else in the world. “Exceeding joy” is found by being a “truly penitent and humble seeker of happiness” as it was for Ammon who was so filled with joy that he fell to the earth. So never forget—if you want to really be happy, repent!  

Love,

Dad