READING PLAN
Starting Over: A Plan on Repentance and Change
Seven days with the Book of Mormon's most powerful transformation stories — for anyone who feels weighed down by past choices and wonders if change is actually possible.
The Book of Mormon has more dramatic transformation stories than any other book of scripture.
This is not an accident. Moroni, the final compiler of the record, explicitly tells us why — the book was written for people who need the Atonement. He says it directly: "I write unto you, Gentiles." And the Gentiles he writes for are people carrying things. The record is full of people who were carrying things and found that Christ could do something with what they brought.
This plan is for someone who is wondering: is change actually available to me, specifically? Not in general — specifically, for the particular weight I have been carrying. The answer the Book of Mormon gives is consistent across every story in this plan: yes. Come and see.
Print this plan
Use your browser's print function (Cmd+P or Ctrl+P) to print this plan. The day-by-day structure is clean for printing — tuck it in your scriptures and return to it whenever you need it.
Enos's Wrestle — When Forgiveness Feels Like It Has to Be Fought For
Read
Enos 1:1-27 (the entirety of the book of Enos — one chapter, the most personal prayer narrative in the Book of Mormon).
What to Look For
Enos doesn't tell you what he did before this prayer. He says only that the words of his father "sunk deep into my heart" while he was hunting, and he "kneeled down before my Maker" and "cried unto him in mighty prayer." Watch what he asks for first — his own forgiveness — and then what happens in sequence: forgiveness for himself, then concern for his people, then concern for his enemies. The prayer expands as the guilt lifts.
Key Verse
"And I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God, before I received a remission of my sins. Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart."
Enos 1:2-3
Reflect
Enos calls it a "wrestle." Not a prayer that came easily or quickly — a wrestle. He prays all day and into the night before the voice comes. What does it mean to you that receiving forgiveness required him to wrestle, and that God honored that wrestling? Is there a prayer you have been praying that has felt like a wrestle?
When God finally speaks to Enos, He doesn't say "I forgive you because you prayed hard enough." He says: "thy faith hath made thee whole." The wrestling was not the price of forgiveness — the faith was. The wrestling was the form that Enos's faith took that day. God met him in it. He will meet you in yours too.
Alma's Rebirth — Three Days of Darkness, One Cry
Read
Mosiah 27:8-37 (the angel, the collapse, the three days) and Alma 36:1-30 (Alma's own retelling of the event, decades later, to his son Helaman).
What to Look For
Read both accounts. The first (Mosiah 27) is the external narrative — what others saw, what was reported. The second (Alma 36) is Alma telling it himself, in his own words, after decades of living with what happened. Notice how the pivot in Alma 36 is a single sentence: "I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me." Everything in the chapter hinges on that one cry. Before it: darkness, pain, regret. After it: light, joy, peace.
Key Verse
"And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more. And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!"
Alma 36:19-20
Reflect
Alma's conversion happens when he cries to Jesus in the middle of the darkness — not after he earns his way out, not after he promises to do better, not after he has served enough time. In the middle of it. What would it look like for you to call out to Christ in the middle of the guilt you're carrying, not after you've resolved it?
Alma the Younger spent three days in a state of exquisite torment over his choices. He was not a reluctant sinner who fell into small mistakes — he was an active enemy of the church his father led. And still: one cry, in the right direction, and everything changed. Not gradually. Immediately. The Atonement is not a slow-drip medication for people who have only mild sins. It is a complete answer for people who have been carrying serious weight for a long time. See the full character study at Alma the Younger.
King Benjamin's Offer — The Change of Heart That Changes Everything
Read
Mosiah 2:9-41 (the core of King Benjamin's sermon on the natural man and the atonement) and Mosiah 5:1-7 (the people's response and their description of what has changed).
What to Look For
Benjamin's sermon contains one of the most precise definitions of human fallenness in scripture: "the natural man is an enemy to God" (Mosiah 3:19). But watch the remedy — not effort, not willpower, but "yielding to the enticings of the Holy Spirit." The people's response in Mosiah 5 is remarkable: they say they have "no more disposition to do evil." They don't say they have more willpower. They say something has changed at the level of desire.
Key Verse
"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord."
Mosiah 3:19
Reflect
Benjamin says the change happens through "yielding" — not striving, not forcing, but yielding. What is the difference, in your experience, between trying harder to change and yielding to something bigger than yourself? When have you experienced the second kind?
The people of King Benjamin do not describe their transformation as a decision they made. They describe it as something that happened to them through an encounter with God — their hearts were changed, their desires were different. This is the Book of Mormon's answer to the exhaustion of willpower religion: at a certain point, the thing that changes us is not effort but encounter. The effort is in showing up. The change is God's work. See the verse study at Mosiah 3:19.
The Buried Weapons — When Repentance Becomes a Covenant
Read
Alma 24:6-30 (the Anti-Nephi-Lehies burying their weapons and choosing to die rather than take up arms again).
What to Look For
The Anti-Nephi-Lehies have converted from a life of violence, and they make a radical decision: they bury their weapons "deep in the earth" as a witness that they will never return to the life they've left. When the Lamanite army attacks, they prostrate themselves and are killed — and the sight of their former companions dying without fighting causes more than a thousand of the attackers to throw down their weapons and convert. Watch what the willingness to die for repentance produces in others.
