I love this quote in "The Infinite Atonement".... "The more spiritual an individual becomes, the more sensitive he becomes to his imperfections. The better he becomes, the worse he realizes he was."
Since I am trying to refocus my life on repentance, I thought I would start with step 1 which deals with having sorrow for the sin, hurt, or mistakes one makes in life. In the book "The Infinite Atonement" Callister describes the two different types of sorrow we can feel. Godly sorrow is that sorrow which brings about the change of heart, and need and desire to want to repair those we have hurt, things we have damaged, and restore our relationship with Heavenly Father. Worldly sorrow often accompanies sin or problems and is usually a natural outcome to the sin, getting a bad grade on a test, losing a friendship, getting pregnant as a teen. These are hardship sorrows that come about as consequences to sin.
There are signs you will see if you have Godly Sorrow; you will have "reservoirs of compassion for those you have hurt, perhaps sore embarrassment, and finally and always a willingness to submit to whatever is necessary" to make things right. It may be an apology, a fixing and mending of hearts, etc. You would be willing to do whatever it takes to reestablish your standing with God. More signs of Godly Sorrow are:
- absence of excuses
- absence of blaming others
- absence of alibis
- willingness to restore to those we've hurt what we damaged, whether physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally
- willingness to apologize
- willingness to confess
- willingness to have compassion to those hurt
As I looked at the criteria of Godly Sorrow, I am on my way, but not quite there yet. I am still feeling a lot of the worldly sorrow that I am missing out on a best friend. I am finding I at times still have excuses, blame, and not as much compassion as I need. But I am grateful to have the knowledge so that I can continue to pray and take inventory so I can keep moving in the right direction.
I'll put it out there, sometimes having Godly Sorrow is hard! Sometimes you do feel it's other's faults you are in this situation, sometimes you don't want to restore what you took away, and sometimes you don't want to have compassion for those you've hurt. Do we rationalize our sin? Do we say it's because of our past so it's ok to say mean things? Do we say they hurt us first so it's ok to have a reaction? Do we say it's ok to ignore because they hurt us? Do we say we sinned but only because they made us? Do we say we sinned but the other person took it farther? Do we rationalize? I know I do.
If you're LDS, there is a great example of Godly Sorrow shown in the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's. They were a people who did heinous acts and murdered, raped, and stole. In an act of Godly Sorrow, these people buried their weapons so far in the ground that they could not ever get to them to hurt others again. In fact, their sorrow motivated them to restitution by offering to the Nephites that they would be slaves unto them until they repaired the damage caused. They knew they wouldn't be able to restore the lives they took but they had a desire to do all they could to make repairs.
Godly Sorrow propels us to moving toward complete repentance. I am struggling with it myself.
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