What is repentance and why would we use it in our lives? Repentance is one of the first principle of the gospel and is essential to our temporal and eternal happiness. It is much more than just acknowledging wrongdoings. It is a change of mind and heart that gives us a fresh view about God, about ourselves, and about the world. It includes turning away from sin and turning to God for forgiveness. By doing so we can lift that burden as mentioned by Elder Ballard. Our repentance should be motivated by the love for God and to have the sincere desire to obey His commandments.
So why would we go through the repentance process? Well I would like to share an analogy to help answer that question. Take for instance a car that has a flat tire. Say that that flat tire represent the mistakes you have made or a sin you have committed. So you made the mistake and you decide not to fix it and you continue to drive on the flat tire. By doing so you are only making it worse and possibly damaging you car as well. We can relate to that as if you made a mistake and you don't repent you can possibly damage yourself as well as others whom you may love, but we can prevent that damage to our car. We can fix our tire or replace it with a new tire. By doing so we are preventing that potential of a harmful damage that can happen as we continue to drive on a flat tire. With that replacement with that tire we can also be relieved of that burden knowing you have a flat tire. The same goes with the repentance process, we can lift the burden and all the things that has troubled us from our mistakes.
I can promise you that as you make those necessary repentance process we can avoid hard feelings or serious negative consequences when we chose to not fix our mistakes. Know that by repentance we can lift those heavy burden off the shoulders and we can be made light again.
