I recently got an e-mail with the title "There, I fixed it." Attached were photos of some pretty pathetic auto "fix-up" jobs. A knocked out headlight on a car "fixed" by two flashlights duct taped into the space (low beam and high beam, perhaps). A sideswipe dent "fixed" by corrugated metal siding riveted to the passenger side of the car from wheel well to wheel well.

OUR MESSED-UP FIX-UP JOBS

We get a chuckle out of those harebrained fix-up jobs. But maybe it's not so funny to think about the foolish and pathetic fix-up jobs we have attempted. Have you ever tried to "fix" your mistake by lying or deceiving? How did that turn out? Have you ever tried to "fix" a problem by pretending that you didn't have a problem? Denial. There's a smart "fix." Have you ever attempted to "fix" the trouble in your life by not doing anything about it and just hoping it would get better? And you thought the guy who taped the flashlights to the front of his car was a moron?

Sorry to be so tough on you. But the truth is that our attempts to fix things in our lives are often ill-conceived and disastrous. Even worse are the stupid things we try to do to fix our broken relationship with a holy God. We try to make up for what we have done wrong with heroic efforts to be better. But does your conscience tell you that has worked? When it sinks in that we haven't made much progress, we fall back on comparing ourselves to the criminals on the front page of the paper. But does that really fix things with God? He doesn't say, "Be good enough that your sins don't land you on the front page of the paper." Instead he says, "Be holy because I, the Lord, your God, am holy" (Leviticus 19:2).

The shocking truth is not that we do some very foolish things in trying to fix our sin-broken relationship with God, but that, no matter what we do, we can never fix it. And we should suffer forever because of it.

GOD'S PERFECT FIXES

But God loves us enough to fix what we have broken. He says so in Isaiah 57:18: "I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him." David experienced just that. He wrecked things in his life, committing adultery and then murder. He admitted that those sins—and a mountain of others in his life—had wrecked his relationship with God. But he also believed, "A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:17). He trusted that God's "fix" for broken sinners is to forgive their sins. That's why he said of the Lord, "He restores my soul" (Psalm 23:3).