Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hey, this is Shannon Williams, and hey, you are listening to the Grace and Grit Mindset podcast. I'm so excited to be with you this week and to share with you what has just been kind of stirring in my spirit. And first of all, I hope that you enjoyed the last episode of the podcast. It was called the Steadfast One. It was the beginning of a series that I'm doing on God's steadfastness toward us and what that means. And then we're going to just look at different ways that God is steadfast. And I'm so excited because eventually I'm going to take these ideas and I'm going to turn them into a book. And I cannot wait because I am such a nerd and I love to write.
[00:00:45] It is like the joy of my life. And I love when I get a hold of a good scripture, a good passage in the Bible, or I get into a really good study that God leads me on. It is. It is, like, so refreshing. But it's like if you've been really, really hungry and somebody gives you a steak meal with potatoes and a salad and a dessert, I mean, that's what it feels like sometimes to me when I'm really studying these.
[00:01:14] These fantastic passages and doing these word studies. So I hope that you, if you didn't catch that episode, I would go back, if I were you and listen to that, to kind of set up what I. This series is all about and what steadfast means.
[00:01:31] But I'm gonna jump in today and we're gonna talk about God is my father.
[00:01:36] God is my father. He's a steadfast father.
[00:01:40] And that's huge. That is amazing because, you know, if you have not had the experience of your life of having it, a solid, steadfast father, that. And that can really feel like a foreign concept to you. Even if you did have a good father, you know, they weren't perfect. And I'm sure there are moments that they could have done things better or you maybe didn't get everything you needed in that relationship. But God is a father to the fatherless, but he's also the perfect father, and he is our father. When we make that decision to accept his son and to give our lives to him, control of our lives, and pledge ourselves to him, he becomes our father. And I love, love, love some of these passages that I am going to talk to you about a little bit today that talk about God being our father. And what does that mean? We're just going to jump into it. We're going to meditate on it because I really believe if you can get this in your spirit, spirit, you're going to really feel lighter and you're going to realize that a lot of this stuff that you're worried about, he's already taken care of.
[00:02:57] Because that's what a good father does. They don't just leave you hanging out there to try to figure it out for yourself, do they? They take care of their children.
[00:03:06] So I'm going to read this is really kind of the, would say the heartbeat of this message. Romans 8, 14, 17. I'm actually going to back up a little bit to verse 12.
[00:03:23] And this is chapter eight. In this chapter, Paul has been talking about the spirit, how you know what it looks like to live in the spirit versus living in the flesh. So he gets to this point and he says, so then brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die.
[00:03:44] But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
[00:03:49] For all those led by God's spirit are God's sons.
[00:03:54] You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.
[00:04:00] Instead you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out Abba, Father.
[00:04:08] I love that.
[00:04:10] I love that.
[00:04:11] Abba, Father.
[00:04:14] Because this, this term, Abba, a lot of modern Christianity says it like it means daddy. And there's a familiarity aspect of Abba. It's the Aramaic that was used in this, in this specific passage, it's only used three times. Abba is only used three times in the New Testament, which I find fascinating. But every time you see you, you see abba paired with father.
[00:04:41] So abba was the Aramaic, but father would have been the Greek word. So you see these two words together, which is like interesting, like double father almost.
[00:04:51] But I think there's also this element or this understanding that Abba carries that it's beyond just this title of father. It is a very clear close relationship that it's not just like a word that you throw around. It's a very much a term of endearment. And not like daddy, where it sounds childish, this is more of a, an honor thing, but also a knowing that you're in right standing with this person as your father. This is your father and you know them and they know you. It's that kind of a feeling.
[00:05:32] And so I love that.
[00:05:34] Sorry. Romans 8, 14, 17 says that.
[00:05:38] And Jesus said that too when he was in the garden of Gethsemane when he's crying out, he says, abba, Father.
[00:05:48] He cries out to God in his anguish, in his pain. And I think that that is so indicative of what this, this title means, that it is like a. Almost a covenant name for God when we find ourselves in these places that are so difficult. And I'm going to give you an examp this because I was remembering today as I was preparing for this episode.
[00:06:13] I GUESS it was 2021. I was.
[00:06:17] Yeah, it was actually 2020 was like the last day, December 31, 2020.
[00:06:21] And I remember it vividly because my mom and my daughter were over at the house and we were packing up.
