Bent

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. - Romans 7:15-18 NIV

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"But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners." Romans 5:8 (NLT) Matchbox 20 had a hit song last year called "Bent." Radio stations still play it, just not quite as much. In this particular song, Rob Thomas -- the lead singer and songwriter for the band -- manages to capture the emotion behind what seems to be a universal problem. Here are a few lines:

If I fall along the way
Pick me up and dust me off
And if I get too tired to make it
Be my breath so I can walk

Can you help me I'm bent
I'm so scared that I'll never
Get put back together...

I started out clean but I'm jaded
Just phoning it in
Just breaking the skin
Shouldn't be so complicated...

Can you identify? No matter how hard you try, you seem to keep messing up? When you step back from your life to take a look, it seems like you're always coming up short? You watch the news and wonder what this world is coming to? You're tired of the struggle and just want to phone it in? You long for life to be simple - the way it's supposed to be -- rather than so complicated? You wonder if a life like yours is really worth God paying attention to -- or better yet, saving? Your capacity for wrong-doing scares you? God knew we would have feelings like this. That's why He sent Jesus into the world... so that these realities wouldn't leave us hopeless. Yes, we are human. Yes, we are sinners. And yes, we are bent. But the good news is that God's grace covers our condition. His grace not only enables us to face life here, but it also promises that one day -- in the kingdom of heaven -- we will be put back together... we will be whole.

Riverbend Church, Austin TX

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For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. - Romans 7:22-25 NIV


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