“Conversion must mean more than just being a ‘card-carrying’ member of the church with a tithing receipt, a membership card, a temple recommend, etc. It means to overcome the tendencies to criticize and to strive continually to improve inward weaknesses and not merely the outward appearances.”
– Harold B. Lee
“Membership in the Church and conversion are not necessarily synonymous. Being converted and having a testimony are not necessarily the same thing either. A testimony comes when the Holy Ghost gives the earnest seeker a witness of the truth. A moving testimony vitalizes faith. That is, it induces repentance and obedience to the commandments. Conversion is the fruit or the reward for repentance and obedience.”
– Marion G. Romney
“No man can sincerely resolve to apply to his daily life the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth without sensing a change in his own nature. The phrase, ‘born again’, has a deeper significance than many people attach to it. This changed feeling may be indescribable, but it is real.”
– David O. McKay
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“Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He can deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, and pour out peace.”
– Ezra Taft Benson
“As children of God we are somebody. He will build us, mold us, magnify us if we will but hold our heads up, our arms out, and walk with Him.”
– Marvin J. Ashton
“Don’t become weary in doing good. If we are patient, we can experience the change of heart we seek. For most of us this will require only a slight change of course, sending us toward the time north. The adjustments we must make are those ‘small things’, but that does not mean they are easy. Too many forces are confusing our compass. But the pull to the polar star is one we recognize. It is the direction toward home.”
– Kathleen H. Hughes
“Sometimes the word converted is used to describe when a sincere individual decides to be baptized. However, when properly used, conversion means far more than that, for the new convert as well as the long-term member. With characteristic doctrinal clarity and precision. . . To be converted, you must remember to apply diligently in your life the key words “a love of God, with a fixed and controlling determination to keep his commandments.” Your happiness now and forever is conditioned on your degree of conversion and the transformation that it brings to your life. How then can you become truly converted? . . Stated simply, true conversion is the fruit of faith, repentance, and consistent obedience. Faith comes by hearing the word of God and responding to it. You will receive from the Holy Ghost a confirming witness of things you accept on faith by willingly doing them. You will be led to repent of errors resulting from wrong things done or right things not done. As a consequence, your capacity to consistently obey will be strengthened. This cycle of faith, repentance, and consistent obedience will lead you to greater conversion with its attendant blessings. True conversion will strengthen your capacity to do what you know you should do, when you should do it, regardless of the circumstances.”
– Richard G. Scott
“The decision to believe is the most important choice we ever make. It shapes all our other decisions.”
– L. Whitney Clayton
“For most of us, conversion does not occur quickly or all at once; it is an ongoing process and not a one time event that results from a dramatic or overpowering experience. Line upon line and precept upon precept, gradually and almost imperceptibly, our motives, our thoughts, our words, and our deeds become aligned with the will of God. Continuing conversion unto the Lord requires both persistence and patience.”
– David A. Bednar
“If we are not rooted in the teaching of the gospel and regular in its practices, any one of us can develop a stony heart.”
– Dallin H. Oaks
“True doctrine, understood, changes attitude and behavior. The study of doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior. Preoccupation with unworthy behavior can lead to unworthy behavior. That is why we stress so forcefully the study of the doctrines of the gospel.”
– Boyd K. Packer
“The process of effectively doing and living what we know to be true is one of the great challenges of mortality. Unfortunately for all of us, what we learn and know is not always reflected in what we do. As disciples of the Savior, we are not merely striving to know more; rather, we need to consistently do more of what we know is right and become better.”
– David A. Bednar
“If you and I sincerely desire to become converted unto the Lord, we must build appropriately and effectively upon Him as our foundation.”
– David A. Bednar
“A testimony comes when the Holy Ghost gives the earnest seeker a witness of the truth. A moving testimony vitalizes faith; that is, it induces repentance and obedience to the commandments. Conversion, on the other hand, is the fruit of, or the reward for, repentance and obedience. Conversion is effected by divine forgiveness, which remits sins. Thus [the earnest seeker] is converted to a newness of life. His sprit is healed.”
– Marion G. Romney
“Those who stand at the threshold of life always waiting for the right time to change are like the man who stands at the bank of the river waiting for the water to pass so he can cross on dry land.”
– Joseph B. Wirthlin
“God’s ultimate purpose is our progress.”
– D. Todd Christofferson
“It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do; even as vital as your work is and will be.”
– Russell M. Nelson
“We are admonished by prophets and apostles to awake unto God, be ‘born again,’ and become new creatures in Christ by receiving in our lives the blessings made possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The ‘merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah’ can help us triumph over the self-centered and selfish tendencies of the natural man and become more selfless, benevolent, and saintly.”
– David A. Bednar
“There is great power in pondering about the expectations we have for our lives. We become what we expect to become. I invite each of you to pause for a moment today and ponder about your expectations. Interview yourself. You may ask questions such as: What am I expecting to accomplish in life? What am I expecting ultimately to become? What am I doing that I shouldn’t be doing? Are the things I’m doing today going to lead me to accomplish the expectations I have for my life? What does the Lord expect of me in my future? I would suggest that you sit and think quietly about what you want to accomplish in your lifetime. Make a realistic and clear list of your expectations. Then make a plan for how to fulfill those expectations.”
