The God Who Cannot Be Shaken
Jeremy Walker serves as a pastor of Maidenbower Baptist Church in Crawley, England, and is married to Alissa, with whom he enjoys the blessing of three children. He has authored several books, and is grateful to preach, teach, and write as opportunity provides.
This post is adapted from Jeremy’s upcoming 50-day devotional, A Word in Season: 50 Days of Hope for Hard Times. Click here to pre-order your copy today: A Word in Season
“For I am the LORD, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.”
Malachi 3:6
There is a great deal of uncertainty and instability in these days. It is the way of the world. In an environment where news—often little more than suggestion, rumor, and spin—whirls around the globe at breakneck speed, no one seems quite sure what is going on. We try to sift the real news from the fake news. Claim and counterclaim fight back and forth. Various bodies of experts are all telling us things that they think we need to know. War, disease, famine, turmoil, suffering—it rolls in from every side. You may be in the midst of it.
And at such a time as this—especially if we are perhaps inclined to fearfulness, if we are timid, if change disturbs and unsettles us—these kinds of events, these kinds of troubles and dangers, can terrify us and shake us. So where do we turn when everything around us seems to be shaking? Where do we look when we ourselves are terrified? What, if anything, will be an anchor for us when everything else seems to be storm-tossed?
In the Scriptures, through the prophet called Malachi, God speaks to his people. He says, “I am the LORD, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.” It is that first assertion that I think is so very helpful for us, very necessary for us to know in the days in which we live, as much as in any of the days the Lord sends on the earth: “I am the LORD, I do not change.”
Everything seems to change, and to change quickly. The advice we get—politically, medically, culturally—seems to change sometimes day by day, certainly week by week. We are not sure when the next shift will come. All around, people are being swept along on the current of current advice, pulled along by the next big personality or social movement. But if we know this God described in Malachi, we know a God who does not change. He is the Rock of Ages, the Rock of our salvation. He is the invincible, eternal, immortal God. He is the one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. There is no variation or shadow of turning with him.
This is what gives the Christian confidence. Everything around us may change. Everything around us must change, for it fades and fails. We live in a world that is passing away. We ourselves change and must change, for we are mortal and changeable. We grow; we learn and develop; we grow older; we decline, and we die. But the God whom we know and trust is unchanging. He is altogether good. He is entirely righteous. He is always true. He is full of mercy and lovingkindness. It is to him, and to him alone, that we can turn. It is he alone whom we can trust in such times as these.
What is your confidence if you are a Christian? When everything else is stripped away, when everything else may be swept away, when everything else feels shaky, shaken, and shaking, where can you find rest? If you are a believer, your fundamental confidence is that—whatever else may be happening around you—you have an unchanging God. He is ever the same in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. He is the God in whom you trust, the God who has undertaken never to leave you or forsake you.
If you are not a Christian, this is the God that you need. If you will come to him, entrust yourself to him, and believe in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, then you will know the blessings, confidences, and assurances of being in the saving grasp of an eternal, unchanging God.