Well, hello everybody and welcome to Redeem Through His Blood. In this podcast, we discuss hope, healing and redemption through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. My name's Scott Durfey and it's my pleasure to introduce my partner in this project, our teacher, Brother David Durfey. Say hi, Dave. It's a good day to repent and be forgiven. Yeah, it is. And fill his spirit by doing so. That's definitely where we're headed today once again.
Hey, gang, I just want to make sure that we extend our gratitude to each one of you, for those of you who have been communicating to us through emails. We've received some great emails lately, Dave, from members and non-members, those who have been listening to our podcasts and questions and comments. We want to encourage both. We try to incorporate your questions in our discussion. And again, we will deal with some of those directly in future podcasts.
We also want to thank you for telling your friends about this and sharing this experience with them as well. That's our hope that we can take the good news of the Atonement, the power of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through His Atonement to those who feel lack or feel less or feel less loved, etc. We just are hoping and praying that this will extend and reach those who need that help. You can respond or send those emails to us here at heredeemsusatgmail.com. He redeemsusatgmail.com.
Well Dave, before we jump into this week's topic, last week we extended an invitation to do a personal inventory. We talked about honesty, the importance of being completely honest in our lives, especially as it comes to our relationship with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And you know, that inventory invitation that we sent out, I actually do that on a nightly basis as a step called step 10 in recovery.
Step 10 says, I'm going to try and quote it, we continue to take personal inventory and when we're wrong, we promptly admit it. There's a process that I go through as part of my dailies in recovery that keep me on the track of recovery and in a relationship with my Heavenly Father. That list doesn't have to be long for me. This is how I do it. There's no pattern. There's no right way, no wrong way. You don't even have to do it. But here's how I do it.
Each night I like to think of two or three things that I've been exceptionally grateful for that day. And when I write those two or three things down, it puts me in an attitude of gratitude where I can feel my Heavenly Father's spirit more fully, more completely, and then I pray to Him, where have I been wrong? Where could I have done better? And when I do that, I receive those answers.
I get recollection of events during the day where maybe I was sharp with somebody at the fast food place because they didn't get my food fast enough to me, or maybe where I was pouting because something didn't go my way in my relationship with my wife, and a myriad of other things. So power behind inventory, great, great power behind inventory, especially when it comes to confessing and forsaking our sins, which brings us to our topic today, Dave.
And maybe just to comment about last week and lead us into today. I love this scripture in 1 John, one of the epistles of John chapter one, verses seven through nine, where he says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. I've always loved that. If we confess our sins, he is faithful. And just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And I would add and to strengthen us, to cleanse us and to strengthen us from all unrighteousness. Now that doesn't mean that we won't continue to sit this in. You know, the prophets sin, they repent every day. They present Nelson, I think Scott has also encouraged us as members of the church, present Nelson has encouraged us to take a daily inventory and to make daily repentance a part of our life. Prophet Joseph Smith said that we should never trifle with daily repentance.
It shouldn't become too rote or we shouldn't take that for granted or it shouldn't become trite or unimportant to us. We should do that as part of our, not just daily progression, but eternal progression. John talks about, after recognizing and being honest with ourselves, which we talked about last time, that we need to confess our sins. We read the scripture last week in Doctrine and Covenants 58, 42 and 43, that talks about the Lord will forgive us and remember our sins no more.
And then he says, by this, or here's the manifestation or the evidence of your repentance, by this you may know if a man repenteth of his sins, behold, he will confess them and forsake them. Last time we introduced the three questions that we should answer today, which is why do we confess sins? Who should we confess our sins to? And what sins need to be confessed? So maybe let's touch on the why for just a minute.
I think the why is, has to do with the assignment that you gave in regards to taking an inventory. And probably the first person we really need to confess to is to ourselves. We need to be honest with ourselves. If we cannot overcome self deception and if we can't become more honest with ourselves, we'll never be completely honest confessing to others or even to God. So taking that inventory and being honest with ourselves is a form of overcoming self deception and sin itself.
