To God And Not To Him

You want to say it again. That is settled and it has been settled for months.

What you cannot do is say it to her.

Not because of anything she has done. Because saying it to her would make it a conversation, and a conversation would need a preamble, and a preamble would require you to explain why this is coming up now, and there is a whole year underneath the why that you are not ready to open.

So the wanting sits there, blocked by a conversation you cannot have yet, and you have concluded that a version she never hears would not really be a renewal at all.

Before anything else, and this stands at the top of every article on this page: if you cannot say it today, you are not failing at anything. Nothing here is asking you for something you do not have.

For everybody else, let me deal with the conclusion, because the conclusion is wrong and it is the only thing in your way.

Create in me a clean heart

There is a psalm written by a man in the worst week of his life, and the direction of the whole thing is what I want.

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me (Psalm 51:10, King James Version)

Read the address. O God. The entire psalm is spoken upward, and there is another party in that situation who is not being addressed at all.

That is not evasion. There is a place for what a man says to another person, and this psalm is simply not it. The vertical business gets done vertically, and it is complete on its own terms.

You are able to complete something upward without a second person hearing it, and Psalm 51 has never once made a private prayer into a half measure. Psalm 51:10 is addressed to God alone in the middle of a situation involving other people, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a whole transaction rather than a rehearsal.

Notice also the word renew in that verse. It is right there, and it is between a man and God, and there is no audience anywhere in it.

You have a renewal available with nobody else in the room, and no verse has ever once required a witness for one. The passage puts the renewing between a man and God directly, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives it as finished.

Who the promise was made to

Now the part that settles it, and it goes back to the day itself.

When you made that promise, you made it to her and you made it to God. Both. That is what a vow is, and it is what separates a vow from an agreement between two people.

Which means there are two parties who received it, and there is nothing improper about saying it again to one of them.

You are not going behind her back. You are addressing the party who is available to you this morning, in the room you are standing in, without a preamble, because that party does not require one.

You are speaking to somebody who received the original and needs no explanation, and it has never once been necessary to explain yourself to Him first. Psalm 51:10 goes straight up with no preface at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives a sentence from a man who cannot yet manage a conversation.

You made that promise to God as well as to her, and the saying of it again to Him has never once been the lesser half. It is written that a man asked God directly to renew a right spirit within him, and the Spirit of God is the one who does exactly that in a kitchen with nobody else in it.

And the conversation with her, if it ever happens, is a different thing on a different day and this page is not going to ask you for it.

One sentence, upward

Here is the assignment, and it has no second person in it.

Say one sentence of it again, out loud, to God, with today's knowledge in it.

You are addressing one of the two who received it on the day, and Psalm 51 has never once described a private renewal as a rehearsal. Psalm 51:10 asks God directly to renew a right spirit with no audience anywhere in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives it as finished.

To God. Not to her, and not so that she overhears it, and not as a rehearsal for saying it to her later. To God, because He is one of the two who received it.

Something like: I said it to You as well as to her, and I know now what the year cost, and I say it again to You this morning.

Out loud, alone. And do not tell her afterward, unless there comes a day when you want to, and that day is not today and is nobody's business but yours.

You are able to finish this without a conversation, and it has never once required her to hear it to be complete. Psalm 51:10 speaks upward and asks for renewal directly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a man says one sentence with no audience.