How to Cope with Unexpected Change

When we are insecure, our first reaction to change is almost always negative. We resist change.

Resisting change seldom works because change is inevitable. It’s going to happen whether we like it or not. You can’t stop growth. You can’t stop change. Sometimes we resent it. And sometimes we just ignore it, pretending it doesn’t exist and resenting it.

The older we get, the more we want security, and anything that shakes our comfortable nest threatens us. We don’t like things to be unpredictable. We don’t like things to change. We want to know exactly where it’s going. We want everything to be programmed, right in place. If anything comes up that is a surprise, we resent it, because it gives us that feeling of uncertainty. So we complain and criticize and we gripe and we grumble.

Change always produces stress. Even positive changes. Negative things like an illness, death, divorce, getting fired from your job, or uprooting your family to move to a new location cause stress. But even positive changes cause stress: a wedding, a baby, a graduation, a promotion, or a personal achievement. Any kind of change—positive or negative—can cause stress in your life.

We might begin to wonder, is there anything permanent in life? Yes, there is. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

While everything else is changing, Jesus remains changeless. All that Jesus Christ was yesterday that we read about in the Bible, he is today. And all that he is today, he will be tomorrow. And he is already in your future. God is not limited by time. He’s past, present, and future. When you get to the future events, he’s going to already be there. That’s comforting because I know whatever change I go through, he’s going to be there ahead of me.

You will never fear the future if you’ll remember and focus on three unchangeable facts about God. If you’ll build your life on these three truths, you’ll have no problem coping with change. You’ll have no problem dealing with the fear of the future. These truths are unchanging—they never change. They’re immovable—they cannot be shaken.

1. God’s love for you will never change.

Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” It is permanent, so you can build your life on it. God’s love for you will never change. When the winds of change are blowing everything away and everything is being uprooted, we need little rocks that we can hold onto. The love of God is the first rock you need to hold onto when change comes.