Any thoughts on who else should we confess to? It's important that we confess next to our Heavenly Father. You know, and there may be, that may be kind of one and the same except for our intent. You know, we need to place our intent also as we confess these sins or acknowledge our own wrongfulness or whatever, however we want to term that.
But as we're making that acknowledgement, what we are is we are drawing closer to Him and as we're drawing closer to Him, I think that that's the beginning part. That's not the completion of, but that's the beginning part of our confession, confession also to our Heavenly Father. And I think that's the next important step in process and who that confession needs to be towards. Yeah, absolutely, and I think it can be helpful to not over generalize our sins to our Heavenly Father.
I think it's helpful to hear ourselves and I actually recommend that if possible that we learn to pray out loud. We're commanded to do that in Dr. Incumbent in section 19 is to pray vocally. It's kind of interesting how Joseph Smith didn't receive the first vision until he prayed vocally and he said this was the first time he had made the attempt. I'm sure he probably prayed about which church to join before he went to the sacred grove where he prayed vocally.
There's a power about vocal prayer and praying out loud and I encourage individuals when they are really serious about confessing their sins that they go somewhere in a closet or somewhere where they can be alone and where it can be private and that they pray out loud in confessing their sins. Satan knows that you've done it, so you're not telling him anything he doesn't know. Heavenly Father knows you've done it, not telling him anything he doesn't know.
But I think it's helpful to do it out loud and to hear ourselves to say it to our Heavenly Father and confess it and acknowledge it before him. There's power in that. I have a really close friend actually who's a psychologist and he and I were having this discussion not that long ago about praying out loud and about the benefit of it. There's a huge spiritual benefit to it obviously and you've touched on that benefit.
But there's also a physical benefit, a cognitive benefit according to him to praying out loud, to hear us utter, to hear our own words, to hear us say out loud the things that we must say in order to accomplish what we're talking about here, David, can be very helpful in driving home and sort of anchoring not just the facts but anchoring our commitment to being different and to allowing our Heavenly Father Spirit to change us. I think it is also evidence of our humility in doing that.
I think as a general rule probably, maybe this is a self confession, is I think people like to pray silently and that most of our prayers, at least our personal prayers, are maybe silent ones, quiet ones. I think that it's just a really good habit to be able to pray out loud and where no one else can hear us but where we can hear our voice and we can hear ourselves cry out to our Heavenly Father. There really is a power about that.
I think it's also really helpful, Scott, that we not take prayer too casually. And what I mean by that is maybe two parts, that we make some preparation, that we actually prepare in our hearts, our emotions, and in our minds what we're going to say to our Heavenly Father. Right, I do too. I think it will really increase the effectiveness of our prayers. It will just take a moment. It doesn't have to be too long.
But where we pause before we kneel down and we just begin to speak and to call on Him, which is wonderful. But when we're really repenting, when we really want to express our gratitude and ask for His help and His forgiveness, I have found it's really a blessing to just take time and meditate and make some preparation. And then the second thing that can increase our effectiveness is to show great reverence, to just really show our reverence and respect for Him.
And there's nothing wrong with praying in the car while you're driving. There's nothing wrong with praying when you're laying down. There's nothing wrong with any of those prayers. They're all wonderful and He loves to hear from us anytime. And in fact, those are important prayers. Yes. Those are important prayers too. Absolutely. And we should pray always. We should pray to pray always.
But there is a power to kneeling down, I think, if we can, and to find a place where we're alone and where we can fold our arms and bow our heads and close our eyes and use sometimes, I think it's even important when we can to use the proper language of prayer and to just to really try to picture who we are talking to. The God of this universe, our heavenly Father, to really feel that and to see that.
And anyway, preparation and great reverence will certainly increase this experience as we repent and confess to Him. You know, when we talk about that type of prayer, Dave, the word that comes to my mind sometimes is supplication. You know, if you supplicate, if I'm supplicating myself to my heavenly Father, I just looked it up. They're going to read this definition, the first definition that came up. And this is the question that says, what does the Bible mean about supplication?
