The Healing Power of Forgiveness

Suggest that when we feel that we have been wronged by others, we should ask ourselves how the Savior would want us to respond. As President Howard W. Hunter, the 14th President of the Church, counseled: “We must think more of holy things and act more like the Savior would expect his disciples to act. We should at every opportunity ask ourselves, ‘What would Jesus do?’ and then act more courageously upon the answer” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1994, 118; or Ensign, Nov. 1994, 87).

Read the following counsel from President Joseph F. Smith, the sixth President of the Church:

“We all have our weaknesses and failings. Sometimes the husband sees a failing in his wife, and he upbraids her with it. Sometimes the wife feels that her husband has not done just the right thing, and she upbraids him. What good does it do? Is not forgiveness better? Is not charity better? Is not love better? Isn’t it better not to speak of faults, not to magnify weaknesses by iterating and reiterating them? Isn’t that better? and will not the union that has been cemented between you and the birth of children and by the bond of the new and everlasting covenant, be more secure when you forget to mention weaknesses and faults one of another? Is it not better to drop them and say nothing about them—bury them and speak only of the good that you know and feel, one for another, and thus bury each other’s faults and not magnify them; isn’t that better?” (“Sermon on Home Government,” Millennial Star, 25 Jan. 1912, 49–50).