Holding on to the Unchangeable

I don’t like change, and I don’t like surprises.  I want everything done decently and in order.  Predictability is just below godliness on my list.  The problem is, I live in a very unpredictable world—, and so do you.  From the time I was a young girl, however, I knew things weren’t as they should be.  Inequity surrounded me, but I felt impotent to do anything about it.  As a result, when I hit my teens, I became a champion of causes, defending the underdog at every opportunity and jumping on every soapbox that demanded justice for someone.  None of it did much good, though.  You see, I recognized the problem but I didn’t know the Problem-Solver.  I saw the injustice but had no relationship with the righteous Judge.  I longed for people to be treated fairly and equally but erroneously believed that unfair and unequal human beings could dispense such treatment.

To be honest, I’m concerned with people who are satisfied with the status quo, who don’t see the need for equality and justice—even if they don’t know how to deliver it.  If we have any compassion at all, we must look around us and see the pain and suffering of others and long to “change” things and make it all right.

But only God can do that.  Only God is good—all the time.  Only God is right—all the time.  Only God is perfect—all the time.  We are not.  What we see around us that needs change is not circumstances, but human nature, sin nature, fallen nature, that all-about-me mentality that is so deep-seated within each of us.  Perhaps that’s why, on a personal level, I resist change and cling to predictability and familiarity.  It hurts to change.  Real change means I have to let go of who I am, who I have become over many years and decades of walking this earth, who I am that is opposite of what I was created to be.

John the Baptist acknowledged that he needed to change by declaring that he must decrease and the life of Jesus increase within him.  Why?  Because Jesus is perfect; John wasn’t, and neither are we.  We all need to change—daily—and to become more like the One who is already perfect and therefore is the only One who does not need to change.  If that process of change is painful for us, so be it.  The Cross was no picnic, but Jesus willingly suffered and died there so we could open our hearts to Him and let Him change us from the inside out.  Because that, beloved, is the only way real and lasting change takes place.

Whether we enjoy a predictable lifestyle or prefer to “fly by the seat of our pants”, we will never see real change in this world until we allow that change to begin and continue daily in us.  May our goal be to become more like the perfect, unchangeable God we serve—and may others be drawn to Him as they see that willingness to change radiating from our lives.

PRAYER: Thank You Lord for Your unchanging hand on my life, for Your dependability, steadfastness, and faithfulness.  Make me more like You.

“For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed”, Mal. 3:6 KJV.

Today’s devotion is by Kathi Macias, award-winning author of nearly 30 books, including Mothers of the Bible Speak to Mothers of Today.  She penned the best-selling devotional A Moment a Day and assisted with Zondervan’s New Women’s Devotional Bible.  A mother and grandmother, Kathi and her husband, Al, call California home.