Introduction:
When we're rocked by change, God steadies us because (James 1:17-18)...
- He is
Good . (Jas 1:17a)
Numbers 23:19 - "God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind."
Deuteronomy 32:4 - "The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he."
- He is Unchanging . (Jas 1:17b)
Romans 8:28 - "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
When we're rocked by change, God steadies us because...
- He Chose you. (Jas 1:18)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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All right, good morning church.
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It is a great privilege and an honor to be up here. Again, I always feel never deserving of this opportunity, so I am incredibly thankful for it.
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And have you ever found it hard sometimes to relate to someone?
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You can try interests, you can try backgrounds, you can try hobbies, sometimes it just it doesn't hit.
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And there is one thing that I'm confident everyone in this room can relate to.
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And that is the concept of change.
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Now, it's not exactly a great conversation starter, like, "Hey, nice to meet you, please tell me about all the changes in your life and how you feel about them." But, life is full of changes.
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In fact, you can't go through this life without going through change.
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It's inevitable.
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That's why there's a million different songs and cliches out there that talk about change, right? I mean I could go on and on about how that's just the way it is, things will never be the same, and how you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone because the times, they are a changing. Or maybe to tell you to turn and face the strange because of the changes.
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Cliches like the only thing constant in life is change.
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And yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world.
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Today I'm wise so I'm changing myself.
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I feel like that one might sound cool but really doesn't have much meaning.
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How about this one?
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Nothing is so painful to the human mind than a great and sudden change.
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The late, great C.S. Lewis came up with this one.
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He said, "Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?" And one more, and this might be my favorite one.
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I'm making some changes in my life, so if you don't hear anything from me, you're one of them.
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(Laughter)
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Actually, there is one more.
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All good things come to an end.
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That one I don't necessarily agree with, and I'll tell you why by the end of the sermon.
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But I think there are so many of these sayings and cliches because everyone can relate to the idea.
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Whether you've undergone major ones or minor ones, we've all experienced it.
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I mean, think about the last 10 years of your life.
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For me, I'm 28 years old, so 10 years ago I was 18, technically just becoming an adult.
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So, so much has changed since then.
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went to college, got married, first full-time job, all of that stuff.
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Think about the last five years even.
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What about the last couple of years pre-COVID?
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We all went through some form of changes through all of that mess.
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And how many changes have taken place even in that timeframe?
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And I've experienced some changes in my own life recently, and it's a big reason why I wanted to talk about this subject today.
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I mean, Ben Roethlisberger is no longer the quarterback of the Steelers and I just, I can't compute with that.
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It's been there the bulk of my life.
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But I have seen some more changes, more serious changes lately.
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I think of Arrow and the fact that my sister-in-law Jocelyn has already graduated from high school and is about to move on from the youth group after having gone for the past seven years.
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That's going to be a big change for me not having her there.
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But another that sticks out for me recently is that my job, I switch shifts from the morning to the middays, same place, same general position.
03:52-03:58
But working in sports radio, a shift change means the landscape of your day to day has totally changed.
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It's new people, new time slot when the show's on the air, which for me I didn't think was going to be a big deal, but it was a much bigger deal than I anticipated.
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I didn't realize how entrenched into a routine I was after doing relatively the same shift for five years.
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I mean, I had time for things later on in the day that I didn't have time for now.
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Sleep patterns definitely improved overall, not having to wake up essentially in the middle of the night but those change too.
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All of a sudden I had this hour and a half in the morning that I just didn't know what to do with and I just found myself like walking around my house like, "What's happening? I should be at work four hours ago. I don't know what to do." And for me, the change was sudden and the change was unexpected. And that can be a really nasty combination no matter what the circumstances. And as my shift and my roles changed, I realized that I needed some stability, maybe more than I thought I would need. And I didn't really I wasn't able to handle that transition as easily as I thought I would.
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And you know what, maybe you've undergone a change or changes that are much bigger than mine.
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And maybe those changes have been really difficult to deal with or scary to face, where you see change coming down the road and really just don't want to meet it.
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It can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing and too much of it can be overwhelming.
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especially when we look at how our world is always changing, and far too often that's not change in the right direction, especially as it relates to God.
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And maybe you faced or are currently facing change that's much more serious than what I was just talking about.
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So I'm here to contend with you today that it's our relationship with our God, with Jesus Christ, the lover of our souls and our Savior, that can ultimately steady things in our lives whenever we feel like we're being rocked by change.
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So let's look at why.
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With that, turn in your Bibles please with me to James 1, we'll go over verses 17 and 18.
