When God's Unchangeableness Changes Us

I heard their warnings and threats. I was addicted to sugar and I knew it. The white powder was my Christian cocaine, something no one was going to send me to jail over save my family doctor and my dear wife. Yet even that was not enough for me to give up my love affair with Little Debbie and her associates.  

 

But as this past Lenten season approached, I thought there was no better time to address my problem than with the promises given to me by the crucified and risen Christ. The more I considered it, the more committed I became. I’ve repented of my sugar use before, then relapsed, and now here I was again.

 

My sugar use was my self-sufficient way of escaping and soothing the stresses of life. And that was idolatrous because God gave the Spirit of Christ to come beside me in the wilderness in the same way He did for Jesus in the wilderness. I not only wanted to kill the idol, I also wanted to know more of the sustaining presence, fellowship, and empowering of the Holy Spirit.

 

I began Lent with all of this in mind, and it quickly appeared as though the Spirit of Christ was honoring my desire to honor Him. Aside from very little craving for sugar, it felt and looked like my work was more dynamic. If progress could be measured in life change, the gates were open and more clients were breaking more readily than usual.

 

Then around day ten, I was working at home by myself when I received a text from one of my sons at 11:40 in the morning. He texted my family members to let us know that he had just gone through the drive-thru for lunch at Chick-Fil-A, and that he had gotten his entire lunch for free because their payment system was down. He suggested that if we went quickly, we all might get the same deal.

 

Embarrassing as this is, I immediately dropped everything and drove like Mad Max on Fury Road to get to Chick-Fil-A. I slithered in line and snaked my way around the building like a constrictor circling it’s meal. Beady eyes focused, I placed a ridiculous order for two 12-count nugget meals with large fries and two large Cokes. The order taker, untypically, did not take payment, so the hunt was still on.

 

I continued coiling my way around the building, when, not more than ten feet beyond the order taker, I became the hunted—by the voice of my conscience or the voice of the Spirit I cannot tell. “You are a greedy person. You’re advantaging yourself at someone else’s disadvantage.” No lie. That’s exactly how it came to me. Like a bone in the mouth of a dog, the hound of Heaven tracked me down and bit.

 

I generally don’t think of myself as a greedy person, but there I was, caught red-handed, full of it. I felt miserable. I badly wanted to get out of line and drive away, but I was surrounded by a brood of other constrictors circling the same prey as me.

 

Painfully, eventually, I made it to the pick-up window. And guess what? Sometime between when I placed my order and my arrival at the pick-up window, the restaurant’s payment system came back on line! All that food I ordered, thinking it was free, I now had to pay for!  

 

I was ticked. At myself. For the greed. For the food. For the payment. For the time. All of it! Rather than making the out-and-back trip like Mad Max, I putzed home down Pelham Road kicking myself all the way.

 

I got home, went into the office, unpacked all the food, and started writing. Eventually, I got to a place where I was stuck. Writer’s block. I got a little stressed and mindlessly reached for one of the Cokes. Not taking my eyes off the computer screen, I took a little sip. And as soon as that Coke hit the back of my throat, I heard the Rooster crow: “You just broke your sugar-free commitment to the Lord. You’re no better than Peter. Maybe you’re Judas! Ten days in and look at you.”

 

That was Friday around lunchtime. I felt so miserable about what I just did that, rather than repent right there, I distorted and abused Martin Luther’s famous advice to “sin boldly” and morphed into a sugar junkie for the next two days. Deep in my pity, I lost track of the Gospel.

 

Early Monday morning, Tamarah and I got up and went for our usual walk. Some walks we chat the entire time. Other walks are quieter with words folded in. That morning, we were both quiet for a stretch, thinking about the day’s work ahead. And then, ex nihilo, a word came: “I am the same yesterday, today, and forever. And you are not.”

 

Again, this is exactly how it came to me. And again, whether the voice of conscience or the voice of the Spirit, or both, I do not know. What I do know is that instantly my heart changed. I could feel it. Subtly, unaware, I had created a graceless law in my heart that was strangling me and was anti-Christ. The Spirit of Christ whom I was seeking was breaking me free from myself and my self-imposed law-keeping.

 

As with all of God’s creative genius, many complicated things happen at the same time. God, in His being, character, and promises, is unchanging; I am dust returning to dust and cannot keep even the simplest commitments immutably forever. I aspired to something godlike, and came crashing back to the dirt.

 

It’s a mercy of God that He is unchanging. Because if He could change for the worse, no telling what kind of monster might He become. Or if He could change for the better, then how can I trust Him now? No, God does not change. And what a comforting, life-changing truth that is for His children.

 

“‘I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty” (Malachi 3:6-7).

 

Aside from a few times when I’ve rewarded myself for doing well, I’ve been sugar-free ever since. This too is a mercy from Christ’s Spirit.

 

Because only the unchanging Spirit of Christ can change us forever.