I have taught people how to repent for a long time and it took me years to notice that I had only ever taught them half of it.
I taught the going down thoroughly. Name it. Do not soften it. Do not make excuses, do not blame anybody else, do not manage the wording. All of that is right and I would teach it again tomorrow.
And I never once taught anybody what to do afterward.
Which meant that a great many sincere people learned an excellent way to get onto the floor and no way at all to get off it, and what happens to a person like that over about five years is entirely predictable.
They stop going down. Not because they stopped caring. Because the floor is where they end up and nobody ever showed them the door out of that room, and a person will avoid a room like that eventually no matter how devout they are.
He says it while he is still down
There is a line in Micah that I did not understand until I noticed where the man is standing when he says it.
Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me. (Micah 7:8, King James Version)
Read the grammar. When I fall, I shall arise. He is not describing something that has happened. He is saying what is going to happen, from inside the fall, before there is any evidence of it.
And the second half is the same. When I sit in darkness. Present tense. He is sitting in it as he speaks.
That is a person on the ground making a statement about getting up, and the statement is not a report and it is not optimism. It is an intention spoken out loud in front of somebody who is enjoying his position.
You are permitted to say the rising before it happens, and Micah says it from the floor in the middle of the dark (Micah 7:8). The same Spirit is the one who puts words like that in a person's mouth when nothing in their circumstances supports them.
What the father does in the parable
The most famous account of somebody coming back has a detail in it about speed that people rush past because they are waiting for the ring and the robe.
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)
He ran. In that culture, an older man running was undignified, and everybody hearing the story knew it, and Jesus put it in anyway.
And notice where the running starts. A great way off. Before the speech. The son has a prepared confession in his pocket and he does not get to finish it, because he is already being embraced while he is delivering it.
The father is not interested in the length of the kneeling. He is interested in getting the boy up and into the house.
You are being met before your speech is finished, and the running in that parable starts while a person is still a long way off (Luke 15:20), and it is the Spirit who makes that a picture of God rather than a nice story about a family.
There is one more, and it is short and it is about ordinary life rather than about a crisis.
For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again. (Proverbs 24:16)
Seven times. The just man in that verse is not distinguished by not falling. He is distinguished by the rising, and the verse counts both without any commentary on the count.
That is worth having in a pocket. The word just is applied to a man with seven falls in his record, and it is applied by Scripture rather than by anybody being generous.
You are called just in a verse that counts seven falls, and the counting and the calling are in the same sentence (Proverbs 24:16), and the Spirit is the one who makes a verse like that available to somebody keeping their own tally.
Why the staying down feels holier
I want to name why people stay, because it is not laziness and it is not unbelief.
Staying down feels like the appropriate response. Getting up quickly feels like taking it lightly, and a person who takes their own faults seriously will instinctively distrust anything that resolves fast.
There is also a bargaining element that most people would not admit and I will say for them. Staying down feels like paying something. It is not conscious. But there is a sense in which remaining on the floor for a period is doing a kind of work, and getting up immediately feels like leaving without settling the bill.
And Hebrews puts a hand on exactly that.
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. (Hebrews 10:22)
Full assurance. Drawing near. That is an instruction about posture as much as about theology, and it is written to people who had a very developed sense of what approaching God properly required.
You have nothing left to pay and staying down was never a payment, and Hebrews 10:22 tells a person to draw near in full assurance rather than to wait until they feel entitled. The Spirit is the one who sprinkles a conscience rather than a person scrubbing one.
And this belongs here plainly, because staying down can go somewhere much darker than remorse. If it has, and being here at all has come into question, that is beyond an article. Tell somebody tonight: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or call the 988 crisis line, in the United States. Going is strength.
So say it, and then get up.
You have a rising that Scripture puts in the same sentence as the fall, and it is spoken from the ground rather than after the recovery (Micah 7:8), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a spoken intention into something that actually happens in a body.
Now the counterfeit, and here it looks exactly like reverence, so learn its shape. It says: get up that fast and you have not really felt it, and a serious person would stay a while longer. That is vague, it names you rather than an act, and its only instruction is to remain on the floor. Conviction from the Holy Spirit names one specific thing and always opens a door in the same breath, and the door here is the one out of that room.
You are already being run toward, and the running in that parable begins while a person is still a great way off with an unfinished speech in their mouth (Luke 15:20). That work is the Spirit's, and He gets somebody off a floor they have been taught how to reach and never how to leave.
This message does not promise the feeling arrives when you stand. It probably will not, and the woman with the chair says the first month felt like cheating. What is settled is that the just man is described by his rising, that the father runs before the speech is over, and that a person who cannot get up will eventually stop going down.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, and say them standing. Christ is in you and you are in Christ, so the standing to speak over your own conscience is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God has a man saying the rising from inside the fall and a father running before a speech is finished, so speak to the habit that has kept you on the floor after the saying was done. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said, and however He answers, leave the outcome to Him.
- Habit of staying down after I have said it, you are not repentance and you are not what He asked for. The Word of God says when I fall I shall arise, and the man saying it is sitting in darkness while he says it.
- Bill I pay with time on the floor, you are finished in the name of Jesus. Scripture says draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, and it never once tells anybody to wait until they feel entitled.
- Father, Luke 15:20 has the father running while the son is still a great way off with his speech unfinished. I stand up tonight and say it is settled, and I thank You that Your Spirit gets me off a floor I was taught how to reach.
Micah 7:8
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