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And I wanna take us there today because James provides a couple of verses that can help us and comfort us when these changes get to be overwhelming.
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Now James just spent time before these verses talking about temptation.
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He just got done saying that temptation comes from our own fleshly desires, and when we give in to temptation, it conceives or it gives birth to sin.
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And sin, when it's fully grown, meaning it has completely taken over our lives, brings forth death.
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So he just got done giving this warning not to fall into temptation.
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what does not giving into temptation have to do with change? Well, what James is talking about here is ultimately about being overwhelmed, right? I mean in this case it's being overwhelmed by temptation and ultimately our own sin rather than constant or big changes in our lives. And after he just laid all that out, he launches right into a few things that are true about us and and that are true about God.
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These are things that are grounded in the word that are true no matter what the circumstances of life are or what things surround us may change.
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So on your outlines, if you're taking notes, when we're rocked by change, God steadies us because number one, he is good.
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Going to verse 17, he says, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. Now I'll be honest with you, I've always kind of struggled with what the term good means in a biblical sense. I mean you hear all the time someone says, "Oh he's a good guy," or you know, "They're good people," or "She's got a good heart." But Jesus says in Matthew 19 17 that there is only one who is good and that's God. How can that be?
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Well really what the goodness of God points to is His holiness. If there is only one who is good and it's God, then clearly there's a difference between God and everybody and everything else. And there is. There are huge differences between us as mere people and the God of the universe.
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And that's what being holy is all about.
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It's about being separated, being in a class of your own.
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So what makes God good and what makes Him holy?
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There are three things that scripture tells us that God cannot do. The first is that He cannot lie. Numbers 23 19 says God is not man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind.
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God is clearly incapable of lying, making him much different than us.
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And this is kind of a silly example and this just came to mind right away when I thought about this, but it reminds me of a scene in the movie Liar Liar with Jim Carrey. Has anybody ever seen that movie? Not exactly the most wholesome movie all the way through, but nonetheless Jim Carrey is a lawyer and unlike some of the upstanding lawyers that we might have in this congregation, he is a perpetual liar. And his son for his birthday, is that for one day his dad couldn't lie. And of course, because it's movie, it comes true, and there's a scene where Jim Carrey is just losing his mind because he can't tell a lie. And he holds up a blue pen and he is he's staring at it and he's trying to get himself to lie and say that it's red. And he's trying so hard and he's saying this pen is royal blue. And I imagine it's maybe a little bit like that with God, although I know that God's never trying to lie, but He is literally incapable of it. That's what the Word says. And along with that, God also cannot sin or do wrong. Deuteronomy 32 4 says, "The Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just without iniquity, cannot commit sin. And then James 1:13, right before the verses we're reading today, he tells us that God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. All signs that he is by nature good. Can't sin, can't be tempted by sin. Okay, so how does all of that come into play when we're dealing with with change? Well, I think it's very easy to get caught up in thinking that God isn't good when we're dealing with things we don't want to deal with. When things aren't going our way, it's easy to blame God and think he's behind all of it even. It's easy to blame God for terrible things happening in the world as a result of a fallen world, too. I mean, just turn on the news. Mass shootings, Innocent people being killed, babies being killed before they're born.
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There are all results of a world that's ravaged by sin.
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God doesn't create evil, but he is in control.
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Bad things happening doesn't mean that God has lost control in any way.
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In fact, he takes what the enemy meant for evil, and he turns it for good.
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We sing about that, right?
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None of those terrible things I mentioned take away from God's goodness.
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Every good thing, every gift we have comes from Him. That's the God we serve.
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That's the God we look to for guidance. That's also the God who created us and created all things.
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And isn't that awesome that He is good? Isn't that reassuring in a life full of changes?
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that he will always stand as a good God who provides us with good gifts. It's a lot easier to go through possibly unexpected changes knowing that God is good and incapable of anything evil. Verse 17 says that he is the father of lights, the source of all good things in our lives. So don't let the emotions of change that seem chaotic draw you away from the fact that every good thing in our lives is a gift from God. He's the provider of all things good, does not change when our circumstances change. His goodness is an essential part of who He is. Which leads me to my next point on the outline, and that is when we're rocked by change, God steadies us because He is unchanging. That's the back half of verse 17, where it says, "Coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." I think this is vitally important to know and to remember when you're going through changes in life. That Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13 8 tells us that and thank God for that truth. Because let's consider for a second that that wasn't true. Let's say that God and his character and what he stands for and what we know about him just changed as society changed. What then would happen to Scripture? If God changed with what was most popular in the ways of thinking during our time, or he adapted to how we we think we've evolved over the years in our society. What good then would his word be? All of a sudden the Bible is really totally unreliable and outdated.
