Why it's good not to be settled

Since coming back to the UK we've been asked many times 'how we're settling' and 'whether we're settled yet.' And this has all been the warm concern of friends for which we're very grateful. It's good to be be rooted back into a good local church. It's good to rebuild a network of relationships. It's good to find some measure of stability. But more and more recently I've been seeing references to stability in the Bible that are sharply negative.

“Moab has been at rest from youth,

like wine left on its dregs,

not poured from one jar to another—

she has not gone into exile.

So she tastes as she did,

and her aroma is unchanged."

It is the complacent, those without Christ, who are settled like the sediment at the bottom of a forgotten wine bottle. God's people have a deep rest and joy in Christ but in this world they have trouble and turmoil and frequent change.

Because change is good for us.

"The Scripture says, "They have no changes, therefore they do not fear God" (Psalm 55:19); and so they go down to hell quietly and securely. Oh, but it is otherwise with God's children! They are tossed up and down. God will not suffer them to prosper or live long in a secure, drowsy, sinful state, the continuance wherein is a fearful evidence that such an one as yet has no saving grace, nor yet belongs to God, seeing as Christ hates such an estate and will not suffer his own to be long therein, but will shift and remove them from vessel to vessel, from condition to condition, till he has wrought in them that disposition of soul that regards and loves him more and more and has nearer and nearer communion with him." (Richard Sibbes, The Love of Chirst, end of Ninth Sermon)

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