Key Verse
"And now, my brethren, if our brethren seek to destroy us, behold, we will hide away our swords, yea, even we will bury them deep in the earth, that they may be kept bright, as a testimony that we have never used them, at the last day; and if our brethren destroy us, behold, we shall go to our God and shall be saved."
Alma 24:16
Reflect
The Anti-Nephi-Lehies name their covenant publicly and make it irreversible — the weapons are buried, not stored. Is there something in your own process of change that would be strengthened by making it more concrete and less reversible? What is the equivalent of "burying the weapons" in your situation?
These people had "stained their swords" — the text says it plainly. They were not innocent converts; they were people who had done serious harm. Their repentance was not a feeling or a verbal acknowledgment. It was a total, public, irreversible act. And the result was not just their own peace — the sight of that commitment moved a thousand people who came to kill them to conversion instead. Deep, genuine repentance has a radius. It affects more people than just the one repenting.
Zeezrom's Transformation — From Enemy to Ally
Read
Alma 10:31 (introduction to Zeezrom), Alma 11:21-46 (Zeezrom attempting to entrap Amulek), Alma 12:1-8 (Zeezrom caught and beginning to change), and Alma 15:3-12 (Zeezrom healed and joining the mission).
What to Look For
Follow Zeezrom's arc across all four passages. He begins as a professional lawyer explicitly using his skills to entrap believers and undermine the mission. Then something shifts — watch the moment in chapter 12 when he stops debating and starts trembling. Pay attention to what Alma says he perceives: that Zeezrom "began to tremble under a consciousness of his guilt." The change starts with honest self-awareness, not performance.
Key Verse
"And Zeezrom lay sick at Sidom, with a burning fever, which was caused by the great tribulation of his mind on account of his wickedness, for he supposed that Alma and Amulek were no more; and he supposed that they had been slain because of his iniquity."
Alma 15:3
Reflect
Zeezrom believed his choices had caused Alma and Amulek's deaths — and that belief was destroying him physically. Then they appeared, and Alma asked him a single question: "Believest thou in the power of Christ unto salvation?" The specificity of the question matters. Do you believe, specifically, that Christ's power extends to what you have done? Write your honest answer.
The Book of Mormon introduces Zeezrom as a skilled manipulator and opponent of the mission. By the end, he is one of the missionaries. That is not a gentle arc — it is a complete reversal. And it happened not through Zeezrom cleaning himself up but through Alma naming what was happening ("a consciousness of his guilt") and asking the one question that mattered. Zeezrom's transformation is a study in what happens when guilt is met with truth instead of judgment: the guilt itself becomes the doorway.
Alma Preaches to Alma — "Can Ye Feel So Now?"
Read
Alma 5:1-62 (Alma's sermon to the people of Zarahemla — one of the most searching self-examination texts in all of scripture).
What to Look For
Alma begins by recounting what God did for his father's people (the history of deliverance), then asks a series of increasingly pointed questions: "Have ye spiritually been born of God?" "Have ye received his image in your countenances?" "Can ye look up to God with a pure conscience?" And then the piercing one: "If ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?" The question is not whether you once had it. It is whether you have it today.
Key Verse
"And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?"
Alma 5:26
Reflect
"Can ye feel so now?" Answer it honestly. Not what you remember feeling, not what you think you should feel — what do you feel right now, today? If the answer is no, what does Alma's sermon suggest about what restores that feeling? If the answer is yes, what has kept it alive? See the verse study at Alma 5:26.
Alma 5 is a sermon about spiritual honesty. Alma is not asking the people of Zarahemla to perform better faith — he is asking them to look clearly at their actual spiritual state and then decide what to do with what they see. The questions in this chapter are hard precisely because they resist easy answers. That difficulty is the point. Real change begins with accurate self-knowledge. Alma 5 is designed to produce exactly that.
The Invitation That Closes the Book — Come Unto Christ
Read
2 Nephi 31:17-21 (the doctrine of Christ — the covenant path of repentance and forward movement) and Moroni 10:30-33 (Moroni's final invitation to come unto Christ and be perfected in Him).
What to Look For
Nephi calls his closing teaching "the doctrine of Christ" and centers it on one thing: pressing forward with a brightness of hope after having entered the covenant. Notice that repentance is part of the process, not the destination — the destination is being "perfected in him," which is not self-improvement but submission to his grace. Then watch how Moroni frames the same truth from the end of the record: "deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and... love God with all your might... then is his grace sufficient for you."
Key Verse
"Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, and by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ."
Moroni 10:32
Reflect
You have spent seven days with the Book of Mormon's most powerful stories of change — Enos, Alma, Benjamin's people, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, Zeezrom, Alma 5, and now this closing invitation. What is the one thing you want to carry forward from this week? Write it as a single sentence. That sentence is the beginning of what comes next.
Moroni 10:32 says grace is sufficient for you after you deny yourself ungodliness and love God — it sounds like a sequence, like you earn the grace by the doing. But read it again: the grace makes the perfection possible, not the other way around. The "come unto Christ" comes first. Everything else follows from the coming. After seven days of sitting with the most difficult stories in the record, the final word is still the same word it always was: come.
You've begun. Here's where to continue.
- Building Faith: A 7-Day Plan — After repentance, faith is what sustains the new direction
- Follow Christ Through the Book of Mormon — A 14-day comprehensive look at who Christ is throughout the entire record
- Be Like Jesus — What the changed life looks like in practice
- All Reading Plans — Browse all six thematic study plans