And of course, we can use this, you know, in all standard works, but what does it mean when we talk about supplication? And I think that this is a good definition. It says, although it is a noun, supplication comes from the Latin verb, supplicare, or supplicare, I don't know how to say it exactly, which means to plead humbly.
While supplication is often thought of as a religious prayer, as it is used 60 times in the Bible, it can logically be applied to any situation in which you must entreat the power of our heavenly Father for your favor. Well, I love that. That's inspired. Supplicate. I love the term in the scriptures, particularly I find it in the Book of Mormon. Cry out. Love Amulet's description of prayer in Alma 34. Cry out morning, noon, and night. Cry out in your closet. Cry out in your fields.
Anyway, cry out. There's this energy and this humility and maybe emotion about crying out to God that can improve our effectiveness as we confess. So have we said enough about why we confess? Why so we feel ourselves taking full 100% accountability, responsibility, and being completely honest? That I think is a predictor and precursor to full and complete repentance. When we talk about crying out, we can move on with this, but it did remind me of a couple of episodes that we had.
One was episode number 16 where we did an interview with the brother Nate Moller and then the next one was episode 19 where we did an interview with the brother Scott Harmon. In both of those cases, they talked about coming more fully into our heavenly Father through the Atonement of Jesus Christ after having gone through some really rough stuff in their lives. In both of those cases, they talked about crying unto the Lord.
Scott talked about crying out from solitary confinement on a cement floor, right? He talked about that and how Heavenly Father reached down and picked him up and has since then kept him in his fold. And the same with brother Nate Moller. He talked about crying out as he was on his way to, in his mind, end his life at his own hand. And that changed because he, according to him, because he cried out. And you know, those types of crying outs can save all of us.
And I think that's what we're talking about. And it's interesting that Enos uses the word wrestle when he describes his all day, all night experience in prayer. He uses the term wrestle. You know, prayer, I love the definition of prayer in the Bible dictionary where it says, prayer is work. Yeah. Well, it takes great energy. Prayer is work. I've said as many casual prayers as probably anybody. I love to pray wherever and sometimes they're just really sweet and casual.
But when we confess our sins and we're intent on repenting, that can be a wrestle. That can be a crying out, a real supplication. There needs to be preparation and reverence for that. And I know that it's worth the time and worth the blessings and the promises that we'll receive as we do so. So let, besides, we've talked a little bit about why. Now let's, we've talked a little bit about who we confess to our heavenly father, we confess to ourselves. We confess to our heavenly father.
Now let's talk about more about the role of the church and confessing to maybe a bishop or someone who has priesthood keys. The instruction that I have received, I think the instruction that's given in the church is that we should confess to either our bishop who is a common judge of Israel and has those keys or we can confess to our stake president. Sometimes we will confess to both in certain serious sins, but those are the two individuals that we should confess our sins to.
We shouldn't confess to counselors. We shouldn't confess to elders, quorum presidents or at least society presidents or others. We should confess to those who have the direct responsibility to be a common judge in Israel. I think it's important that we be really careful that we don't confess generally to the church or to members, other members of the church, but we confess to the proper priesthood authority.
And the role of the church is really important, which maybe we can talk more about as we get into this. Any thoughts or questions about confessing to the proper priesthood authority? Yeah, I think that this is one. So it's important for us to know that not all things, and I think you've said that, but let's reiterate, not all things need to be confessed to a priesthood authority. That's important for us to know.
Oftentimes in our fervor and in our desires to come fully and quickly to him, we sometimes think that to beat ourselves up over things, I was going to say the little things, because sometimes the little things can feel like big things in our lives. But there are things, Dave, that should be confessed and things that probably are not necessarily most appropriate to confess for various reasons to those priesthood leaders as well. And I think that it'll be important for us to talk about that too.
Well, I always go back to the statement by President Marion G. Romney when he was in the first presidency of the church with President Kimball, and the statement that he gives, which was kind of the direction given to us when I was the branch president of the Missionary Training Center. I have to paraphrase the quote because I don't have it here in front of me.
