“Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.” (Hebrews 6:1-2). One key reason that many of us postpone our commencement or slacken our effort of repentance and striving to walk by faith the gospel path is that we are afraid of starting over. It's as if life were a marathon and we got off the path at mile seven to grab some coffee and take a break and, now that we want to get started again, we have to go all the way back to the beginning and run those seven miles again. That's not how it works. The Lord does not require us to scrap everything and dig out a brand new foundation. However fully or completely we feel that we have abandoned or forfeited or forgotten the principles and ordinances of faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, when we repent fully and apply the Atonement of Christ and receive forgiveness and clear away all of the pride and vanity and self-deception, we will find that the foundation we laid all those years ago is still there, and the Holy Ghost is waiting to bring all things once more to our remembrance. We must go on unto perfection, not back. We learn line upon line and we don't try to unravel all of the old lines so that we can start again. Our flaws and our mistakes and our deviations are part of the pattern now. Every time we repent we are born again and become a new creature. Doing so may require us to tear down much of the great and spacious building that we had been working on. But the foundation of faith on Jesus Christ and repentance remains, plus a little extra. The winds of adversity and the tremors of affliction are going to shake us to the foundations time and time again. But each time our pride must come crashing down and we must start again, the foundation grows a little taller and a little wider and a little stronger. We will not notice right away, but as we continue to go forth with faith and repent constantly and hold fast to our covenants and seek always the companionship of the Holy Ghost and endure all of the falls and crashes and implosions of our hopes and dreams and, in short, as we go on unto perfection, eventually our foundation will have risen higher than even the loftiest turrets of our most prideful ambitions.
