I Had Said Sorry So Many Times the Word Had Gone Soft

There is a specific kind of tiredness that comes from apologizing to God for the same thing for years.

It is not guilt. Guilt at least has some voltage in it. This is flatter than that. It is the sound of a word you have used so many times that it has worn smooth, like a coin that has been in a pocket for thirty years and has no writing left on either side.

I got there. I want to say that plainly, because a man who preaches and has never been there is not much use to anybody in this particular room.

I had a sentence I said to God. I will not tell you what it was, because it was mine and it was not very good and the exact wording does not matter. What matters is that by the end I was saying it the way you read a sign you pass every day, and I knew I was doing that, and knowing it made it worse, and then I would apologize for that too.

And underneath all of it was one question that I could not get an answer to on my own: if I do not feel it any more, was any of it real?

Paul answers that question, and he answers it in a way I did not expect.

Two sorrows, and only one of them moves

Here is the verse, and the whole thing turns on one word.

For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. (2 Corinthians 7:10, King James Version)

Worketh. Both sorrows work. Both of them are doing something. Paul is not separating real sorrow from fake sorrow, which is what everybody assumes he is doing. He is separating sorrow that produces a turn from sorrow that produces a circle.

The sorrow of the world goes round. It feels terrible, and it is genuine, and it arrives at exactly the same place it started, which is why it is exhausting. That is the loop I was in with my worn out sentence.

Godly sorrow moves. It ends somewhere. And notice how Paul describes the end of it: not to be repented of, which means you never have to go back and regret having turned.

You are not being asked to produce a feeling, and Paul measures a sorrow by where it goes rather than by how much it hurts. 2 Corinthians 7:10 tests the sorrow by its work rather than by its heat. It is His Spirit, John 16:8 who convinces the world of sin, who does the work a person cannot manufacture in themselves.

What God does not despise

If the worry is that a worn out offering is not good enough to bring, David got there first and said something startling about it.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. (Psalm 51:17)

Thou wilt not despise. That is a strange way to say it. He does not say God is delighted with it, or impressed by it. He says God will not look down on it, which is exactly the promise a person needs when what they have to bring is threadbare and they know it.

David wrote that in the worst week of his life, having done something enormous and known about it for a year. He is not bringing God a polished thing. He is bringing a broken one, and the whole verse exists to say that broken is admissible.

You have something admissible to bring, and Scripture rules on it in advance. Psalm 51:17 says a broken and contrite heart He will not despise, and it is the Holy Spirit, Romans 8:26 who helps our infirmities and makes intercession, who carries what a person can no longer phrase well.

The son's speech never got finished

The most famous turn in the Bible is not eloquent and never gets delivered in full.

I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. (Luke 15:18-19)

He rehearses it. He walks a long way with it in his mouth. And then the father runs, and the speech gets about halfway out before it is interrupted by a robe and a ring and a party.

Two things are worth noticing.

The first is that the boy's motive was not pure. Read the verse before: he is starving. He thinks about the bread in his father's house. Scripture leaves that in, and does not apologize for it, and the father does not audit it at the gate.

The second is that the wording did not matter. He never got to the good part. The turn was in the direction he was walking, not in the sentence he had prepared.

You have been turned toward Him already if your feet are pointed that way, whatever the sentence sounds like. Luke 15:20 has the father running while the speech is still unfinished. It is the same Spirit, Galatians 4:6 sent into the heart crying Abba, who is the one making that word come out at all.

What actually leads a person to turn

There is a line in Romans that reframes this whole subject and it took me years to believe it.

Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? (Romans 2:4)

The goodness of God leadeth thee. Not the fear of God. Not the disgust of God. His goodness is the thing that walks a person toward turning.

Which means a person trying to squeeze more feeling out of themselves in order to make the turn count has the mechanism backwards. The feeling was never the engine. His kindness is the engine, and the feeling is sometimes a passenger and sometimes is not in the car at all.

And it means the worn out sentence is not evidence against anybody. It is evidence that a person has kept walking to the same door for years, which is a form of faithfulness that nobody ever calls by that name.

You have been led here by His goodness rather than dragged here by your own disgust. Romans 2:4 names the goodness of God as what leads to repentance. It is the Spirit of God, Titus 3:5 naming the renewing of the Holy Ghost, who does the renewing that repetition never could.

And if what you keep apologizing for has got heavier than a habit, say it out loud to a person and not only to God in a quiet room: a doctor, a counselor, a sponsor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. There is no prize for carrying the same thing alone for eleven years, and I have never once seen it work.