[00:06:30] At the time was my husband. We were still married. Now he's. He's my ex husband. We were packing up his belongings. He had already had moved out a long time before that, and the relationship had been strained that entire year. And he had told me a couple months before that that he had filed for divorce. But I never did get the divorce papers. I just kept waiting and I would say something to him and he would be like, yeah, they should be there soon, or whatever. And I started to think, well, maybe he really didn't file. Maybe it was all just like a, you know, him just trying to, I don't know, manipulate me or just get me to tell him I'm sorry and, I don't know, just, you know, control of the relationship or whatever.
[00:07:12] But then I remember that day because my. My mom and my daughter were there and we were packing everything up, and all of a sudden I got served with papers and I just. I collapsed.
[00:07:26] I collapsed and I pulled him out of the envelope. And it's just crazy that my family was there. And the only thing I could say as I wailed was, abba, father.
[00:07:37] I didn't just say God or father or Lord. I just cried out, abba, father. It was the only thing I could think of and it honestly bypassed my mind. It was this deep, guttural cry.
[00:07:56] And I didn't realize it till now, but I was doing the same thing that Jesus did in the garden. I was calling on this covenant God that the man I had been with had. Had broken and severed our covenant. But I was calling on my covenant God who would not.
[00:08:15] Who would not break his covenant, that he's steadfast and his love for me.
[00:08:21] And that's such a beautiful bittersweet memory for me because it was so painful.
[00:08:27] But it was so comforting to know that when I. I can feel it now, when I cried out to him like that like he was there. Like, he was like, I'm here. I'm right here with you. I'm never gonna leave you. I'm never gonna forsake you.
[00:08:40] And I want to encourage you with that today, that if you feel that way, remember that he's with you. He's never gonna leave you or forsake you. He's not like a man that he should lie or that he should fall apart and walk away or abandon you, whatever. Whatever it might be.
[00:08:57] And I just love that memory. And I love that, that I get to share that with you today. And I hope it encourages you a little bit. But.
[00:09:05] But I love what Paul says here. We have received the spirit of adoption and cry abba, Father, we aren't slaves. We aren't slaves anymore living in fear. We're sons and daughters.
[00:09:18] So think about this for a second. Jesus was the true son of God, right? He was the true son of God. The essence of the Father, the face of God here on earth. He was. He resembled God's heart for humanity, that he wanted to bring and draw everyone back to himself to become their father. But we were grafted in. We were adopted in. But the beautiful thing is he loves us the same way that he loves his own flesh and blood son.
[00:09:53] He loves us like that.
[00:09:56] We can't even really fathom it. We don't understand it.
[00:10:00] We still think in some strange way that we need to earn it or deserve it or perform.
[00:10:07] But that's not what Paul's teaching and that's not what we know to be true.
[00:10:12] You know, because fear leads back into slavery.
[00:10:17] It's a real orphan kind of spirit.
[00:10:20] But we go from fear to adoption to Abba, and then we eventually become heirs of this Scripture talks about us being heirs and co heirs with Christ.
[00:10:34] So here's the thing that I want to say.
[00:10:38] Because God is steadfastly our Father, we don't have to live like orphans anymore. You know, so, like, what. What does it look like to live as someone who's an orphan versus someone who's a child or daughter or son of God, Right? Well, orphans, for one thing, they live in a lot of fear. Think about it. This is heartbreaking to me because I absolutely have had a heart for orphans and children all my life that are. That are mistreated or, you know, abandoned, rejected or abused in any way. I think most of us Christians would say, yeah, of course, I have a heart for that. But just think about this for a second. If you know you're an orphan, what does that feel like, that feels a lot like being afraid all the time. That feels like you're not protected. That feels like uncertainty. That feels like never knowing who's going to take care of you, not having that parental figure there to support you, to protect you, to encourage you, to give you the things that you need to feed you, to clothe you, the other things that you cannot do for yourself as a child. And I want to remind you and me and all of us that we are still children to God.
[00:11:59] We are never going to outgrow this aspect, that we're just children of God. We are never going to outgrow. We're never going to be adults to Him. We're always going to be his child.
[00:12:12] I know sometimes you may look at yourself and I do this too and go, gosh, I'm 40 something years old, 35. I'm 54. Why do I still, I should be grown up by now. Why do I still have these, these needs? Why do I still feel afraid? Why do I still feel unprotected? Why do I still do stupid things when I get scared? It's because we're still children and we're always going to be children. Even when we're in heaven, we're his children.
[00:12:37] We are made to be protected and loved and secure in our relationship with our Father. We're never going to get to a place where we don't need that.
[00:12:49] And so, you know, fear is the doorway back into this orphan spirit. But that's not the spirit that we've received. We've received the spirit of adoption.
