Psychotic Girl

I heard you threw your man around
picked him up just to let him down
it's a shame baby but i always knew
it's just the way your gonna do

The Black Keys

the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live

Ecclesiastes 9:3

Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
There is not one.

Job 4:14

The older I get, the more aware I become of the world around me. The more I watch the news, the more cynical I become. The closer I examine myself and my own sins, the more I realize that humanity is completely and utterly hopeless. And then I look at God's word in relation to the world I've come to know. And God's word only confirms my sneaking suspicions that man is completely helpless without the divine intervention of the Almighty. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." Before the intervening grace of God, we were all "the natural person", incapable to understand the things of God. The prophet Isaiah says that our "righteous" deeds are like filthy rags to God. No man can please God apart from faith. Paul says that we are dead in our sins. What does it mean to be dead in our sins?

Scripture is abundantly and perfectly clear that our sin has separated us from our Creator, that our hearts are inclined toward evil, and that we are incapable of keeping God's law. I would like to think that I am a good guy. I have friends that are "good" people. But good is a relative term. Compared to Osama bin Laden, I'm a pretty good guy. Aren't we all? Compared to Mother Theresa, I'm still a decent guy, I think. I know a lot of people that give up their lives to serve others. I've spent considerable time on the mission field. Compared to Jesus Christ......Is there anything that I do that is good compared to Jesus? My sin is only magnified next to the life of Christ.

If I were to give you a glass of water, you could drink it and say that it was good. Christ often referred to himself and his salvation as water that would quench thirst. If I were to give you a glass of water with a drop of urine in it, would you still drink it? Certainly, the water could dilute the urine, right? Or has the one drop of urine completely and totally ruined the glass of water? Sin has done the same thing to us. One sin separated mankind from God and lead to the whole race being ruined. Spiritual death. Can the glass of water remove the drop of urine and make itself clean again? Not according to scripture. Jeremiah says that a leopard cannot change his spots. Job says that nothing unclean can produce something clean. This is a sobering thought when we look at ourselves and our relation to an almighty and perfect God. We cannot change ourselves, our righteous deeds are like filthy rags, we cannot even seek after God for His help. Dead men tell no tales.

The good news is this. Christ came for the sick. Christ came to raise the spiritually dead. Because of our complete inability to come to God on our own, Christ came and drew His people to Himself. In John 6:44, Jesus says, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day." And for those that have been called and drawn to Christ, the Apostle Paul gives us this powerful message of hope in Romans 8:28-30.

"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified."

To God be all the glory, forever and ever. Amen.