Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” As we strive to live faithful lives and become like our Savior, it is easy for us to quickly become overwhelmed when we consider all of the thousands of different commandments and precepts and standards to which we are to valiantly and perfectly embody, every second of every day. There's the commandments that we break on purpose because we are being wicked and willful, and the commandments that we fail to keep because we are weak and wayward, and then there are all of the commandments that we violate because we are unwittingly inattentive and ignorant. But God has given us a way to still live righteous lives and make real progress without drowning in the depths of demanding doctrines and cascading commandments. “And this is my doctrine, and it is the doctrine which the Father hath given unto me; and I bear record of the Father, and the Father beareth record of me, and the Holy Ghost beareth record of the Father and me; and I bear record that the Father commandeth all men, everywhere, to repent and believe in me.” We don't have to run ourselves ragged chasing after ten thousand different commandments and failing miserably at almost all of them. We only have to focus on keeping one commandment - the commandment to repent. If we have sinned and broken one commandment, but then we repent, we have also kept one commandment. Repentance can be the one kick that we practice ten thousand times. It doesn't matter how good or bad we are at keeping this or that commandment as long as we always commit to immediately obeying the commandment to repent as soon as we have recognized that we have erred. Every time we repent, we get a little better at the process of repentance. But it's more than that, because not only do we improve in our capacity to repent, but repentance also makes us humbler, wiser, and more capable of keeping whatever commandment it was that we broke. God does not care if we sin seven times or seventy times seven times or ten thousand times so long as we are repenting seven or seventy times seven or ten thousand times. The more we sin - and repent! - the more easily we will recognize and find ways to put off the natural patterns and tendencies that lead to sin and the more sensitive we will become to the whispered guidance of the Holy Spirit. Practicing repentance ten thousand times will make us a force to be reckoned with, just as we would be afraid to fight someone who had practiced the same kick ten thousand times. I know that we all struggle with keeping all of the commandments perfectly, so let us focus only on getting better and better at one of the very most important of all of God's commandments - repentance.
