It's Not About Me - Max Lucado [13]
Change. Had more than your share? Wishing you could freeze-frame the video of your world? Would it help to stand in Saint Peter’s Square and tell the fellow on the balcony, “Stop! No more change!”?
Save your breath. He can’t help. If you’re looking for a place with no change, try a soda machine. With life comes change.
With change comes fear, insecurity, sorrow, stress. So what do you do? Hibernate? Take no risks for fear of failing? Give no love for fear of losing? Some opt to.They hold back.
A better idea is to look up. Set your bearings on the one and only North Star in the universe—God. For though life changes, he never does. Scripture makes pupil-popping claims about his permanence.
Consider his strength. Unending. According to Paul, God’s power lasts forever (Romans 1:20). His strength never diminishes. Yours and mine will and has. Our energy ebbs and flows more than the Thames River. You aren’t as alert in the evening as in the morning. You can’t run as fast when you are eighty as when you are twenty. Even the strongest among us must eventually rest. Lance Armstrong can maintain a bike speed of thirty-two mph for a solid hour. Healthy college males last forty-five seconds at that pace. I’d make thirty before wanting to throw up. Armstrong lives up to the last half of his last name. He is strong. But at some point he must rest. His head seeks the pillow, and his body seeks sleep.1
Call Jim Eubank strong. Swimming seventy laps a day and holding half a dozen endurance swim records would be proof alone. But still logging a daily mile in the pool and winning races at age eighty-five?2 Don the Speedo and flex those lats, Mr. Eubank.You are strong, but you won’t be strong forever.
God will. The words “I’m feeling strong today” he has never said. He feels equally strong every day.
Daniel calls him “the living God, enduring forever” (Daniel 6:26 ESV). The psalmist tells him, “I will sing of your strength. . . . For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress. O my Strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love” (Psalm 59:16-17 ESV).
Think about it. God never pauses to eat or asks the angels to cover for him while he naps. He never signals a time-out or puts the prayer requests from Russia on hold while he handles South Africa. He “never tires and never sleeps” (Psalm 121:4 NLT). Need a strong hand to hold? You’ll always find one in his. His strength never changes.
Need unchanging truth to trust? Try God’s. His truth never wavers.
Would that we could say the same.We’ve learned to season our words with salt, we eat them so often. Our opinions change like Rodeo Drive fashion trends. (Weren’t your convictions about child rearing stronger before you had kids? Do you know any Republicans who used to be Democrats and vice versa?) Our convictions tend to change.
HE NEVER SIGNALS
A TIME-OUT OR PUTS
THE PRAYER REQUESTS
FROM RUSSIA ON HOLD
WHILE HE HANDLES
SOUTH AFRICA.
Good to know God’s don’t. His view of right and wrong is the same with you and me as it was with Adam and Eve.
“The word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8 KJV).
“For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.... All thy commandments are truth. . . . Thou hast founded them for ever” (Psalm 119:89, 151-152 KJV).
Your outlook may change. My convictions may sway, but “the Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35 NKJV). And since it can’t, since his truth will not waver, God’s ways will never alter.
He will always hate sin and love sinners, despise the proud and exalt the humble. He will always convict the evildoer and comfort the heavy-hearted. He never changes direction midstream, recalibrates the course midway home, or amends the heavenly Constitution. God will always be the same.
No one else will. Lovers call you today and scorn you tomorrow. Companies follow pay raises with pink slips. Friends applaud you when you drive a classic and dismiss you when you drive a dud. Not God. God is “always the same” (Psalm