But President Marion G. Romney basically said that we confess to the church and to the proper priesthood authority when there have been any criminal activity, when any serious laws – I'm not talking about speeding tickets or any of that – but when criminal activity could end up in some sort of an action in court or result in other consequences, all of those should be confessed to the proper priesthood authority, when any sins would
affect our worthiness to participate in the ordinances of the gospel, since the role of the priesthood keys and authority is to protect the sacred nature of ordinances and protect individuals from partaking of ordinances unworthily, any of those sins need to be confessed, or any sins that would put our membership in the church in question should be confessed. So I have received lots of confessions, Scott, as a bishop and as a branch president at the Missionary Training Center.
I've been in lots of disciplinary actions or membership councils, as we call them today. They're all sweet, especially sweet missionaries coming into the MTC, probably seven or eight out of ten. I feel like they've got to confess something, and some of them are really serious and they're hard.
But I remember one sweet missionary who came into my office on the first Sunday that he was there, I was to interview all the new missionaries on the first Sunday, and he came in and I asked him about his worthiness. Are you worthy to be here, Elder? How are you feeling about your worthiness and your relationship with God, and are you feeling the spirit? And he started to cry, and he looked down at the floor. This was pretty normal. Most of them did this before they would confess.
They would look down at the floor before they could look up at me. And he was crying, and I sat there and watched tears roll down his off the end of his nose with his face to the ground. So sweet. I had this sacred little spot on my orange carpet in the MTC many years ago, and I swear I could see a salt ring in my carpet from tears of missionaries confessing their sins, as they said in that chair. Kind of a sacred little place. Oh man, that's where I would kneel to pray.
So every morning, Sunday morning when I was there at 5.30 in the morning to begin my day, I would kneel near that little spot of salt on the carpet. That's tender. And he begins to cry and takes him a minute, and he's not offering anything. And after a few minutes, I said, Elder, is it have to do with any moral issues? Do you have a girlfriend? And he looks up at me surprised. Oh no, no president. I don't have a girlfriend. I never even dated in high school. I said, okay, okay, good.
Can you share with me what you're concerned about? And he says, well, you know, it's just come back into my mind since I've been here that when I was 13 years old, you know, so what's that, six years, I think he was 19. When I was 13 years old, one day I stole a piece of gum out of my mother's purse, and I didn't tell her about it. Oh man, anyway, sweet, you know, but Elder, I said, I think you've been forgiven of that. I think your mother's forgiven you. I think the Lord's forgiven you.
I think you're good. Is there anything else? Oh no, he said that's the only, I thought, wow, I was worried about him because he was so good and so pure and he was kind of timid and I actually said to him, I think, you know, now where are you going again Elder? And he said, California. And I said, you're going to see a lot of sin, Elder in California. I hope that you're prepared for that and grateful that you're so worthy. I would have experiences like that every once in a while.
He's confessing their sins. I had one sweet kind of farmer boy. He was a tough kid, tough, you could tell, built and came from a farm and spent his summer's hauling hay. Yeah, yeah, he was out in the Grantsville, Tawilla area and remember him.
He was powerful and he came in and he started to cry and confess that his neighbors had gone on an extended vacation and he was to take care of their animals and the chores and kind of their farm and oversee things for them while they were gone on this extended vacation. And he said, but one day he said, they gave me a key to their house and I went into their house and I got a drink of water and I turned on their TV and then he didn't say anything for a long time and I said, and?
Well that's all. I just feel like I kind of took advantage of the situation. Okay, yeah, yeah.
I just feel like I wasn't, I didn't need to do that and wow, I remember thinking, oh my goodness, I was a little concerned about him being so good and so many of them are so pure but missionaries would confess many things and then you take the extreme of the missionary that I think I referred to a few weeks ago, you know, the missionary who came in and confessed and he just, he just came, well let's make this really short. I've done everything.
And felt no, no more or no remorse or little remorse in his confession. So after hearing literally I think of thousands of confessions at the MTC, probably eight out of ten had something that they felt like they needed to just resolve and make sure that they were clean and ready to go. I've learned that we have kind of this guilt complex in some ways in the church, Scott.