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What's true in here and what God said might not be true anymore. That's if there were variations to who God is. That's if God changed like shadows change when light hits it at a different angle. The Bible would never stand. We constantly need new versions of it, or for God to keep bringing new insights to us to add to the Bible. But we know that what is written in Scripture is already the complete Word of God. That'll never change, because God will never change. And there's a fancy word for it that I learned through this process of writing this and studying this and that is immutable, unchanging over time and unable to be changed. Just like we said earlier that God is unable to lie, He's also unable to be changed. He's unchanging in His purposes, in His character, and in His promises. So what are His purposes? Romans 8:28 says, "And we We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.
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There's purpose there for those of us who call Jesus our Lord and Savior, that we have a good God working things out for our good.
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He has purposes to glorify His name and does that by revealing His power in the Holy Spirit through our lives.
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He creates us for His glory, and He'll glorify Himself in our lives no matter what changes in our lives if we focus on Him.
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And His character remains the same.
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And part of His character is His love.
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And that brings me to a story about something that I once loved, and that was Dippin' Dots.
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Anybody remember Dippin' Dots?
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lovers of Dippin' Dots here. I was just at a pirate game and they call them mini-melts now. I'm not sure if Dippin' Dots got like bought out, but I didn't even know they still existed. But they do. They're out there. And oh man, I loved Dippin' Dots. And my very first Dippin' Dots experience was at Kennywood. Had a big bowl, biggest bowl you could get of Dippin' Dots, probably cotton candy like those.
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And immediately after downing these Dippin' Dots, I proceeded to go on every single spinny ride possible.
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Musical Express, Baron Curve when that was still around, just all of them.
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And as you can imagine, right after that, things did not go well.
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Needless to say, my love for Dippin' Dots changed after that day. Dramatically. As in didn't love them anymore. Not in the least. In fact, I was repulsed by dipping dots. Still I am a little bit, picture makes me a little nauseous. But God's love for us doesn't work that way.
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If we are truly saved when we sin against him and grieve the Holy Spirit and do things that would kind of make God sick, He still loves us.
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His love doesn't change like my love changed for Dippin' Dots.
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In fact, the Bible says in Romans 5 that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
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While we were His enemies, responsible by our own deeds and by our own sin, and hanging Him up on that cross, He still died for us.
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He still loved us.
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His love won't change when our job changes.
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His love won't change when a certain relationship in our life change, or we change where we live.
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God's character doesn't change.
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And God's promises won't change either.
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He promised us a lot of things through His word.
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He promises us that He'll always be in control, that He'll never leave us at Deuteronomy Psalm 23, that He will supply every one of our needs, Philippians 4.
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The list goes on and on about His purposes, the attributes and the promises that God keeps because His Word tells us so.
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So the point of all of that is, God is reliable.
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He's dependable.
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else in our lives is unchangeable like God is, because He cannot change. His words are true now, they were true when they were first written, when they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and they'll always be true into the future. And in a world that's full of volatile change, where things can look differently in an instant, God is the rock that won't follow suit.
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and nothing that happens to us, nothing that we do, no stage in our lives can separate us from the love of Christ.
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You know how I know that?
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Because His word says it.
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And He's not going to ever change that truth, He can't.
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And that brings us to our final point of when we're rocked by change.
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God steadies us because He chose you.
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Let's read verse 18.
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It says, "Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures." By his own will, he reveals that truth to us.
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We know that God is by his very nature good.
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We know that he is unchanging.
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And now we know that he brings us his word because He cares about us.
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James gives the best example of one of those great and perfect gifts God gives to us that he just mentioned a verse before that.
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It's the greatest gift He ever could have given to us and ever has given to us.
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He gave us Himself through His Word and He gave us something that He doesn't give any of His other creations, and that is salvation.
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That's new life in Christ.
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And this is a thought that we should absolutely hold onto when we're in the middle of change that we don't like in our lives.
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God knows that we're broken.
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He knows that we're sinful.
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But he gave us a new life by sending his one and only son, Jesus, to become a man and spend a life on earth.
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He humbled himself to live as we live, yet live the perfect and sinless life so that he could ultimately lay it down on our behalf.
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That while we were still yet sinners and enemies of him, he was willing to be crucified on cross, suffered a horrifyingly painful death, only to raise from the dead while putting to death the sins of anyone who had put their faith in Him. And I know you've probably heard that so many different times, but your salvation should never become dull. It should always be a source of joy for you, that that you're his.
