Filling Up on the Good

R*** was talking about how he had felt a LOT of promptings in the beginning of his conversion. Then he said that after a couple of weeks they went away a bit. He felt like God had kind of left him alone and he started to wonder why. Then he came on visits with us. He said that God had come to help and heal him. Then when he was better, it was his job to start looking for where God was. He said it was kind of a game. God's not with him anymore, because he's not so sick. Thus, if he wants to be closer to God, he starts to go where He goes: with the sick, the sad, and the smitten. Isn't that an interesting thought?

Next, we had a lesson with someone named Jose Luis. He'd been a drug addict since the age of 10 or 11. We told him that repentance is not the process of removing something bad alone. The most important part of true repentance is filling it with something better. It's like a cup. I can see an empty cup and say that it's a wasted cup. I can tell you that I don't want any air in the cup. Then I'll tell you to take the air out of it. However, for every air molecule that leaves, another one enters. Likewise, there's really no way to defeat sin. We simply can't pull air out of the cup. Neither can we effectively pull/push sin out of our lives.

The secret, then, is that we fill the glass with water. We practice the principles of faith. We start by reading the scriptures, then we pray and attend church. As we continue practicing, we receive the Holy Ghost more in our lives, and then we start sharing it. Like R** said, we start going in search of God and His miracles in the lives of others. As we continually fill our cups, we can finally truly repent of the mistakes we have made or are currently making. We can say that repentance is composed of a series of steps such as recognition, remorse, restitution, reformation, resolution, etc., but I honestly feel that it comes down to this simple principle: we fill our life with smart/good things and simultaneously take necessary measures to do away with the dumb/bad things.

--Elder Brown