When you say you are sorry are you feeding the person you wronged a appropriate line to help them cope with the offence? We in our imperfection often times operate in that imperfection that hurt the people we hold close so in response to this decision to act without that person’s interest in mind we apologise. When we hurt someone we apologize for hurting them, but why? My wife would say we are acting like a person pacifying a bill collector – feeding them lines we have no attention of fulfilling just to satisfy their need for a “reason” of not meeting a promise. I want you to ask yourself ( as I ask myself ) why do we apologize, and more importantly what does it mean? I believe we are acting out of brokenness and the person who is hurt requires a reason for your issues that resulted in their pain so we genuinely offer an apology in hopes to at least admit that we are guilty of this offence. In order for this apology to mean any thing we have to be more then sorry we have to take action to correct the brokenness that this offense sprouted from. We have to repent – this is the first part of an apology; we just leave that part out I think because this is the action that delivers reconciliation for the root of the behavior, not just a, “please excuse my behavior”.
We say “sorry” but we don’t show the ability to respond to the root cause of our decision we say “sorry”, but leave out the work of repentance: which is the action part of,”I’m sorry”. Repent is being sorry and it is a changing of the mind so we are mindful to not continue down the path that hurts the people we love and care about. Repent is to reveal the brokenness that issue express themselves through. Repent is not just excusing the behavior that hurt the people we love it is doing something about it. An apology means nothing if we don’t fix the issue. I can apologise for hurting you over, and over again, but if I don’t deal with the core cause that leads to this behavior I am just speaking empty words with no intention to change. I must repent.
lastapostle 