Welcome to Closer to Christ, the General Conference, where two friends who love Jesus share our
own approach to studying the most recent General Conference talks.
This is Abbey and Amy.
Let's jump into it.
Today we get to enjoy taking a deeper dive into Be Thou Clean by Elder D. Martin Gorey.
Did I say that okay?
Of the 70.
I'll just start by summarizing a little bit of how he kicked it off.
He starts by talking about him playing soccer near a church and he overhears a pastor telling
his congregation about the coming of the Lord.
So this young Elder Gorey understood that he would need to have clean clothes for the
Lord's coming tomorrow.
And so he had his mom wash his best outfit so that it would be ready for him.
And to his disappointment, the Savior didn't return that next day.
The scripture is in reference to what the pastor was relaying that day.
It said, no unclean thing can enter into his kingdom.
Therefore nothing entereth into his rest save it be those who have washed their garments
in my blood because of their faith and the repentance of all their sins and their faithless
unto the end.
That comes from 3rd Nephi.
So how does outfit clean, Amy?
He was ready for the coming of the Lord.
That all that it takes is a clean set of clothes.
So let's just jump in with a question about being clean.
What are some challenges that prevent us from being clean?
Some challenges that come to us when it comes to repentance in our daily lives?
You know, as I was thinking of this question, just a couple of things came to mind.
The first one was, for me, I really didn't think of repenting every single day until
our prophet challenged us to.
I just didn't really think that I, you know, there were times that I did, but it wasn't
a daily thing.
So I think maybe for some of us that we just feel like we're not doing something grievous.
And so we don't think that that's needed.
And because of President Nelson's challenge, I think that for a lot of us, it's a reflection
to self-reflection.
The challenge would be to repent daily, find joy in daily repentance.
Joy.
Again, right?
That totally changes it.
I want to re-emphasize that.
I knew what you were talking about.
So yeah, self-reflection would be the key for that one.
And then the second one is that sometimes it is obvious, but we don't want to repent
or give up that favorite sin yet.
So those are the two that I thought of.
How about you, Abby?
So just as we were re-emphasizing the way that he phrased it, he said, find joy in daily
repentance.
That's something that I've learned later in life.
Not just daily that you can come to him, that it doesn't have to be like grievous sins and
like big things that you're bringing to him.
Really finding joy in repentance is finding that you can turn anything over to him.
You recognize that it's not something, a burden that you want to carry anymore.
The second that you want to turn it to him, that can be done.
And in those moments, that's when you really feel the joy like, oh, did it disappear?
No, but it's no longer my burden alone to bear.
Because I've involved him in the process.
I love that.
That's really good.
So when I'm asking, what's the challenge, it's just knowing that that's not option.
Knowing that it doesn't have to be this huge big thing that you're all of a sudden turning
over to him.
And I think if we work on that ourselves and if we train up our children, if we have some,
or a friend, as we're discussing what real repentance looks like, if we can teach that
lesson to others, that's going to help them get over a challenge.
I don't know, I'm kind of stumbling on this, but I'm thinking...
A different way to look at it.
Yeah.
It took me a while to learn that piece of it.
So the sooner that we can get that out to those that are in our circles, then we're
really blessing a lot of lives.
They can look at it a little bit differently, not like it's this something you save up for.
You can only ask him for forgiveness so many times, then you're going to throw it at his
feet all at once.
Yep.
I totally get that.
You're welcome to daily repent and find joy in that.
So how does the atonement of Jesus Christ give you hope and peace when you struggle
with this inner mistake?
So when I remember that the atonement of Jesus Christ is for everyone, then I remember that
that includes me too.
So that's big for me.
Isn't it funny when you can look at somebody that hasn't had Jesus Christ as part of their
life and they're carrying around these burdens and you watch them change, their very being
changes as they come to him.
And that somehow, sometimes maybe it's like a mental block or whatever.
I don't know exactly what the reason is, but you can physically see it in somebody else
and then you have this gap like, but that can't be for me.
It's for everybody else.
It wasn't meant that way.
So I just like that you said that includes you too.
We have to remind ourselves of that.
How often we disregard ourselves as being the one that that's for.
And maybe unintentionally sometimes we don't realize that we do.
I think that must be what it is more often than not.
We don't mean to do it to ourselves.
You're like, oh, of course, because deep down we know, but then when it actually comes to
the nitty gritty and the small things in our lives, we're like, eh.
I'll just keep it myself.
I'll just deal with it myself.
So this is for anyone listening to the podcast.
Have you ever sat in sacrament meeting and thought, well, here we are again.
I'm the same old me and I keep making the same mistakes.
Is this even worth it?
And am I wasting the Lord's time?
So I actually had an experience with this and maybe I'm the only one who's ever felt
that way.
About 10 years ago, I was sitting in sacrament meeting.
I had younger kids.
It was not uncommon for one of my kids to have a meltdown before church and for some
of us to come with tear stained faces and no socks because they felt weird.
The socks felt weird.
Yes.
The sock was on the right foot.
