Change and Our Steadfast Lord

Chelsea Vaughn

The greatest challenge that accompanies change is the discipline of trust. I have no shame is saying that this is a challenge that receives my frequent failure.

I grew up overseas in a community of expats. This community held the coined title “the place of the revolving door”. We laughed at the truth that this phrase had in our community. Life in a stable location was never guaranteed, and airports offered the hospitality of a second home. A frequent flyer is prepared to board and exit a plane. It is not news to them that they will exit the plane, just as they boarded it. Airports are the source of millions of flights each day. These flights transfer people across the largest seas only to deliver them somewhere else. The expat community has named this a revolving door. Flights come, and they leave. Doors open, and they close. Expats arrive, and they move.

I developed a transient mentality that held friendships, location, and trust with very open hands. My value for depth was never lost, but my value for steadfastness was. Change was a second nature, and expectation for it was necessary. With this, I didn’t expect anything worthy of wholehearted devotion. I quickly learned to never give away something that I was too afraid of losing.

I never understood that my hesitancy to trust was rooted in fear. I lived in expectation of change, so why should I trust someone with my heart if things were guaranteed to change? My trust was far too valuable to lose, so it was not offered. It remained this way until my senior year of high school. The year I learned my identity in Christ. This concept imparts the greatest security known to man. A life lived in security is against everything I taught myself to know.

God created man to trust Him, and he did in the beginning. The building blocks of the One Truth crashed down under the tree in Eden. When Satan invokes doubt to our confidence in God’s voice, then our own walls of self- protection replace God’s protection. We trust ourselves, instead of God (Genesis 3:5). This is, perhaps, one of the most infectious results of the fatal Fall.

How is trust rebuilt when its foundation has been replaced with a faulty substitute?

This is how: we must acknowledge the fact that we don’t own the right to protect ourselves. God sent His one and only Son to reclaim His creation. Jesus humbly walked this life to save what was lost. Our devotion to the protection of the Father was lost. Therefore, we are not learning how to trust God for the first time, but we are remembering how to trust God.

It is only when we release our white knuckled grip we have on self- protection, that we can learn how to be children full of trust for their Father. If I could have recognized the freedom in the steadfastness of Christ, then I would not have built walls of self- protection. I have the assurance of an anchor in a God that never changes, and I live in a world that daily reminds me of my need for His security (Hebrews 6:19).

The world can’t promise us much. There is one thing I have learned that it does promise, though. That promise is that it will revolve, change, and move on. This process will take place with or without my will. God knows this process reminds us of our fragile and faulty foundation, and I could even say He uses it. He uses the insecurity of the world to remind us of His everlasting security (Psalm 33).

It is often in the moments of frustrated faulty plans that we see Jesus in His steadfastness. The faulty walls we built crash down, but Jesus takes our face into His strong hands. He looks into our eyes, and He reminds us who we are. Even more than that, He reminds us of our Faithful Father. He was complete in the beginning, and He is in the end (Revelation 21:6-7).

Today, I thank God for the revolving door I grew up with. I am thankful because I genuinely embrace change, but I also cherish trust. I appreciate the greatness of His faithfulness deeper than before, and I anticipate the revelation of His steadfastness to the end.

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Chelsea is a student, freelance writer, and a director for a non- profit calledInitiative. She attends Dallas Baptist University and is working towards a degree in Communication Theory with a minor in Psychology. She’s spent more of her life overseas than in her home country, and has a heart to see the world. Her utmost passion is watching Jesus work past the boundaries of culture. She would love to use her gift for writing to reach the nations, regardless of location.

You can read more of her writing on her Blog.

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