"God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow". Like you I have heard that since I was a young child. To be honest, I have thought that it meant that God was always consistent. Of course He was - after-all He was God. No mistakes, or slipping up on an 'off day'. But recently, A.W. Tozer, in his little - but powerful book - The Knowledge of the Holy - has helped me to see that it wasn't that at all. God cannot change. He is unchangeable. He is Immutable. Not by His willpower - but by His very being. Read a portion of Tozer's comments below. And then maybe read them again. 

“Of what use to me is, the knowledge that God is immutable?” someone asks. “Is not the whole thing mere metaphysical speculation? Something that might bring a certain satisfaction to persons of a particular type of mind but can have no real significance forpractical men?”
 
If by “practical men” we mean unbelieving men engrossed in secular affairs and indifferent to the claims of Christ, the welfare of their own souls, or the interests of the world to come, then for them such a book as this can have no meaning at all; nor, unfortunately, can any other book that takes religion seriously.
 
But while such men may be in the majority, they do not by any means compose the whole of the population. There are still the seven thousand who have not bowed their knees to Baal.
 
These believe they were created to worship God and to enjoy His presence forever, and they are eager to learn all they can about the God with whom they expect to spend eternity. In this world where men forget us, change their attitude toward us as their private interests dictate, and revise their opinion of us for the slightest cause, is it not a source of wondrous strength to know that the God with whom we have to do changes not? That His attitude toward us now is the same as it was ineternity past and will be in eternity to come?
 
What peace it brings to the Christian’s heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself. Incoming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood.
 
He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith.
 
He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when He will see no one. Neither does He change His mind about anything.
 
Today, this moment, He feels toward His creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, the sinful, exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind.
 
God never changes moods or cools off in His affections or loses enthusiasm.
 
His attitude toward sin is now the same as it was when He drove out the sinful man from the eastward garden, and His attitude toward the sinner the same as when He stretched forth His hands and cried,
 
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
 
God will not compromise and He need not be coaxed. He cannot be persuaded to alter His Word nor talked into answering selfish prayer.
 
In all our efforts to find God, to please Him, to commune with Him, we should remember that all change must be on our part. “I am the Lord, I change not.” We have but to meet His clearly stated terms, bring our lives into accord with His revealed will, and His infinite power will become instantly operative toward us in the manner set forth through the gospel in the Scriptures of truth

Fountain of being!
Source of Good! Immutable Thou dost remain!
Nor can the shadow of a change Obscure the glories of Thy reign.
Earth may with all her powers dissolve,
If such the great Creator will;
But Thou for ever art the same,
I AM is Thy memorial still.

 From Walker's Collection
​

RIVERS NOT RESERVOIRS
7982 Hillcrest Trail
Jonesboro, Georgia 30236

WEB:     www.hisrivers.org
EMAIL:  his.rivers@gmail.com

Busy at the computer just about to complete the next blog posting when it happens….. ‘locked up’. Can’t do anything. Mouse won’t work. I click or try to click on everything…. nothing. I hit every function key and even every number on the keypad… nothing. Even ctrl+alt+del doesn’t work. In a second of frustration, I hit the power button and turn the ‘thing’ off.  And you are saying ,,,, “Yep, been there, done that”.

I have been reading a 120 page little book by A.W. Tower - The Knowledge of the Holy.  Randy Alcorn has said, ‘that other than the Bible this book has been the most influential in his life.’

From the first paragraph on, my brain begins acting like my computer —- it is trying to ‘lock up’. It just doesn’t seem capable of processing. 

However, not being one to keep this experience to myself, I am going to share ‘some’ of Tozer’s thoughts with you, and pray that your brain will not lock up! Here is just a small taste.

“God has no origin, and it is precisely this concept of no-origin which distinguishes That-which-is-God from whatever is not God.

Origin is a word that can apply only to things created. When we think of anything that has origin we are not thinking of God. God is self-existent, while all created things necessarily originated somewhere at some time. Aside from God, nothing is self-caused.

By our effort to discover the origin of things we confess our belief that everything was made by Someone who was made of none. By familiar experience we are taught that everything ‘came from’ something else. Whatever exists must have had a cause that antedates it and was at least equal to it, since the lesser cannot produce the greater. Any person or thing may be at once both caused and the cause of someone or something else; and so, back to the One who is the cause of all but is Himself caused by none. (Are you starting to feel a little bit of lock up?)

‘Where did God come from’ - the child asks. By this question, he unwittingly acknowledges his creature-hood. Already the concept of cause and source and origin is firmly fixed in his mind. He knows that everything around him came from something other than itself, and he simply extends that concept upward to God. The little philosopher is thinking in true creature-idiom and, allowing for his lack of basic information he is reasoning correctly. He must be told that God has no origin, and he will find this hard to grasp since it introduces a category with which he is wholly unfamiliar and contradicts the bent toward origin-seeking so deeply ingrained in all intelligent beings, a bent that impels them to probe ever back and back toward undiscovered beginnings. (Some of you are already hopelessly ‘frozen’ - ‘locked up’)

To think steadily of that to which the idea of origin cannot apply is not easy, if indeed it is possible at all. The human mind, being created, has an understandable uneasiness about the Uncreated. We tend to be disquieted by the thought of One who does not account to us for His being, who is responsible to no one, who is self-existent self-dependent and self-sufficient. 

To admit that there is One who lies beyond us, who will not be be dismissed with a name, who will not appear before the bar of our reason, nor submit to our curious inquiries; this requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess, so we save face by thinking God down to our level, or at least down to where we can manage Him. (Anybody still with me?)
​
Yet how He eludes us! For He is everywhere while He is nowhere, for ‘where’ has to do with matter and space, and God is independent of both. He is unaffected by time or motion, is wholly self-dependent and owes nothing to the worlds His hands have made.”

​Rev. A.W. Tozer
​

RIVERS NOT RESERVOIRS
7982 Hillcrest Trail
Jonesboro, Georgia 30236

EMAIL:    his.rivers@gmail.com
BLOG:      www.hisrivers.org/rivers-blog

Jesus said to His disciples, "Come and follow me......". And they - dropped their nets, left their business, or there families - and followed Him.  Now that was pretty simple - simple but not easy. For us in the 21st century it is still simple, but not easy.  

'Yes Jesus I will follow you, just as soon as I take care of a few things. I will follow you when I am finished with this current project. I'm coming.'

We just 'fell back' from daylight savings time to standard time.  In a sense, sometimes I think we are operating the same way with Jesus. We are on two different time zones. I am sometimes on 'Easy life time zone"  and Jesus asks us to operate on "Simply follow Me time zone". . 

One of the truths the Leavell's are realizing, is that when Jesus says Come - or Go we must keep it simple even though it is not easy.  Obedience to the Lord, is simple, and it it immediate - it requires dropping everything and following Him.  

​Anything else may be easier, but I am not so sure it isn't Disobedience.
​​

RIVERS NOT RESERVOIRS
7982 Hillcrest Trail
Jonesboro, Georgia 30236
​(404) 784 - 4618

Leavell's to Nigeria Web Page
Mark's Email