So anytime the summer was over and we had to start wearing clothes again, like I'm serious,
we had to start wearing clothes again.
My sons would have a hard time wearing socks and wearing actual pants because they had
been wearing swimsuits all summer long.
So anyways, so I sat down.
I was sitting there and I was thinking I'd been a lousy mom again that week.
I had the thought.
So I prayed right there in my mind and I asked Heavenly Father, am I wasting your time coming
here again?
The same old me every single week that sacrament meeting changed my life forever because the
feeling inside my heart and around me instantly changed.
It felt as if I was instantly transformed to the presence of Heavenly Father.
And I felt that in my bones.
I understood without question that no effort we put forward or put toward being better
is ever wasted.
I understood that when we choose to take the sacrament, sometimes that's just the lifeline
we need to Christ and His atonement that week.
I understood that when we take the sacrament weekly and renew that covenant to always remember
Him, we're taking part of His power into our lives.
Even if that power goes unnoticed, it still goes to work.
This was the first week I'd ever actually felt tangible hope springing from the atonement
of Christ.
And in this meeting, it was through the ordinance of the sacrament.
That week I understood hope in a different way.
It was hope that I could change.
It was hope that even if I didn't recognize the change within me, it actually was happening
just like bamboo growing.
It was happening because I kept choosing Jesus.
Each week I kept taking the sacrament with a broken heart and a contrite spirit and with
a hope to believe Christ.
I hope to believe Him and when He said, come unto me all ye that are heavy laden and you
will find rest to your souls.
I found hope and peace that week and that lesson has never left me.
Like President Nelson said, no one can ever take away a witness, pour into your heart
and mind about what is true when the spirit witnesses.
So that's my experience.
You haven't really questioned it again since then.
You don't get down on yourself so much if you don't feel like big leaps and bounds of
changes are happening for you in your life.
You're happy with micro changes.
Yes.
And I do seek change in a different way.
Now I was like for that time, that is what I needed.
It was like Amy, you're in a spot that like it feels like nothing's happening when your
kids are really young, but really a lot is happening.
Do you feel like your understanding of repentance has grown since then?
Do you feel like because you understand more about how repentance works for you and that
you are worthy and able and capable of repenting like daily at this point has helped you become
more receptive to the spirit, more capable of following his guidance?
I would say, yeah.
I mean, everything is a process, right?
And I mean, when you look at like 10 years ago, then yeah, I would definitely.
So Abby, when we were just talking about the first question we went over that was talking
about, what was it?
The blocks to daily repentance.
Yes.
Daily repentance.
What are the challenges to repent in our daily lives?
So it's interesting because you, you know, you brought up that it doesn't have to be
big things, right?
We can learn the joy of repentance and small things.
So when we repent, we turn to God.
I turned to God in nightly prayers and I give him whatever it was from that day.
So it might look like this.
Maybe I hand over my frustration or anger or exhaustion.
Maybe I hand in my judgment of another person.
And then I ask in prayer for the opposite, which is a virtue of Christ to take its place.
So for frustration, I might ask for Christ's perfect peace.
For anger, I might ask for Christ-like understanding.
For exhaustion, I may either ask for eyes to see what I can leave undone today or the
Christ-like gift of knowing when quote, it is finished or for Christ's perfect power
to drink from the bitter cup and just do that thing.
So it kind of depends on what it is.
The exhaustion could, you know, he could be like, well, you don't need to be exhausted
because you don't need to do that thing.
Or he can say, here's the power to do it.
So that's the way it is.
But for me, this is one way of repenting because I turned to Heavenly Father in prayer.
I give up that thing and I ask for Christ's atonement to heal me.
It's inviting the atonement of Jesus Christ to work in your everyday life.
I think that's the biggest part that makes it different is that if you save up all of
these things that are in your heart and like, let's go back to you saying that you felt
like I'm a terrible mom and I'm coming to you and nothing's really changed.
Am I wasting your time?
It's different when you know that you can have that conversation daily.
You run through positives that you've done that day and you run through things that you
would change if you could go back and change it.
Now you can't, you can't go back and change that, but he can make those things right.
And when you're doing that on a daily loop the next day, because you've opened this communication
with him, when you're ready to snap at your kids or get short with somebody or say something
bad about somebody, let's say those are a few things that come to mind that might happen
in a given day, you think twice about it.
So again, he can cover those things as they come up in that day.
When I make it a daily thing, I do find that what I need to bring to him is less and less.
For sure.
I agree.
That's not true because it's making it sound like I don't mess up daily.
What I'm saying is the amount that you're trying to unload is less because it's just
a day.
It's not a week or a month.
I haven't saved up to think for it.
It really is just kind of getting rid of that burden before it becomes so heavy that it
was too hard to bear.
And also maybe not before it becomes too heavy, but before it sets in enough to where it becomes
a habit.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
So it's nice to do that as well.
I also feel like when I am coming to him every day with these things, something that would
have hung me up, like on one of my mistakes or whatever it was, five years ago, 10 years
ago, whatever, if you're asking every day, I feel like before I was afraid to say, hey,
where am I with you?
