When I was in choir in high school, we sang a song called “Everything Must Change.” It was a beautiful melody, but the subject matter — which you can guess from the title — was a downer. I’m sure Mr. Daniell, our choir director, who is still a friend of mine, wasn’t happy with the way we all complained about that depressing song.
The older I get, the more I identify with what that song expressed (although it’s still a downer). My grandparents and my dad have gone on to be with Jesus, and I won’t see them again until I do the same. My nieces aren’t small and cuddly anymore; I still love them with all my heart, but my relationship with them is different now that two of them are teenagers and one of them is an adult.
I’ve changed careers a couple of times, and my family has experienced health scares. I’ve closed the doors on some friendships in recent years and reopened other doors that I thought were closed. Even my church family has changed over the years.
Change is inevitable, and it’s constant. But the only thing we can count on to never change is God. We see reminders of His unchanging nature throughout His Word.
In Numbers 23, God sent a message through Balaam, who said, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”
Moses reminded the Hebrew people just before they were to enter the Promised Land:
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.
Deuteronomy 7:9-11 (ESV)
The psalms are full of references to God’s unchanging nature, and God had the prophets deliver messages about His immutability. The prophet Isaiah gave us the encouragement that the unchanging God can give us strength to endure:
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. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:28-31 (ESV)
“For I the LORD do not change,” God reminded His people through the prophet Malachi — the last prophet before He sent His Son to earth to redeem those who call on His name.
Related: Sunday Thoughts: Enduring to the End
Jesus told His disciples that, although the world around us is subject to chaos and destruction, His nature is unchanging, instructing them in Matthew 24:35 that “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Jesus’ brother James reminded his readers that “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, ESV). It’s such a comfort to know that the God who lavishes so many good things on His people isn’t capricious or vacillating.
In his second letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul quoted what was probably an early church hymn that states, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13, ESV).
In the last chapter of the Bible, Jesus spoke to the Apostle John to remind us that God will remain unchanging through eternity when he said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13, ESV).
What do we do with the knowledge that God never changes? It should increase our faith and fill us with comfort and peace. God’s unchanging nature should also give us courage and joy, and it should lead us to worship. My prayer for you today as you read this is that you’ll experience all these things when you contemplate God’s immutability.
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