Repent and Receive - A Question of Control

When President Nelson told us that "Our ultimate quest in life is to prepare to meet our Maker," he also told us how to do that:

Our ultimate quest in life is to prepare to meet our Maker. We do this by striving daily to become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. And we do that as we repent daily and receive His cleansing, healing, and strengthening power.

So, in order to prepare to meet our Maker, we are to become more like Jesus Christ by repenting daily and receiving His cleansing, healing, and strengthening power. At first, I thought it was odd that President Nelson listed receiving Christ's power as a thing we need to do, since we have little control over that. We can only receive what we're given, so if Christ doesn't offer us His cleansing, healing, and strengthening power, we can't receive it. Yet, the more I think about it, the more control I think we have.

Firstly, while it's true that Jesus could withhold His blessings from us if He wanted to, that's not what He wants. He offers cleansing, healing and strength to everyone, on the condition of repentance. He has already decided to give us those blessings if we do our part to qualify for them. As long as we repent, which is something we can mostly control, Jesus will offer us His great gifts.

Yet, that doesn't mean that we'll necessarily receive those gifts. Even when we qualify for blessings, we won't always accept them. Christ may forgive us, but will we forgive ourselves? Christ may cleanse and heal us, but we might regain the old stains or reopen our old wounds. And Christ may give us strength, but what good is having strength if we don't use it? Jesus Christ offers us great blessings, but it's up to us to use them.

Essentially, we need to change. Change is the central element of repenting and of making good use of the power Jesus offers us. To repent means to change our behavior. There are a few more steps than that, but change is the biggest one. And the cleansing and healing Jesus offers us won't last long unless we change our ways and stop doing whatever we did to make such cleansing and healing necessary. And the strength we receive from Jesus Christ increases our ability to change.

But of course, the choice of whether we change or not is ultimately up to us. If we choose to repent and change, God will help us to do so, but even then, we have to choose to accept His help and to keep and continue the changes we choose to make. It's all up to us. Whether we choose to change our not, whether we accept God's help of not, and whether or not we ever change back, is all up to us. We control our destinies, including our eternal destiny. The choice of whether we repent and receive God's blessings or not is almost completely in our control.