Friday, October 8, 2010

Comfort in a Changeless God


This morning while I was running, the sun came up. My mind was racing since I got out of bed and during my run my legs couldn't keep up with the pace of my thoughts. The world is such a mess right now and so many people that I love deeply are dealing with loss, financial woes, relational difficulties, and they all connect in some way to this spiritual battle that is raging in the cosmos.

As the sun came up, I was comforted with God's daily faithfulness to give us a new beginning each day. But then I was struck with the fact that even this will one day change. The sun, like all creation, is groaning and growing weaker. The only dependable hope we have is God. Only God can be counted on each day. His mercies are new each morning, but morning is not always promised. God's promise is that He will be with us. God's promise is that He loves us eternally in Christ. God's promise is that He is faithful and just and in Christ has forgiven us and made us holy giving us direct access to Him forever.

God does not change. We can count on Him.

God is simple (that is, totally integrated), perfect and immutable. These words affirm that he is wholly and entirely involved in everything that he is and does, and that his nature, goals, plans and ways of acting do not change, either for the better (being perfect, he cannot become better) or for the worse. His immutability is not the changelessness of an eternally frozen pose, but the moral consistency that holds him to his own principles of action and leads him to deal differently with those who change their own behaviour towards him (Ps. 18:24–27). --Sinclair B. Ferguson and J.I. Packer, New Dictionary of Theology

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