[00:13:04] So Paul directly is connecting this knowing God as the Father with being released from a posture of fear. Fear, which is where orphan mindsets go. They go right to fear. And I can so just relate this to my own life. And I really don't know why, because I've always had a really good father who took care of us and protected us and provided. But I, I found myself living in a posture of fear.
[00:13:31] And that for me, that may be because of what I've been through after I grew up and the marriage that I was in and some of the things that happened. And I'm not saying anything bad, I'm just telling you we were both young when we got married and didn't know what we were doing and didn't know who we were and did the best we could and with our brokenness and our trauma.
[00:13:52] So I'm definitely not saying anything bad. I'm just telling you that a lot of my traumatic things that have happened A lot of them were as a child, but a lot of them that have to do with this posture of fear of God not being my father and me being an orphan and needing to fix everything came from some of the things I went through after I got married.
[00:14:16] But I want to just say, here's something we need to dwell on. We don't want to dwell on this, you know, fear thing. This constantly being, that being the focus, the focal point is being afraid. What we want to do is we want to meditate on God being our Father.
[00:14:34] So what is, what does that mean to us?
[00:14:37] So if God is my father, then obviously I'm his child.
[00:14:42] I'm his child.
[00:14:44] I belong to Him. I am his responsibility. Doesn't mean I don't bear any responsibility for myself, but it means I'm under His care and his provision.
[00:14:57] What else does it mean? It means that I've been chosen and adopted. He hand chose you and me and decided to adopt us regardless of our mistakes that we were going to make, regardless of the outcome. He still said, I want this one, I choose this one.
[00:15:16] It also means that I belong. I have a family.
[00:15:21] I'm not detached. I'm not alone.
[00:15:24] I belong. I have a. I have a home with Him.
[00:15:28] It also means I don't have to earn my place. I don't have to dance and sing and perform.
[00:15:35] I don't have to earn a place that was already given to me based on Jesus's righteousness and sacrifice.
[00:15:43] I don't have to fear being abandoned.
[00:15:46] There doesn't have to be a fear of abandonment. Even if I've been abandoned by people in this world, people I loved, people I, my own father, whatever it might be. I don't have to fear God abandoning me. He already adopted me. He's not going to change his mind, which we're going to talk about in a minute. I'm also an heir, right? So if I'm his child, that means that I'm an heir. I'm going to inherit some things, right? That's cool. And it also means I can approach him as Abba, which is what I was talking about earlier when I was crying out to him. It means that I have this right to come to him whenever I need to. He's given me access to come to him because we're in a covenant relationship and to call on his name, because oftentimes, you know, human fatherhood may have taught us that love can be inconsistent. Care, protection, priority.
[00:16:42] It can be inconsistent, but God's fatherhood is not.
[00:16:46] And so I want to. Just also on top of that, I want to talk about James 1:17, because I think this is a fascinating scripture, and it talks about how he doesn't change.
[00:17:00] James 1:17. He's talking about gifts and things like that that come from God. Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights, which. I love that title with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
[00:17:15] Some translations you'll see shifting, shadow or change. He doesn't. He doesn't change. You don't. You don't end up in his shadow in a way that he's not aware that you're there.
[00:17:28] He does not change his mind once he's adopted you.
[00:17:32] This is beautiful because I don't have to live like an orphan.
[00:17:38] Because if I understand that he doesn't change his mind about me, then I don't have to live in fear. I can. I can realize that, hey, this thing is forever.
[00:17:50] I. I don't ever have to worry about him turning me away.
[00:17:56] He. He said he's not, you know, he isn't a good father today and then angry and withholding tomorrow. Right? He's. There is no variation or shadow due to change in him. He doesn't have an attitude issue one day and you're on his good side, and the next day he can't stand you. That's not how he. That's not how he responds or reacts. And, you know, if you ever have thoughts like that, like it's based on your performance, or maybe tomorrow he won't love you or you did something wrong, so he's mad at you. Those are not coming from him in his spirit. Those are lies from the enemy. Or they're. They're coming from your own trauma and what you've been through. And you're. Now you're just associating those type of situations with. And you're attributing that to him. You're saying, okay, he's like this. Because this is what I've experienced in my other relationships.
[00:18:43] I hope this is encouraging you, because I think I really love it.
[00:18:48] So let's just say what does Romans 8 reveal about God?
[00:18:53] And when you pair it with James 1:17, it reveals his fatherhood is steadfast.
[00:19:02] So what happens in our minds and our bodies and our emotions when I actually believe that he is steadfast and that I am his child and that he's my Abba? What changes, even just physically in your body, if you're stressed out right now and you just say, you know, okay, God is My father, he's steadfast.
