He Is Waiting Until He Feels Sorry Enough to Count

He is not putting it off. He wants that understood, because from the outside it looks exactly like putting it off.

What he is doing is waiting. He has an idea in his head, and he has never once examined it, which is that there is a level of feeling required for this to be genuine, and that anything under that line would be a performance and would show.

He has felt something a few times. Twice it was strong. Once it was in a car and once at two in the morning after a bad conversation.

Both times he thought, that is close, and both times it went before he did anything with it.

So he is waiting for it to come back, and to come back big enough, and he has been waiting about two years now, and he is starting to suspect that it comes less often the longer he waits, which would be a bad arrangement if it were true.

God asks for the heart instead of the display

There is a line in Joel that goes directly at the performance question, and it goes at it from an angle nobody expects.

And 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, and repenteth him of the evil. (Joel 2:13, King James Version)

Tearing the clothes was the standard public display of grief in that culture. It was visible, it was expected, and it was how a person showed how much they meant it.

God says do the other one.

And then read what follows. He does not describe what a properly torn heart looks like. He describes Himself. Gracious, merciful, slow to anger, of great kindness.

The reason given for turning is not the size of the feeling. It is what He is like.

You are being pointed at His character rather than at your own thermometer. Joel 2 gives the reason as what God is and never as what a man produces, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old instruction stop sounding like a bar to clear.

Paul says what leads a man to it

There is a sentence in Romans that names the thing that actually moves somebody, and it is not what most people would guess.

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 weight of your guilt. Not a sufficiently bad night. Goodness is named as the thing doing the leading.

Which reverses the whole arrangement a man is waiting inside of. He has been trying to generate enough remorse to qualify for kindness. Paul says the kindness is the thing that produces the turning, and it is already in the room.

You are led by a goodness that arrives before the feeling does. Romans 2 names what leads and puts it first, and it is His Spirit who makes an inverted order feel like relief rather than a technicality.

The father moved while the son was still a long way off

In the story about the son who came home, look carefully at the timing.

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran. (Luke 15:20)

Yet a great way off.

The son has not arrived. He has not delivered the speech. He is on a road, in the state he is in, having gone home mostly because he was hungry, which the story says a few verses earlier without embarrassment.

The father is already running.

Nobody in that story checks the quality of the son's motives at the gate. That inspection never happens, and Jesus told it that way on purpose.

You are met on the road rather than at the gate. Luke 15 has the father moving while the son is still at a distance, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that timing land on a man who has been waiting to be ready.

Isaiah writes the order out plainly

There is a verse in Isaiah that lists the steps, and the striking thing is what is not in the list.

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:7)

Forsake. Return. That is the whole of the man's part.

There is no clause about working up a feeling first. There is no minimum. There is no waiting period while somebody establishes that he means it.

And the promise on the other side has the word abundantly in it, which is not the language of a transaction being carefully weighed.

You have a list of steps with no feeling requirement in it. Isaiah 55 names forsake and return and stops there, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an absence in a list as important as what is in it.

Hosea puts it in the plural, out loud

There is a line in Hosea that reads like something a group of people said to each other, and it is short enough to use.

Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. (Hosea 6:1)

Come, and let us return.

It is an invitation somebody makes out loud, not a state somebody achieves privately.

And the reasoning in it is entirely about what God does afterwards. Heal. Bind up. Nobody in that sentence is arguing about whether they are sorry enough to be allowed.

You are invited to move before anything inside has settled. Hosea 6 puts the returning first and the healing after, and it is His Spirit who makes an old invitation feel like it is addressed to somebody in a park on a Tuesday.