Repentance Means change

Serving as a missionary in the South Africa Cape Town Mission, I spoke to many men and women who spoke English as a second or third language. Xhosa was the major language of the majority of the people I encounter in the missionary field, and I could not speak the language well enough to discuss the gospel with the passion it creates in me.
When it came to speaking about the act of repentance, a wise missionary told me that the meaning of repentance is to change. Inguquko is the equivalent word in Xhosa, but I am glad that I focused on the word Change. God does not want us to change from being individuals, but from being full of, influenced by, and encumbered in sin from thoughts, words, and action= CHANGE!

President Russel M. Nelson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in the April 2019 General Conference, 

"The word for repentance in the Greek New Testament is metanoeo. The prefix meta- means “change.” The suffix -noeo is related to Greek words that mean “mind,” “knowledge,” “spirit,” and “breath.”
Thus, when Jesus asks you and me to “repent,” He is inviting us to change our mind, our knowledge, our spirit—even the way we breathe. He is asking us to change the way we love, think, serve, spend our time, treat our wives, teach our children, and even care for our bodies.
Nothing is more liberating, more ennobling, or more crucial to our individual progression than is a regular, daily focus on repentance. Repentance is not an event; it is a process. It is the key to happiness and peace of mind. When coupled with faith, repentance opens our access to the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ." [We Can Do Better and Be Better By President Russell M. Nelson]

---

Leave the shell of the old life behind and move on to perfection on change at a time.

Repentance means more than apologizing for wrongs we commit or omit in our daily walk, but also change into a better version of ourselves. Little by little we leave the old self behind through small changes we make on a daily basis. Jesus Christ commands, "Be ye therefor Perfect..." Matthew 5:48. He did not say that perfection would come immediately. The tool to obtain perfection is repentance made possible by the Atonement of Jesus Christ. 

Moroni Perspective
​In his farewell engraving on the Golden Plates that became the modern Book of Mormon, Moroni leaves his testimony and admonishment saying, "come unto Christ, and be perfected in him..." How are we to be perfected in him?
​Moroni continues with the answer, "deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ." Moroni 10:32 What has Moroni seen of you?

---