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And it was all because he wanted to.
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That's what the text says.
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Now, I know that some of you might be thinking, well, wait a minute.
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I mean, you're saying that he chose me, but don't I ultimately have to choose him?
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I mean, I thought that's how it worked, right?
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I have to choose him and what he's done for me to accept him.
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And the answer is, yes, it's both.
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And there's something beautiful in that, isn't there?
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That somehow God can work to save us by his choosing and by our choice at the same time.
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That is, there are some things that God is capable of and God does that it's just like, okay.
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That is God being God and his amazing ways to work all of that out according to his will.
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and some things maybe we don't ever quite comprehend.
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But that's how amazing our God is.
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And the text says, "Because of this new life he's given us, we are the first fruits of his creation." Now, what does first fruits mean?
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It means that we have standing above the rest of creation.
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We aren't like the birds or dogs or cats or lions or tigers or bears, oh my.
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God chose us to have a relationship with.
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He created us in His own image.
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He wants to be in relationship with you.
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No amount of change in your life can affect that.
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And you can accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord today and make that a reality for yourself.
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And praise God that He doesn't just leave us tossing through the waves of change as we go about this life.
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He is the most reliable and dependable aspect of our lives at any time.
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It's who He is that He provides good and perfect gifts to us.
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It's who He is that He never changes and never will change.
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The God we know in the Bible and the one that we have our own personal relationships with is the same God as He was yesterday and the same one He'll be tomorrow.
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And He's the God who desires relationship with us, who sought us out to give us eternal life with Him, so that one day our world will never change.
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We'll be spending our days praising Him and worshipping Him in heaven for all of eternity.
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And so with that mindset, I go back to the very beginning of one of those clichés, "All good things come to an end, right? Again, that's one of those cliches that I always hear, and is that true? I would say not when you know Jesus, because He is a relationship, and having a relationship with Him is a good thing that never ends.
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In fact, it only gets better as you know Him more, and get to know Him more deeply as you rely on Him when you're going through trials or changes. And ultimately, you're made perfect in Him when you're glorified in heaven at His right hand. So how about that? So maybe you are in a season of change in your life right now.
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And people can deal with change in different ways. Sometimes people embrace change. Other people hate it no matter what it is. Whether you chose it or you didn't, maybe it is a little too much and you're feeling overwhelmed. Things are spinning out of control. How do we respond? How do we commit to our lives to Christ as sons and daughters of Him? Well, I'd say we interact with the world and others around us knowing that God is always in control. That some things might not make sense. You'll probably get confused or sad or maybe angry at some of those things that happened to us that we didn't choose, or we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves, but we trust in Him because He's good.
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Life might be full of change, but God is never changing.
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We continue to seek Him and know Him because He won't change with the times.
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He might reveal more and more of Himself to you and His greatness to you as you get to know Him and as you seek Him, but He's the rock.
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And if you're feeling like God has forgotten about you in the midst of all your changes, know that He chose you.
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He sought you out to have a relationship with you as God in His word promises He'll never leave you.
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And changes will never stop coming.
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I mean, we would be foolish to believe that that's going to be just a season of life.
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We'll always have changes, even some bad ones, some uneasy ones, but trust Him, He's good.
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He'll never stop being good.
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He'll never change.
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The anchor for our souls.
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And He wants you to know Him.
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Be in relationship with Him.
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Talk with Him and glorify Him with your life.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, I thank you for Everything that you reveal to us in your Word, Lord, we know that change is something that we can never stop going through in life.
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We don't choose some of the changes that go on around us.
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But God, we know that no matter what happens, no matter what changes happen, that you're in control.
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And you always will be.
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God, you are that one thing in our lives that won't change.
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That we don't have to keep up with what's new with you.
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God, you lay it out there and you've laid it out there from the very beginning through your word.
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We know exactly who you are, your promises, your character, and we know that our salvation rests in you.
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That our relationship with you will not end.
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It'll only get better whenever we're spending eternity with you, God.
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And so I thank you for the comfort that that brings as we continue to go about this life.
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And I pray that it would embolden us to face changes, and that we would still be witnesses for you through all of it.
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And I pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read James 1:17-18
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
How have you handled unexpected change in the past? How can you handle it in light of your relationship with Jesus?
Why is it so important that we serve and know an unchanging God?
What are some ways you can avoid being overwhelmed or anxious about change in life?
Breakout
Pray for one another.