Unchanging

 It may not seem like a comfort to some, but as far as I’m concerned, knowing that God is unchanging, that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, provides me with great joy. I don’t have to guess at what God’s thinking today or whether He’ll be moody tomorrow. He is the same and has been since Adam first opened his eyes and looked upon the garden God had created for him and eons before that. He will remain the same for all eternity because He said He would.

You’ll never get a memo from God informing you that the user agreement has changed or that due to a rapidly changing financial environment, your property tax payment has been reassessed, and you owe a couple hundred more every month to cover it. Everything around us is in flux. Everything changes, but God remains the same. You’re never going to find hidden charges or processing fees in God’s contract, nor will there be exemptions for a particular class or group of people.

God will never try to bait and switch you, nor will you ever be expected to dole out more than the prearranged price. Your wretchedness for His glory. Your darkness for His light. Your all for His all.

It was disheartening to walk into my local Dollar store a few weeks back and find nothing for a dollar. Their name alone would make one think that you would, but alas, they had two-dollar shelves, three-dollar shelves, and even five-dollar shelves, but no dollar shelves.

People have the same reaction when they believe the things people tell them that God promised rather than go to the source for themselves and see what God, in fact, promised. They’ve multiplied of late, being too many to count, but all have similar messages of you resting easy and God throwing wheelbarrows of money onto your sleeping form. Some even journey into the land of heresy by insisting that the reason Jesus had to die on the cross was so that you could be rich.

The gospel, according to John, makes it clear as to why God sent His only begotten Son, and it’s not so you could have a six-car garage. Anyone who tells you that God’s purpose for Jesus extends only insofar as getting what you could otherwise by the sweat of your brow if only you applied yourself is lying to your face and keeping you from seeing the glory of Christ and who He is. The Bible is not a magic lamp, and Jesus isn’t a magic genie. He will not be treated as such or be used and abused for the sake of a handful of soulless ghouls to make fortunes off the backs of the naïve and innocent.

Granted, there is an argument to be made that those seeking fortunes via Jesus are neither naïve nor innocent, gravitating toward those who tickle their ears and seeking out those who lie to their faces in the vain hope that the lies may become truth if repeated often enough, but if those pretending to be servants of Christ did not exist, if the fallacious doctrine was not made available, then even though they seek teachers whose only function is to echo their sentiments back to them, they couldn’t find them.

Believing God will never disappoint. Believing what people say about God and the assurances they dole out on His behalf, without His consent or command, will always disappoint. It’s just a matter of when, not if.

James 5:13-15, “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.”

James painstakingly outlines how we should react to different circumstances throughout life so that it might be well with us. The first thing he mentions is suffering because it’s a reality in the lives of every person, whether rich or poor, wise or foolish. Suffering is not exclusive to any one group. We all have our seasons and valleys, and in the midst of our suffering, our singular response is to pray.

Since James is writing to believers, we can infer that believers are not exempted from suffering in this life either, but we do have a recourse, a go-to, something we can do to mitigate and find relief, and that is to pray. He doesn’t exhort us to wail and pull out our hair or go door to door and tell everyone willing to hear about our suffering; he doesn’t instruct us to go on Facebook and put up some mysterious one-sentence post that makes everyone think we’re suicidal or about to hurt ourselves just for the sympathy, rather he tells us to pray.

If you are suffering, run to God. Entreat Him via prayer, which is one of the best ways to spend our time, but one that has fallen out of favor with much of today’s church because it’s neither entertaining nor exciting to get into your prayer closet and be alone with God.

Every true servant of God, every individual who stood out in the pages of Scripture as being bold and fearless, had prayer as their foundation. It was a common and consistent practice to the point that even on pain of death were they to pray to God, they still did so because they could not be apart from fellowship with Him.

As wise servants, prayer should be our first go-to whenever suffering occurs in our lives, not our last resort. We run to God in our moments of hardship and trial, knowing He will comfort us, strengthen us, and journey with us on our way home.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.