Indeed, procrastination is the thief of eternal life. As a person puts off his repentance until later, he learns to his dismay that the power to change is inversely proportional to the power of habit: the greater the strength of habit, the lesser the strength to change.
“Do Not Procrastinate the Day of Your Repentance”
Elder Melvin J. Ballard explained that until a person “learns to overcome the flesh, his temper, his tongue, his disposition to, indulge in the things God has forbidden, he cannot come into the celestial kingdom of God-he must overcome either in this life or in the life to come. But this life is the time in which men are to repent.
Do not let any of us imagine that we can go down to the grave not having overcome the corruptions of the flesh and then lose in the grave all our sins and evil tendencies. They will be with us. They will be with the spirit when separated from the body. The spirit only can repent and change, and then the battle has to go forward with the flesh afterwards. It is much easier to overcome and serve the Lord when both flesh and spirit are combined as one… .
Every man and woman who is putting off until the next life the task of correcting and overcoming the weakness of the flesh are sentencing themselves to years of bondage, for no man or woman will come forth in the resurrection until they have completed their work, until they have overcome, until they have done as much as they can do.” (“The Three Degrees of Glory,” sermon delivered in Ogden, Utah, on 22 September 1922.)