Confessions don't hear enough confessions from those who really need to confess and they probably hear too many confessions from those who are just beating themselves up, who have a guilt complex and who are shaming themselves. And I just think it's important that all of us understand what confessions need to be made and the spirit in which those confessions should be made.
We don't need to confess certain things that are only affecting me or that I'm wrestling with that don't affect others or that would not affect my worthiness to participate in the ordinance of the church or threaten my church membership and where there's been no criminal activity. Those can be taken care of directly to our Heavenly Father through the Savior's atonement and in our taking full accountability for those we can confess and forsake them and move on.
So I used to tell my students when it came, when they would ask questions, well do I need to confess this, do I need to confess this and this and this and this? And I would just say, well when in doubt, go check it out. But I think that those who commit serious sins, they know they should confess and they should confess. And those who don't commit serious sins, they should be understand and have the faith necessary to just take care of that with their Heavenly Father.
The confession is still there but it's just with our Heavenly Father. So Dave we talk about the who and kind of for what so far. And I think that if we talk about these things, it's important for us to include why. Why is confession so important? How would you answer that question if somebody were to say, Dave, why do we need to confess at all?
So I touched on that when saying that to accept full accountability, full responsibility in my complete honesty, I need to hear myself, to myself and to others, to my Heavenly Father especially and to others, take accountability and responsibility for my sins. And as we go further into this, let me just, there's one more group of people we need to confess to.
If we have done anything in them, if we're married, and we've done anything to offend our sweetheart in secret or otherwise, that we should confess to her. If we have done anything to hurt others, we should ask for their forgiveness and confess our offense to others that we have hurt or sinned against. I think that's also really important, Scott. And that goes into the why so that we can maintain those sacred relationships of trust. Right.
Right. Well, I think as we start talking about these sort of things, another potential part of the why is it's really there's a freedom that comes with it. There's a burden in carrying these secrets. You know, I think last episode I talked about how my sweetheart Deb always says that we're only as sick as our secrets. Well, those secrets are heavy and they weigh on us and they don't just, I mean, there's a physical weight that we sometimes feel from the, but there's always an emotional weight.
There's always a spiritual weight that comes with having these secrets. And anybody who's experienced this, I have and, you know, perhaps most of us at some point have. And I haven't. Here's an invitation to engage in this process because the freedom and that comes from that confession is unmatched by anything else I've experienced in this life.
I remember one time when, when I needed to put forth a confession and it was a big confession and that confession resulted in the lifting of my membership ultimately. And you know, and it was not a confession of one thing. It was a confession of an attitude that involved many things, but that those many things, which I at one point in my life was ready to go to my grave with Dave.
I was, I was just really ready to just, you know, because of the fear and the pride and all those other things that we had talked about earlier in earlier episodes, because of all of those things. There was such a weight on me that my personality had even changed. Unbeknownst to me, it was unrecognizable in large degree by myself, but it had changed. I had become more morose. I had become more edgy. I had become more honoree. I had become more conflicted with anything that was spiritual.
I became more defensive. I had a big chip on my shoulder most of the time. But when that confession took place on my part and when I was able to put in process a true repentance process, and these things were things that needed to be confessed. There were legal issues involved. There were other issues that, you know, had to do with morality and other things too that definitely needed to be confessed. These were not, I took bubblegum from my mom's purse scenarios.
These were not, I took a $5 bill out of the till at the dry cleaners and went and bought a hamburger with it. You know, they weren't those types of things. They were heavy, heavy, heavy things. And through that confession, there was a huge weight. And we hear that, you know, I feel like a weight was lifted off me. Well, that's literal.
You know, for those of us who have been through that process, that expression is not just an expression, it's a literal experience where we feel unweighted and we feel more freedom. And we actually feel freedom now to start moving in the direction where we have felt damned to do so prior to that. We just felt like we were stopped and couldn't keep moving in that direction. Yeah. And we can't sin in a bubble, Scott.
All our, when we sin, as you described your sins affecting you personally and your emotions and your attitudes and your, you know, whenever we sin, it affects others around us. And it's so important that when we are negatively affecting others around us who are close to us, that we maybe confess to them. So children who teenagers, adolescents who go in and confess to a bishop will probably be encouraged to share it with their parents. Now a bishop will keep it confidential.
