Tonight, our family was honored to have around 30 kids (between 12 - 18 years old) over to the house for a youth fireside. The topic I was given to speak about was forgiveness and repentance. To start things off, I decided to do something to really set the tone for serious and thoughtful discussion. I asked them to write down the answers to the following questions:
- What’s the name of a person who said and did something absolutely horrible that severely hurt you in any way?
- Why did this person’s action(s) hurt you so bad?
- What’s one reason why Heavenly Father would allow this to happen to you?
- What amount of money would you accept to forgive this person?
- If you were this person, what would you do in order to receive forgiveness for your actions?
- What you accept from Heavenly Father to forgive this person?
We had a great discussion on #3, which ended with an agreement that God would not give us anything we couldn't handle and that we're supposed to learn something from the experience that makes us stronger. Question #4 was easy, $0.00 - meaning forgiveness can't be measured in dollars. We never got to discuss #5, but hopefully they understand from it that forgiveness is needed to allow the other person a chance to repent.
That brought us to why repentance is so important. To make things interesting, I shared a story from the New Era magazine published in March 1986 called "The Bubble Gum Battle". It relays a funny story about a man that got a Hubba Bubba bubble gum stain on his favorite khaki pants and the effort it took to get the stain out. I won't ruin the story - but he makes a great comparison of how our lives are like trying to keep khaki pants clean ... both take constant effort since there's no way to keep them for getting dirty. Our tool for keeping ourselves clean is repentance, and we should not be afraid or ashamed to use it when we fall short.