#15 God never changes
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
-Hebrews 13:8
There is a saying that the only constant in life is change. Every little thing in our existence is constantly changing. Stars are growing and shrinking. Galaxies are swirling and moving. The earth is rotating not just on its axis but also in its orbit around the sun. Living things are born, they grow, and then they wilt and die. Rocks change from fire, water, volcanoes, explosions, and contact with other things. If you are like me your thoughts, opinions, and stances change from day to day, or hour by hour, or after learning new information from any host of places. Nothing around us is the same as it was when we first experienced it. Change is expected. Some of us handle change better than others. It is easy, then, for us to change God to fit us as we move through life.
Except, God does not change. This simple truth is hard to grasp because outside of the LORD everything else changes. When your morality, faith, and beliefs wax and wane it isn’t God who is moving. We are the only ones who change in our relationship with God. It doesn’t matter if your relationship is good or bad, or weak or strong, we are the ones who change it. This is hard for me sometimes. I want God to move the goal posts as my life shifts, crashes, or lands softly. I want the LORD to adjust so He is on my highest mountains and lowest valleys. God does meet me wherever I am, no matter how low I can go. But it is His unchanging faithfulness that pulls me near no matter how hard I shovel to erode His foundations.
“For I the LORD does not change; therefore you, o children of Jacob, are not consumed.” -Malachi 3:6
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” -Isaiah 40:8
“Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but You are the same, and Your years have no end.” -Psalm 102:25-27
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” -Matthew 24:35
“The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations.” -Psalm 33:11
My fallen brain tells me that God wants me to be happy; so surely He will bend His rules a little so I can sleep with this person. When the LORD says love only Him with all your heart, mind, and soul …He would surely understand how important money is or how desperately I want to be anyone else. I mean I love God, and God loves me, so how can I bend His scripture to support all the things I want in life, right? God is a tolerant and understanding guy so of course He would be for everything in woke culture. I am sure God has a really loose understanding of who He is because we are more enlightened now and back then they were simpletons. These thoughts, and all others like them, are blatant lies.
God. Does. Not. Change.
It doesn’t matter how many times and ways we change His word. When we come before the LORD He will judge us with His word, not the version we have rewritten to match our life. And yet it is so incredibly easy for Christian’s to ‘update’ God’s word. How can we expect non-Christians to perfectly uphold His word on what is sin?
To be honest, right now I am struggling with this. My beloved husband has brought up divorce, and I want to react out of my own heartbreak. Here is my list of reasons why I should be able to change God’s words:
My broken heart.
My husband has been lying to me for years.
An unending list of ways my husband failed.
My unerring list of ways I have perfectly shown love for my husband.
My list of hurts and heartbreaks having more meaning and my examples are far superior than my husband’s list of hurts and heartbreaks.
God is wholly on my side.
These are just what I can rattle off right now. I am sure if I gave myself time I could come up with a more exhausted list. Even if all of these were proven 100% true none of them make it okay to change God’s word. They can all be flipped and be true of the list my husband has against me. We are both victims and villains in our marriage. Here are just a few words from God that wipe away both our lists.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” -1 Corinthians 13:4-8
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” -Ephesians 4:32
“Then Peter came and said to Him, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’” – Matthew 18:21
“If we are faithless, He remains faithful—for He cannot deny Himself.” -2 Timothy 2:13
Forgiveness and Love. They cancel and silence my lists. Marriages are seen as contracts—or worse as just a slip of paper—in our society of no-fault divorces. This also holds true for Christian marriages. If I had gone into my marriage with these views the outcome of divorce would be unsurprising and almost expected. But we made a covenant with the LORD. Our vows were not just to each other but also with God. Now there are a few biblical reasons for a divorce (adultery, abuse, one is an unbeliever). Otherwise, divorce is not just turning our back to one another, but we also then turn our back to God. It is saying our sins and wrongs are bigger than God, that forgiving one another is too much for even Jesus on the cross. These thoughts are not only wrong they are also impossible for God. Nothing is bigger, wider, deeper than God. Since God is forever and unchanging, our covenantal marriage is as well.
“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable.” -Isaiah 40:28
“But You are the same, and Your years have no end.” -Psalm 102:27
“Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts; “I am the first and the last; beside Me there is no God.” -Isaiah 44:6
“But He holds His priesthood permanently, because He continues forever,” -Hebrews 7:24
“And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” -Genesis 17:7
“In hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.” -Titus 1:2
“Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’” -Isaiah 46:9-10
“But the LORD is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure His indignation.” -Jeremiah 10:10
Remember that our unchanging God is also holy, eternal, truthful, loving, and good. These attributes are permanent. My faithful God is the same today with my crumbling marriage as He was on my wedding day. The same is true for whatever you are going through right now. He is the same when I rage against Him over my marriage as when I am held to His chest. I do mean rage against Him. I yell accusations. I try to manipulate the LORD; if He truly loved me then He wouldn’t let this happen to me. It is so much easier to waggle my finger in His face or poke it into His chest declaring all the ways His holiness has failed me. I am His beloved, cherished, and righteous daughter! How dare He make me go through this! All the time ignoring the fact that Jesus was perfect, and He was murdered. Everyone, even God, turned their back on Jesus. But I should be treated better! I have a more perfect understanding of what it means to love than the LORD.
Yes, I do think these thoughts and I write them on my heart. They are things I would never say in front of other people. God hears the words deep in my heart. I demand God to change the script He handed me for my life. God loves marriage. God is good. God is loving. So He better damn well change this trajectory of my life. These things are jarring for me to read back to myself. My pride tells me I am a better person than this. When I am not. None of us are. I am not alone in thoughts like this. We Christians just never say them out loud, so we don’t have to admit them. It fills me with shame as the Holy Spirit convicts me of these sins just a moment after I say them. The LORD, thankfully, has never loved, does not currently love, nor eventually love as I do. There is nothing I can do to change this.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” -James 1:17
“But You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” -Psalm 86:15
“Give thanks to the God of heaven, for His steadfast love endures forever.” -Psalm 136:26
“’For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but My steadfast love shall not depart from you, and My covenant of peace shall not be removed,’ says the LORD, who has compassion on you.” -Isaiah 54:10
“Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; He is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments.” -Deuteronomy 7:9
“Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the skies.” -Psalms 36:5
Sometimes I need to remind myself of this every minute. My anger, accusations, doubt, and faithlessness cannot change my faultless place before God in Christ. If I was still a pagan and railed against my gods like this, I would not be held in such a position of grace. My gods would not answer me. They would move on until I flogged myself and made amends to them. I would have to do this repeatedly until these gods would see me as properly redeemed and trusted again. This staggers me so profoundly; highlighting and glaringly showing that not all religions are the same. There is only one path that leads to Jesus. Only through Jesus are we able to come before God. Once I am grafted into the family tree of God there is nothing I can do to break my branch off from that tree.
This is the good news we Christians celebrate. I do not do this well, and sometimes not at all. I am prone to stray away from Him in all the directions. This is true for all Christians. We are not perfect in our walk with the LORD. Me being a Christian does not make me more holy than you. In fact, it makes me worse because I know the LORD, and I still walk away. Whereas you do not have a relationship with God; your walk away from Him is expected. However, I would tell you these same things that I tell myself. God, thankfully, is the same loving father today as He was when Jesus walked this earth. I can trust Him to be the same loving father for all my struggles tomorrow and the day after.
The LORD is unshakeable. Nothing can change Him. There is peace in this. I don’t know if this helps you at all. This is how I process God’s word in all my frailty and weakness. I pray it will help ease whatever you are going through.
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither our fears for today or our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us form the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39