Bishops role is to not to call parents in, not to, you know, he needs to protect the confidentiality of those who confess to him. I'm not talking about child abuse or sexual abuse or those kinds of issues. I know that's in the news a lot these days about the exclusion of confidentiality in confessions to ecclesiastical leaders in the church. And there's two sides to that. And I recognize both of those opinions.
That an adolescent who is having an issue, let's say with morality, it would be nice if that individual, that youth would be willing to share that with their parents so that the parents could help to strengthen them. So another reason why we confess is to seek assistance, to seek a little more strength, to get some help. That's another reason why we confess. Whether that's to our Heavenly Father or the bishop or to our parents or spouse or whoever that might be.
We can't sin in a bubble, meaning that we can't sin without affecting others. And we should ask for the assistance and help of others to those who we trust who can really help us. I think it's sometimes not good to confess to parents because some parents can't handle it frankly and bishops and individuals need to be wise about the counsel they give in that regard.
I've had some students who have told me about their confessing to parents and their parents beating them up, either physically or verbally. And that's just totally backfires. So there has to be some wisdom and spirit in who we confess to.
And it's important that as we talk about confession, Scott, before we go into the role of the church in more detail, it's important that we identify that in this scripture in Doctrine Covenants 58 verse 42 and 43 where it says, By this, she may know if a man repenteth of his sins, behold, he will confess them and forsake them. It's interesting that these two are put together.
These two, I don't want to call them steps, but these two choices are part of the repentance process and that they go together. Confessing and forsaking. The Lord is not pleased when we feel like we have to confess to everyone and their dog, so to speak. The Lord is not pleased when I know when teenagers are confessing serious sins to teenagers, to their friends. That does nothing but weaken both of them. We should not confess sins to individuals who can't handle it.
When you confess a sin to a priesthood leader who has keys, and I've experienced this many times, it's like water off a duck's back. I would hear all these confessions at the MTC and I'd walk in to our sacrament meeting at four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon and I would look out at individuals and I would know, hey, I know they confess some things to me, but I couldn't really remember them. I thought that was one of the great miracles of that process was that I couldn't even remember their sins.
It was so sweet to go in there and say, I can't remember what they confessed. But that may not be true when we're talking about confessing to friends, for example, of our moral transgression over the weekend, that would only damage our friend, make their weakness even greater. So we have to understand that when he says confess and forsake, forsaking means that we don't go around and continue to confess over and over and over again.
I think in this regard Elder Anderson has a story about that when he was a mission president and a missionary in France confessing to him and it's a sin that he'd confessed to his bishop, confessed to his stake president. He continues to confess to President Anderson, Elder Anderson, who's a mission president there, and Elder Anderson finally asked, will you just put this behind you and move on? We need to confess and then forsake, let it go. We need to let it go.
I know I had that problem as a missionary, right? I confessed to my bishop, I confessed to my stake president. I stood in the line, it was a long line. This was, I'm old and this was before we even had an MTC and there was still a missionary home in Salt Lake City in a converted old elementary school and I still remember the presence of the mission home, the name was President Byrd.
And I stood in a line that went from his office down the hall, around the corner, down another hall and I got in the end of that line about 10 o'clock one night and stood in that line until about 1 a.m. in the morning so that I could just confess my sins just one more time. Then I go out on my mission, I feel like I got to confess and my mission president there and I'm writing. Anyway, we need to know that when we confess, then we forsake.
If our confession is honest, full and complete, then we need to forsake it, Scott. We need to let it go and put it behind us. There's another component to this forsaking part, right? How often do we beat ourselves up because of our past sins and we use those as ways to flog ourselves even in front of others, even jokingly, even making light of, well, yeah, you know me, that's how, and on it goes. Forsaking our sins also means that we don't keep wearing those dirty clothes.
