What's Wrong With Me?

I do not understand the things I do. I do not do what I want to do, and I do the things I hate. And if I do not want to do the hated things I do, that means I agree that the law is good. But I am not really the one who is doing these hated things; it is sin living in me that does them. Yes, I know that nothing good lives in me—I mean nothing good lives in the part of me that is earthly and sinful. I want to do the things that are good, but I do not do them. I do not do the good things I want to do, but I do the bad things I do not want to do. So if I do things I do not want to do, then I am not the one doing them. It is sin living in me that does those things.

Romans 7:15-20

When I was younger, it seemed as though I was in trouble a LOT!  And by a LOT, I mean every day, many times a day.  It's not that I tried to mess up.....okay, not all the time.  But it seemed like I would find myself in trouble for something I did or something I said more times than not.  And I just could not understand it.  I wanted to do good things and make my parents, teachers, people in general, proud of me or, at least, happy I was around, but that just didn't seem to every work out.

I would sit in church and Sunday School and hear the stories of that make the Disciples sound like they were angelic.  I heard the stories of how the Apostle Paul was the epitome of perfection.  The more I heard these stories and the more I looked at my own life, the more depressed and frustrated I became.  I would get so angry with myself that I would wonder "why bother? I'm NEVER going to get this right. I'm never going to be 'good enough' just like I had been told so many times before."  

And it wasn't until after college that I actually looked deeper into this passage.  Up until that point, I had read the Scriptures like I read the ingredients on a cereal box (in my mind it sounded like Charlie Brown's Teacher "Blah, blah, blah" in my head).  Imagine my response when I realized that this venerated Apostle, who had been shown to me as if he were perfection incarnate, comes right out and says, "Why do I keep doing the bad things I don't want to do?"  BAM!!!  The golden veneer shattered and the truth was released!  Paul was just a human being like me.  Paul had the same issues that I did.  Paul made mistakes, was argumentative (he and Barnabas argued so violently that they went their separate ways), so why had I wasted ALL this time beating myself up?

Because I had not learned that my human nature did not change when I accepted Christ.  My human nature didn't change when I was baptized.  My DESIRE changed because I wanted to do right, but my human nature did not change because my soul is still trapped in this human body.

This is why Jesus gave His took my place on the cross.  This is why His blood paid the price for my sin.  So I can learn to stop beating myself up with my past and my seeming talent to screw life up!