Lesson Helps

Young Women Lesson 26: Repentance

Manual 3; Supplement from "Help Them on Their Way Home" by Henry B. Eyring

Discussion Questions:

  • What should you do if you think you need to repent? Who can help you?
  • What would you say to a friend who is planning to sin and repent later?

Excerpt from "Help Them on Their Way Home" by Henry B. Eyring:

I was a young bishop when I began to see clearly why the Lord wants us to strengthen children when they are young and rescue them quickly. I will tell you one story of a young person who represents many whom I have tried to help over the years.

She sat across from me at my bishop’s desk. She spoke to me of her life. She had been baptized and confirmed as a member of the Church when she was eight. There were no tears in her eyes as she recounted the more than 20 years that followed, but there was sadness in her voice. She said that the downward spiral began with choices to associate with what she thought were exciting people. She began to violate what at first seemed to be less important commandments.

She felt at first a little sadness and a twinge of guilt. But the associations with her friends provided a new feeling of being liked, and so her occasional resolutions to repent seemed less and less important. As the gravity of the commandments she was breaking increased, the dream of a happy eternal home seemed to fade.

She sat across from me in what she called misery. She wanted me to rescue her from the trap of sin in which she found herself bound. But the only way out was for her to exercise faith in Jesus Christ, to have a broken heart, to repent, and so be cleansed, changed, and strengthened through the Lord’s Atonement. I bore my testimony to her that it was still possible. And it was, but so much harder than it would have been to exercise faith early in her life on the journey home to God and when she first began to wander.

*To read the full talk, click here.

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