Do you know what I mean?
Sure.
So when you do it every day, you know where you stand with him.
And guess what?
It's most likely that the very next day you're not going to be going over the same thing
because you're past that, you're done, you're moving on to the next.
And you've invited him into this process of helping you with those things that you want
to change about yourself.
So you've identified the glitch in your natural man or the actual exactly what your natural
man's designed to do.
For sure.
Telling him, I want to involve you in the process to soften this sharp edge that I have.
I need your help in this way.
And then as opportunities come up to make better choices that relate to that, he's in
that process.
He's going to provide opportunities to say, hey, your kid just spilled sugar everywhere.
You wanted patience and your kid just spilled sugar everywhere.
What are you going to do with this?
Are you going to lose your cool or are you going to explain this isn't what we do and
start cleaning up, have them involved in the process?
You have every moment of every day, you have multiple scenarios of how things can go.
But if you've decided that you want it to go a certain way and you want to be more Christ-like,
the actual action that we're inclined to do might not be the one that we end up doing,
which is a good thing.
Right.
Which is what we're after right now.
Okay.
So I really like the question.
So in the help that we get, the Relief Society and Elder's Quorum, there's the help.
From the church news that we're linking.
Yes.
And I like this question.
How does repentance help us become more receptive to the Spirit and more capable of following
His guidance?
So after this, the thing that I went through that I was just talking about, I would say
that as we repent daily, it's kind of like sloughing off the calluses of our hearts.
And when our hearts are soft, they are more sensitive.
A sensitive heart is more receptive to the Spirit when He guides us or comforts us or
teaches us.
And at that point, we're able to be more capable.
Right?
More able.
Yes.
So I feel like that's really the big thing is it's like sloughing off every day.
What if the callus is on our feet or whatever winter feet?
We decided to do it all just one time in the winter.
Like it doesn't do the same amount of, you know, it doesn't do the same job.
If you want it to be soft and pliable, then that's the way the daily work is better.
Yes, it is.
Small increments.
Any thoughts, Abby?
I would say it's a process.
I would say obviously the prophet where he's encouraged us to find joy in daily repentance,
I'm thinking that that's going to hit younger ears than I was when I really grasped onto
this idea.
Isn't that great?
It's so great.
So they don't have to be like halfway through their life before they're testing that out
and seeing what joy and what happiness that they can get from really putting more things
at the Lord's feet because he's already suffered for them.
We just have to decide when we want him to step in and take those burdens from us.
True?
Yeah, totally.
It's funny.
I tell my daughter so many times, I'm like, you're learning things that I'm learning right
now in midlife.
Yeah, you're half my age.
Right?
And then my mom is 83 this year.
She's learning the same things from conference.
Right.
And so she looks at you and being like, you've got another half of your life to where I am
that you get to experience the joy that comes from following what the prophet has reminded
us of.
Truly.
It's amazing.
I love it.
I love that we all get all generations are learning together right now because these
words are living.
These younger generations verbalize out of their mouth they've heard that message and
then they're applying it.
It just leaves me awestruck.
I'm like, that's another way that we're seeing that the Lord is accelerating his work and
he's preparing us all for the opportunity to be as ready as possible.
Be thou clean, as the title of the talk would say.
Yes, yes.
What a great thing.
I know.
I agree.
We don't have to just wait for that Sunday to feel the best about ourselves and feel
like connection with our savior.
We can feel that daily.
So my question would be for our listeners, how do you find the joy of daily repentance?
What's that process for you?
It may look different in different seasons of your life, but what is that process right
now?
That would be my question.
That's an action item.
That's them self-reflecting and then coming up with the action item.
Is there still feeling like it's a burden to really turn things over to the Lord?
Is there something that could be done that make you feel like, no, he wants that relationship
with me.
He wants to hear from me daily, weekly, whatever.
He loves those check-ins.
Closing thoughts.
I loved this quote that he had at the end.
He says, I testify that the atonement of Jesus Christ is real and that as we learn to follow
the guidance of the Holy Ghost, he will lead us to repent and use the power of the Savior's
atonement in our lives.
And that's exactly what it is.
I feel like, again, going back to President Nelson, as we learn to find joy in daily repentance,
I feel like what he's saying is learn how to use and access the power of the atonement
in your lives every day and just see what happens with your life.
My life has changed considerably.
Where before I was living in, I guess, apathy, now I am very much in charge of what I'm doing
and I actually look forward to dumping the things off every night.
And then I'm like, all right, what are we doing next?
And I climb that mountain with him.
So I think that it's very interesting that something that the prophet has said has helped
really change and shift the way that I look at something as I would say, quote, mundane
as what I used to think repentance was.
I didn't think it was a good thing.
I thought it was like plan Z. Honestly, as a kid, that's what I thought.
So yeah, I just feel I do feel joy in daily repentance.
Can't say better myself.
That's a wrap.
We'll catch you on the next one.
See you next time.
Thanks for watching.