Permanent Change

Did you know that you and I can do something which God Himself cannot do? We can change! I think that is good news (my wife would agree), because it means that I can still improve. God, on the other hand, is already perfect and, as the hymn says, ‘there is no shadow of turning in Thee.’ The fact that God is unchangeable is the bedrock of our trust in Him. He totally and utterly dependable, reliable and perfect in every way. He will truly never change.

The Lord has changed me more than I could have ever hoped for since I became a Christian. This is something to be deeply grateful for. But reality is, I will need to keep changing, until the day I pass on from this life, as there is a lot in me that is as yet very unlike Jesus.

God completely accepted us the day we came to Jesus and invited Him to be our Lord and Saviour. We don’t need to change to earn His favour or to improve our standing with Him. Jesus won all of that for us when He gave His life on the cross. Instead, we need to change because He loves and because He has accepted us. It is His passionate love for us that prompts us to want to become more like Him.

It is the power of God, through the Holy Spirit, which brings true change. At the core of things, we are unable to change ourselves. But God is looking for us to have a willing heart. The day we stop changing is the day we start our spiritual decline.

Psalm 55 seems to link a lack of change to a lack of fear of the Lord. If we fear God, we will be motivated to continue on the path of transformation, from one degree of glory to another. Let us pray that we never feel self-satisfied, or get to the place where we feel we have somehow arrived. Can we really ever say that we have become totally Christ-like in all our actions, words and thoughts?

If we have become stagnant, grown calcified, and have lost the desire for change, we should be fervently praying that God will restore us to a true fear of Him, to give us back the desire to continue on that journey of spiritual transformation. There is a lot of good we can do in this world, but I believe it would all be meaningless, unless we also pursue becoming more like Him.

I think the most powerful compliment anyone could ever give us are the words, “You remind me of Jesus”. When I think about it, becoming like Jesus is what I really want more than anything. Don’t you want the same thing?