That whisper of yours just now, "Heavenly Father, please forgive me", I know the ache that lies behind it. You feel the weight of your sin as something you cannot shake off, and you wonder, perhaps, whether heaven can really open to such a faltering cry. But let me tell you something that many a troubled soul is slow to learn: when you come to God with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, you are not bringing Him something He despises, you are bringing Him the very sacrifice He loves.
Do you remember David, after all his grievous falling? He did not clean himself up before he came back to the throne of grace. He came with his hands full of shame and his heart split in two, and he found that a spirit broken in pieces was the only offering that rose as a sweet smell before the mercy seat. Repentance is not a sour medicine you swallow once and then put away on the shelf. No, it travels arm in arm with faith, a sweet companion that walks beside you all the way home. I have known the truest, deepest happiness not when I laughed loudest, but when I leaned lowest on the bosom of my God and felt it so safe to be small. So if your soul is weeping now, do not think you have missed the way. You have found it.
And see this, dear heart: when the Scripture speaks of forgiveness, it does not place a little measuring line around your sin and say, "Only up to this point, and no further." When Adam fell and broke the whole world in his fall, God did not at once banish every hope. Even in the garden, where the serpent heard his curse, a promise was laid up like a seed in the cold ground, the Seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head. That was God's way of saying, before you had shed a single tear, that He meant to have mercy. How much more now, when the blood of that promised Seed has been poured out and the atonement is finished? The forgiveness that comes to you "for Christ's sake" is not pinched and sparing. It rises like a full tide, according to the riches of His grace, not according to the smallness of your deserving.
You may have been prayerless; you may have passed many a day without a thought of heaven. But the word that says, "Thou hast not called upon Me, O Jacob," comes just before the word that says, "I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake." That is the great "But" that stills all the thunder. "If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" Who indeed? Not one of us. But there is forgiveness with Him, and it is written across the black-edged envelope of our sin like a promise of love folded inside. You are not commanded to climb to heaven and fetch it down; you are commanded to believe it, to receive it, and you may be certain that what God commands you to do, you are permitted to do. The lowest seat in the Father's house is yours simply because the door stands wide.
So lean all your weight on Christ. Do not fear that you are too bruised or too small or too full of failure. The Shepherd gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart, and He is not looking for strength in you, He is looking for need. That you have brought Him, and He has never yet turned away a soul that came with nothing but a plea for mercy.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, You who did not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax, look now upon this dear one who has called upon Your name. Their cry is short, "forgive me", but it comes from the depths, and You have always heard the voice of the contrite. Wash them in Your precious blood, speak peace to their conscience, and let them feel the quiet thrill of sins remembered no more. Keep them close, keep them low, keep them trusting, until that day when faith gives way to sight and every shadow of sin is forever gone. In Your strong and tender name, I ask it. Amen.