We get rid of them, they're gone. Yeah, and it's important for us to remember where we came from. It's important for us to remember that some of those sins, and you know, we don't want them out in front of us, we don't want to be focusing on those, that's not forsaking. But forsaking also doesn't mean that we completely forget about them, we just don't keep relishing in them regardless of what that relish may look like. It's important for us to be able to look back.
You know, I always say in recovery, it's important for us to remember where we've come from, otherwise we have a serious danger of maybe going back to where we came from. It's important for us to remember that. But in order for us to really forsake, we can't keep living even verbally in that type of life, Dave. Not even mentally or emotionally, for example. When I was a missionary, this is what we would teach about repentance, it was in part of the discussions we had to memorize.
We would teach about the steps we used to call them then, which I don't like to call them now, but when it came to forsaking of sin, we would say, forsaking your sin means. You never repeat it, not even in your mind. Right. Well, I loved that then. That was a blessing to me then as I was trying to repent of my sins as a full-time missionary, and it continues to be a blessing to me now. And I know that it is a choice to keep confessing your sins mentally.
Now it's true, Scott, we will not forget our sins, and that's a gift and a blessing, so we won't repeat them. But we can't relish and go through the process in our mind of sinning over and over and over again and ever put them behind us, forsake them, and feel forgiven. Forsaking means that we let them go, and that when we think of them, it's, oh no, not, okay, let me relive it.
When we forsake sins, it means we do not repeat them even in our minds, and maybe especially in our hearts, that we let them go and that they're behind us. My wife, I love her little exercise that she has when she thinks of her past sins or she thinks of her little sins that she commits daily. She just speedily repents by bowing her head and saying, thank you, thank you. And she's thinking of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
I think that sometimes a little trigger like that when we think of our past sins, because Satan does not want us to let go of those sins. That's the one thing he doesn't want us to do is forsake them. He wants to hold them over our head, keep them in our minds and in our hearts, and he does so, and he has the power to do so. And he uses our own sins against us by confessing them to us, by not letting us let them go, over and over and over again, says, remember when?
Remember, I think that he can put those thoughts into our mind, and when they come into our mind, we have a choice to make. To either relive them or to forsake them by thinking of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and about the power of the Atonement and exercising our faith in Christ and that through him that it's behind me, I've let it go. And we bow our heads and we say thank you and we move on. I think that is so wonderful that we have that opportunity.
And there's where Heavenly Father takes again those weaknesses and makes them become strengths to us like talked about in Ether 1227 in the Book of Mormon, where we have those rememberings, right? But rather than beat ourselves up, we do as Chris does and say thank you. Thank you for redeeming me. Thank you for paying that price. Thank you for your merits being in place of my merits to bring me closer to you. And those in that way can be a real blessing.
And that's where we see the Atonement of Jesus Christ really work in our lives. Absolutely. I love the quote that Elder Anderson used in his book, The Divine Gift of Forgiveness in the chapter called Confessing and Forsaking Sin. I love this quote that he uses by Elder Neil A. Maxwell, who says, Confessing aids forsaking. It's important to see how these two, as the Lord uses them in Doctrine and Cums 58, how these two go together. Confessing aids forsaking.
We cannot expect to sin publicly and extensively and then expect to be rescued privately or quickly. When we face those we have heard, especially those we love, although it is a painful experience, there can be a great help in giving us the strength not to repeat the sins of the past. So Confessing aids forsaking.
And forsaking means that we don't continue to confess our sins even to ourselves, that we don't continue to shame ourselves or to relive them in any way in relishing them or in the horror of them, that we just let them go and we quickly think of Christ and thank Christ for his redemption. That's how the process of repentance works. And it is something that does take work. It takes great effort. It takes great mental exertion to be able to put our sins behind us.
It takes complete honesty to be able to be fully accountable and to become blameless. So I think that we have probably said enough about Confessing and Forsaking, such an important part of the process of repentance. And I think it's really helpful. I invite our listeners to think about how these two, I don't know what to call them attributes. What do we call them?
These two exercises or these two choices, these two actions of our repentance, confessing and forsaking, how they are connected, how they go together. We need to confess what we need to confess to those who need to hear the confession. And we need to stop confessing over and over and over again sins that we should be forsaking. And we should not confess to anyone who the confession is going to weaken or hurt.