– M. Russell Ballard
“This life is not so much a time for getting and accumulating as it is a time for giving and becoming.”
– Lance B. Wickman
“The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of the people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature . . . Christ changes men, and changed men can change the world.”
– Ezra Taft Benson
“God did not send us here to simply give us a grade; he sent us here because he knew the process would change us.”
– Henry B. Eyring
“Converted means to turn from one belief or course of action to another. Conversion is a spiritual and moral change. Converted implies not merely mental acceptance of Jesus and his teachings but also a motivating faith in him and his gospel. A faith which works a transformation, an actual change in one’s understanding of life’s meaning and in his allegiance to God in interest, in thought, and in conduct. In one who is really wholly converted, desire for things contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ has actually died. And substituted therefore is a love of God, with a fixed and controlling determination to keep his commandments.”
– Marion G. Romney
“The purpose of the gospel is to make bad men good, good men better, and to change human nature.”
– David O. McKay
“True happiness is not made in getting something. True happiness is becoming something.”
– Marvin J. Ashton
“Don’t worry about how inexperienced you are or think you are, but think about what, with the Lord’s help, you can become.”
– Henry B. Eyring
“The process of gathering spiritual light is the quest of a lifetime.”
– Dieter F. Uchtdorf
“We will not accidentally come to believe in the Savior.”
– L. Whitney Clayton
“God cares a lot more about who we are and about who we are becoming, than about who we once were.”
– Dale G. Renlund
“Even the smallest act of discipleship or the tiniest ember of belief can become a blazing bonfire of a consecrated life.”
– Dieter F. Uchtdorf
“Perhaps the greatest discovery of my life, without question the great commitment, came when finally I had the confidence in God that I would loan or yield my agency to Him – without compulsion or pressure, without any duress, as a single individual alone, by myself, no counterfeiting, nothing expected other than the privilege. In a sense, speaking figuratively, to take one’s agency, that precious gift which the scriptures make plain is essential to life itself, and by, ‘I will do as thou directs’, is afterward to learn that in so doing you possess it all the more.”
– Boyd K. Packer
“The very purpose of the creation and of our mortal existence are to see if you and I will do and become what the Lord instructs and commands us to do and to become. We have not been blessed with moral agency to do whatever we want whenever we will. Rather, according to the Father’s plan we have received moral agency to choose the right, to do good, and to become whatever God intends for us to become.”
– David A. Bednar
“As disciples of the Savior, we are not merely striving to know more; rather, we need to consistently do more of what we know is right and become better.”
– David A. Bednar
“My beloved brothers and sisters, to those of you who have been blessed by the gospel for many years because you were fortunate enough to find it early, to those of you who have come to the gospel by stages and phases later, and to those of you—members and not yet members—who may still be hanging back, to each of you, one and all, I testify of the renewing power of God’s love and the miracle of His grace. His concern is for the faith at which you finally arrive, not the hour of the day in which you got there.”
– Jeffrey R. Holland
“The Apostle Paul taught that the Lord’s teachings and teachers were given that we may all attain ‘the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ’. This process requires far more than acquiring knowledge. It is not even enough for us to be convinced of the gospel; we must act and think so that we are converted by it. In contrast to the institutions of the world, which teach us to know something, the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to become something. . . It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become.”
– Dallin H. Oaks
“If we look at us only through our mortal eyes, we may not see ourselves as good enough. But our Heavenly Father sees us as we truly are and who we can become.”
– Dieter F. Uchtdorf
“If we earnestly appeal to God, He takes us as we are and makes us more than we ever imagined.”
– Neill F. Marriott
“Sometimes Latter-day Saints express the wish that they could be baptized again – and thereby become as clean and worthy as the day in which they received their first saving gospel ordinance. May I respectfully suggest that our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son do not intend for us to experience such a feeling of spiritual renewal, refreshment, and restoration just once in our lives. The blessings of obtaining and always retaining a remission of our sins through gospel ordinances help us understand that baptism is a point of departure in our mortal spiritual journey; it is not a destination we should yearn to revisit over and over again. The ordinances of baptism by immersion, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the sacrament are not isolated and discrete events; rather, they are elements in an interrelated and additive pattern of redemptive progress. Each successive ordinance elevates and enlarges our spiritual purpose, desire, and performance. The Father’s plan, the Savior’s Atonement, and the ordinances of the gospel provide the grace we need to press forward and progress line upon line and precept upon precept toward our eternal destiny.”
– David A. Bednar
“The Master could be found mingling with the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the afflicted. He brought hope to the hopeless, strength to the weak, and freedom to the captive. He taught of the better life to come – even eternal life. This knowledge ever directs those who receive the divine injunction: ‘Follow thou me.’ It guided Peter. It motivated Paul. It can determine our personal destiny. Can we make the decision to follow in righteousness and truth the Redeemer of the world? With his help a rebellious boy can become an obedient man, a wayward girl can cast aside the old self and begin anew. Indeed, the gospel of Jesus Christ can change men’s lives.”
– Thomas S. Monson
“The greatest reward is not what we receive for our labor, but by what we become by it.”
– John Ruskin*
“Although conversion is miraculous and life changing, it is a quiet miracle.”
– LDS.org website
