1. Having faith in Jesus Christ means that we know of him and about him. We must come to know him personally. When we do we can believe in him and his ability to redeem. And we can also believe him that they way is right and sure. This process of drawing ourselves nearer to Him makes us better. D&C 19:23 is the Lord telling us to learn of Him. D&C 88:118 teaches us that we can share words of wisdom with others to help them grow in faith. Alma 32:27 teaches us that we must, awaken and arouse our faculties, we must experiment on His words. Any effort we make to believe will be strengthened and furthered. I think we have to really want to believe and trust.
2. D&C 58:42-43 The process of repentance requires that we also confess and forsake our sins. Those two things show that we really are repentant. To forsake seems to be fairly straight forward -- we don't do whatever we did again. To confess seems to have a little more to understand around it. If we were to confess everything we could think of as a sin to a Bishop or Stake President that would be overwhelming in every aspect. I do believe that we can confess our sins to God for many things that we do wrong and want to repent of. We know that there are yet very many things for which we should confess to the proper authorities. We also need to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit -- I tend to think that those have to be in place to truly confess and forsake.
It is only through Christ that we can be saved, because he offered Himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law. The mistakes I make break higher laws than those established by man. If it were not for Christ I would have to pay the full measure of the cost for breaking those laws. Christ has enacted the power of Mercy by paying in full for all of those mistakes that I made, and then again for each human that has ever lived or will ever lived. On top of all this he also felt the pain? Why was that necessary? In the end His Atonement made possible the redemption of my soul, which includes the resurrection of my body. This seems to be a physical redemption that he makes.
3. In D&C 18:22 we learn that we must be baptized to be saved. In D&C 49:13 - 14 we are reminded that baptism by immersion must be followed by the laying on of hands for the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Or, we can't receive the Holy Ghost without baptism. In D&C 20:37 we get a list of things that we should do to be ready for baptism: - humble ourselves, - desire to be baptized, - come forth with broken hearts and contrite spirits, - witness before the church that we have truly repented of our sins (not exactly sure what this means), - are willing to take upon us the name of Jesus Christ, - with a determination to serve him to the end, - and have truly received the Spirit of Christ unto the remission of sins... So this last one and the one about witnessing before the church that we have repented are hard for me to understand. If I'm allowed to guess, my first instinct is that it is related to our attitude. Do we seem like members anxious to do our part, participate, share our testimonies, pray, attend all of our meetings, maybe even sit closer to the front, etc. I think as we do these things, not that we want to be seen by others, but because we feel it as a part of our worship and a part of our gratitude towards God for the blessings he has given us. I don't think we would act that way if we still needed repentance.
4. So the "power of the Holy Ghost" can operate before a person is baptized and leads one to that the gospel is true. It will testify of the truthfulness of Jesus Christ, his work and the work of his servants. The Gift is given to those who are baptized by proper authority. This gift allows us to have the companionship of the Holy Ghost when we are worthy and it is more powerful than that which is given before baptism. Most importantly it has the power to cleanse and purify while he is with us.
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