Repent That I May Heal You - Elder Neil L. Anderson

Repent...That I May Heal You - Neil L. Andersen

Ensign, October 2009

I think about this story from President Faust quite often when I regret things that I SHOULD have done.     It is very sweet to me, and I love it.     I wonder how many sins of OMISSION we should repent of.....

The scriptures speak of His arms being open, extended, stretched out,  and encircling.   They are described as mighty and holy arms of mercy, arms of safety, arms of love, “lengthened out all the day long.”

You will remember a tender story told by President James E. Faust. “As a small boy on the farm … , I remember my grandmother … cooking our delicious meals on a hot woodstove. When the wood box next to the stove became empty, Grandmother would silently pick up the box, go out to refill it from the pile of cedar wood outside, and bring the heavily laden box back into the house.”

President Faust’s voice then filled with emotion as he continued: “I was so insensitive … I sat there and let my beloved grandmother refill the kitchen wood box. I feel ashamed of myself and have regretted my [sin of] omission for all of my life. I hope someday to ask for her forgiveness.”

More than 65 years had passed. If President Faust still remembered and regretted not helping his grandmother after all those years, should we be surprised with some of the things we still remember and regret?

The scriptures do not say that we will forget our forsaken sins in mortality. Rather, they declare that the Lord will forget.

This is footnote 29 - very good and interesting......

Mosiah 4:3. The scriptures link our happiness in this life and the next with peace of conscience. Note Alma’s teaching that the opposite of joy is remorse of conscience (see Alma 29:5). Other prophets tie the torment of the wicked following this life to the guilt they feel (see 2 Nephi 9:14, 46; Mosiah 2:38; 3:24–25; Mormon 9:5). Joseph Smith said: “A man is his own tormentor and his own condemner. Hence the saying, They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone” (in History of the Church, 6:314).