Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. James 1:17
What really stuck out to me in this verse the first time I read was the “with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” This convicted me at first, because there is lots of variation in me and lots of places of inconsistencies and hypocrisy, but since I have meditated on these words further, it has also brought to my attention the conviction for the devil here: he, too, is filled with variations and shadows of turning. The NIV version says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” The devil, I tell you, changes like shifting shadows.
I have a chain-reference Bible, which means that basically, all along the margins of my pages are references to other scripture verses that deal with similar themes and issues throughout the Word. You can, for example, take a topic like “love” and follow it throughout the Bible by looking up it’s next mentioning. Here’s a picture:
One of the references that is mentioned in the margin alongside this verse of James is Numbers 23:19, and it blew me away:
God is not a man, that He should lie,
Nor a son of man, that He should repent.
Has He said, and will He not do?
Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
Inasmuch as I can comprehend, I think that this verse from Numbers and the verse from James are speaking to the solidness of God’s Word, God’s Truth. Unlike us, He is bound by His very nature to follow through with the things He promises and the things He says will come to pass. He does not lie, He does not have need for repentance; He has said, and He will do, and He will make it good. He has no variation, no shadow of turning, no shifting identity that promises one thing today and something different tomorrow.
Sometimes in our wandering doubts, we undermine this nature of God. We can think perhaps that we are only “halfway” healed, or that “maybe” we can be saved but it sure doesn’t feel like it today. We can think that we believe the promises of God, but then not live like we do … We can say “yes, Lord” and then turn around and gossip behind His back, wondering to ourselves if He is even real because these things we believe just can’t make sense.
God boiled this down very plainly to me recently: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29, Matt. 16:15). And the Spirit got more specific, as He tends to do, when I brush off His questions: “Do you say that I am real?” I felt the sting in my heart.
“Yes, Lord.” I responded at once. Then turned around and went right back to the way that I was living, among the shifting shadows and variation and inconsistency.
“Do you say that I am real?” He asks again. “Do you?”
And this makes me think. Do I? Or is my Christianity just a convenience?
Because the God of the Bible is not one of convenience.
Is my Christianity just one of trend?
Because trends change, and the God of Bible does not have variation.
Is my Christianity just empty words, promises I make but cannot keep?
Because then I am living in the shifting shadows, and the God of the Bible is not found there.
I have struggled in my walk for so long because I feel that I cannot package up a good explanation for the things I believe, the things I have come to know. My lingering words leave my faith open-ended because I constantly fail to find closure and peace in the ways I attempt to describe this One True God.
He has said, dear beloved. Will He not do?
Yes, yes He will.
My testimony of this? I guess I have found that in some ways, it is not to be written, not even to be spoken — it is to be lived. Why? Because the deep calls unto deep and in the very darkest crevices of our souls where no man’s eye can see or ear can hear or words can articulate, we can know that we are touched and that we are changed and that we are new. He has said, and He will do. He gives us a good and perfect gift of faith from above that allows us to know that this relationship is real without giving us good and perfect words to share it.
Because words come in and out of our mouths easily and “the tongue is full of deadly poison” (James 3:8 — can’t wait ’til we get there!) and words come in and out of ears easily and they, themselves, can become the shifting shadows. Words on paper, words on screen, words in the air, words in an email, words in my cell phone: they can be nice, they can be encouraging, they can be used to edify; yet they fail in the moments when we are spinning and spiraling out of control because we can’t understand. Words are used to understand, but sometimes, God does not want us to understand. Sometimes He just wants us to know.
We are to know without understanding, we are to believe without comprehending. He has said, and He will do. That we must know, that we must believe. If we don’t, everything else will unravel.
There is not an instance in Scripture when God leaves a dilemma undone, where He walks away from a situation and only half of the issue is fixed. He didn’t die halfway on the cross and He didn’t rise halfway three days later. He didn’t create half the world and then have a rest because it was just too exhausting. He finished the job, completed the work. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit (John 19:30).
Know that every good and perfect gift is from above, and that if it is not good and not perfect, than it is not from above. And let us know that all things of debilitating variation, shifting shadows, turns of darkness, the masquerades, the falsities, the hypocrisy — those things are from below, from death and they replicate death and they rope us under into more death. Let our Christianity not just be words and empty promises, but let it be the act — a lifetime — of standing on the Solid Rock where there are no shadows of deceit or hidden agendas! Where God has revealed Grace, the face of Love, Jesus, in fullness and completion. Won’t you come and dance with me there!
Thirst 