I know it's true that in the young single adult population of the church, I had many tell me this, that they would go on dates. And when they were dating and that individuals would ask them, have you ever done this? Have you ever done that?
And this was a part of a conversation they were having, which was, I believe, totally used by Satan to manipulate individuals and to weaken individuals and to kind of see what individuals were willing to do or what they have done or what, oh man, I used to tell students who would tell me that. I would say, well, that's just evil. That's just evil to ask people about their past. You don't ask people about their past. There is nothing good that can come out of that.
Now I have to pause because Elder Anderson, he and I had this conversation. I think when people are getting in a really serious relationship, Scott, when they are maybe becoming so serious that they might be engaged or they might be married, then that's a little bit different. And that an individual deserves to know, are there any sins of your past? Are there any addictions in your life that are going to affect our relationship? That's a different deal. I'm not talking about that.
I'm just saying people who are not in a serious binding relationship should not be confessing their sins to each other. That is damaging and it's manipulative. Yeah. We could go on and on. This has been a great podcast. I think that I've got to take a lot of things for myself from this, Dave. I love what you read to us from the book about what Elder Maxwell had said about how confessing begins the forsaking process. It just strengthens it.
It strengthens it, even the beginning of it in some ways. I want to reinforce to Scott the idea that shaming is damning and that shaming is definitely not forsaking. A person who has forsaken their sins as we are commanded to do, if we have confessed them to ourselves, to our Heavenly Father, and to proper priesthood authority and others who maybe we have hurt. Once we have done that, forgiven at this point or not, we need to forsake them.
Forsaking means that we let them go and we don't continue to live them, repeat them, even in our minds. Shaming is the process of individuals who just cannot let it go, who keep reliving it, keep beating themselves up over it. And again, I know that Satan plays a role in that. That shaming is not repenting. It has no role in the repentance process. If we go back to episode number three, in episode number three, it's entitled, The Glimpse of Who We Are.
And if we have that glimpse, if we even have a brief or a small understanding of who we really are, the shame is non-existent. Shaming is of the devil. There is no question that shame, let's just identify that real quickly. Shame means, and I've heard this said a lot, shame means that I'm a mess, that I'm a mistake, that I am a mistake. That's shame. That's not shame. I mean, we're not mistakes.
We are children of our Heavenly Father who have a divine royalty waiting for us at some point as we become joint heirs in our progression with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Shame has nothing to do with that. Guilt on the other hand helps us to capitulate and to... we can use guilt down the road as sort of steering aids, helping us to stay on the track. Huge differences. Shame has no part in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Guilt is positive and it's of God to recognize, to truly recognize our sins. So guilt is a positive. But shame is of Satan. Guilt is of God. Shame is of Satan. And shaming is damning. So when we talk about confessing and forsaking, they go together. And once we've done the confessing, which aids the forsaking, we put it behind us and we let it go.
And then next week we can talk about some of the other parts and choices that we need to make, some of the other work that we need to do in order to feel forgiven of the Lord and to complete the repentance process, which is an ongoing process, a daily process.
So thankful to talk about these things and maybe just an invitation again, which is to begin now, to confess yourselves, to confess your sins to yourself, to come into the open, no more secrets, and to be able to confess to those who need to hear the confession and to know one else and then to put it behind us and to begin to forsake them.
And as we do, we begin to live more fully the gospel of Jesus Christ, thereby allowing the spirit of our Heavenly Father to be with us, to always be constant in our lives, and thereby putting on the atonement of Jesus Christ and His power through that. Another great day, Dave. Grateful to be here with you. Do you have any final thoughts before we?
We didn't get to the role of the church or to the membership councils, which I just wanted to touch on briefly, Scott, but we can maybe do that next week as well. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, everybody. Yeah, it's good to be here. Hey, gang, thanks for being with us. Remember that we love you. We hope you feel our Heavenly Father's love for you most importantly. And always remember that you have been redeemed through His blood. Thanks for being with us.
We look forward to being with you again very soon. Take care.