He Had a Speech Ready and His Father Never Let Him Finish It

A man wrote out what he wanted to say to God four times and threw all four away.

The first one was too long. The second one read like a legal document, which was not surprising given what he did for a living. The third one he could not finish because halfway through he started listing the reasons, and the reasons made it worse, and he stopped.

The fourth one was better. It was honest and it was short and he was almost pleased with it, and then he noticed that he was almost pleased with it, and that felt like exactly the wrong thing to be, so that went in the bin too.

He sat there with a pen and nothing written and understood that he had been trying to find the right way in, as though there were a door somewhere with a particular handle on it and he had not yet located it.

He had spent an hour drafting. He had not said one word.

The son wrote a speech, and it did not get used

Everybody knows the parable. Almost nobody notices what happens to the words.

The younger son, at the bottom of it, works out exactly what he is going to say:

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)

Three parts. An admission, a disqualification, and a proposal. He has thought about it. He has almost certainly said it out loud on the road.

And then this:

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (Luke 15:20, King James Version)

Saw him. Which means he had been watching, which means he had been watching for a while, which means the running started before one word of the speech was delivered.

The son does get some of it out. He says the first two parts. And then the father, without answering any of it, turns to the servants and asks for the best robe and a ring and shoes.

The third part never gets said. The proposal about being a hired servant, the arrangement he had worked out to make himself acceptable, does not survive contact with his father's actual face.

You are not required to find the right way in, because somebody is already watching the road. That is Luke 15:20 as it is written, and it is the same Spirit, Galatians 4:6 sent into the heart crying Abba, who lets a person believe the running started before the speech.

Seven words, and one of them went home justified

Jesus tells another one, shorter, and He tells you the verdict at the end so there is no ambiguity.

Two men pray. One of them has a great deal of material. The other:

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. (Luke 18:13)

That is the whole prayer.

No structure. No explanation. No reasons and no plan. Seven words, and one of them is just an address.

And then Jesus says the thing that should end every argument anybody has ever had with themselves about how to say it:

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. (Luke 18:14)

You have enough words already, and He is not waiting for better ones. That is Luke 18:14 with the verdict attached. It is the Spirit of God rather than your phrasing who carries a sentence like that where it is going.

What God actually says He is looking for

If there were a formula, the Psalms would be where it lives, and instead there is this:

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 put it, and it is deliberate. It is written for somebody who assumes that what they are bringing is not good enough to bring.

And through Joel, God says the same thing by ruling out the performance:

Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. (Joel 2:13)

Tearing your clothes was the visible, public, unmistakable sign of grief. God says do not do that. Do the other thing, the one nobody can see.

You are not being assessed on how it sounds. Psalm 51 and Joel 2 both rule out the performance. It is His Spirit who does the turning in somebody who does not know how to start.

The distinction that is worth knowing

There is one useful line about this that is not a checklist, and it is Paul distinguishing two things that feel identical from the inside.

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

The difference is not intensity. Both can wreck a person.

Worldly sorrow circles. It is about how it looks, what it cost, who knows, and it ends where it began, only more tired. Godly sorrow moves. It has a direction, and the direction is toward somebody rather than around yourself.

If the circling kind is what is there tonight, that is worth saying out loud too. You are not required to manufacture the right kind of feeling before you turn. 2 Corinthians 7:10 names the difference in order to describe it rather than to set an entry requirement, and it is the Holy Spirit, Romans 8:26 described as helping our infirmities, who carries what a person cannot generate.

And if what you are turning from has got past what one person can put down alone, say it out loud to somebody as well as to God: a doctor, a counselor, a sponsor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Nobody should be alone in a room with certain things, and asking is not a failure of the turning.

The worst king they had

If the question is how far in is too far in, Scripture has an answer, and it is not subtle.

Manasseh reigned in Judah for fifty-five years and the record of him is about as bad as the Bible gets. Chronicles lists it without softening anything. He is described as having done worse than the nations that were driven out ahead of Israel (2 Chronicles 33:9).

And then:

And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, And prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication. (2 Chronicles 33:12-13)

He was intreated of him. God let Himself be talked to by that man.

There is no negotiation in the text, no probation, no explanation of why it was allowed. Fifty-five years of the worst on record, and then a prayer, and then God listened.

You are not further in than the door goes. That is 2 Chronicles 33 on the page. It is the same Spirit who makes a fact about a dead king into permission for a living person.