[00:19:30] And because of that, I don't have to live like an orphan anymore.
[00:19:35] I'm loved, I'm cherished, I'm protected, I'm provided for. I'm safe.
[00:19:42] So that's the kind of thoughts that we need to be meditating on and reminding our bodies, because our bodies are responding constantly to the threat of fear.
[00:19:52] And so we have to use our spirit, which is constantly in communion with the Father.
[00:19:58] We have to turn inward to our spirit, where the Holy Spirit is. And we have to say, remind me, because I'm having a moment here.
[00:20:08] Remind me of who you really are. You're my father. I am not an orphan.
[00:20:13] And I just. I just lift my hands to you, Lord, and I just ask you to remind me that I belong to you.
[00:20:23] I think that's such a more powerful way to use our minds, to use our imaginations. And speaking of imagination, speaking of meditation, I talked briefly about meditation last week. It's not a weird, crazy, New Agey thing. And that I'm talking about, meditation is all through the Bible.
[00:20:42] You know, you see prophets doing it. You see, like, John was caught up in a revelation. Obviously he was. It says he was meditating on the Lord and he was caught up in a revelation. Paul was talking about meditating on the Lord. He was caught up in the third. Or he said he knew someone that was caught up in the third. Heaven might have been talking about himself. But what I'm saying is meditation is such a powerful way for us to connect back to the Lord. Instead of us constantly meditating on negative things, ruminating about the things that I wrong in the world, watching the news and being terrified that, you know, now we have another pandemic, or we're about to go to war with someone, or everything is so bad, the economy is about to crash. And, well, no wonder you're stressed out. No wonder you're afraid.
[00:21:29] This is an internal work that we have got to learn how to do as believers. We have to learn how to turn inward to the Holy Spirit and to learn how to meditate on these truths. And this is so simple because you just take this phrase, God is my father, okay? Because God is my Father. I do not have to live like an orphan anymore.
[00:21:50] I don't have to figure everything out. I don't have to be smart. I don't have to have all the answers.
[00:21:57] I'm connected to him and he has them all.
[00:22:00] Those are the kind of things we need to be meditating on, not rehearsing the Awful things that we see every day.
[00:22:11] Yeah, I love also what Galatians 4. 6. And he says, because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, abba Father. So here's the other place that you see Abba Father. Interesting note here.
[00:22:30] The first time we see it is when Jesus says it. I told you, it's only three times. In the New Testament, Jesus is in the garden and he cries out, and he cries out to Abba Father. Then you see it again in Romans where Paul says, you've received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, abba Father. Then you see it again in Galatians 4. 6. And because your sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying abba Father. Do you see? And I'm just now noticing this. Every time you see this, it's a cry of Abba Father.
[00:23:00] It's a very strong cry.
[00:23:04] It's not just a casual phrase.
[00:23:07] This is the kind of cry that you have when your whole world falls apart.
[00:23:15] It's visceral, it's deep, and it's cuts right to the covenant that we have with him. That's what this is. It's the covenant name that we have for him being our father. That's how I see it, anyway.
[00:23:32] It's so beautiful.
[00:23:36] Definitely more than just saying daddy. I don't think Daddy can really carry the full weight and meaning of it.
[00:23:47] But here we have that. We are adopted.
[00:23:51] Here's that progression. We're adopted.
[00:23:54] He becomes our Abba, or he is our Abba or his child. Then we become an heir.
[00:24:00] So that's so much bigger than saying, wow, God, it's a really loving father or a really loving dad.
[00:24:05] No, this is a bigger deal than we understand it to be. I wish that I could really say it better than I'm saying it. And I'm sure there's some amazing, amazing pastors and theologians out there that have talked about this, but it's a cry. And I want to just, I want to challenge you this week. Like, are you in that space where you are just exhausted from trying to fix things? Are you in a place where maybe your whole world just fell apart?
[00:24:35] Cry out to your Abba father.
[00:24:39] That is your right.
[00:24:41] You've been adopted. You have every right to cry out to him that way and he hears you.
[00:24:50] Yeah.
[00:24:53] God is steadfastly my father. Therefore I can learn to live securely, securely as his child.
[00:25:03] So the thing is, you know, this, this name, Abba doesn't appear in places where everything feels wonderful.
[00:25:10] It's actually in these moments of profound anguish and pain and suffering beyond anything that there are even human words for. It's like, it cuts right to the core of. Of the whole thing, you know, it's beautiful.
[00:25:28] I hope that this is encouraging you today. And I think that I just. I really want to just encourage you to really do your own study here, to really look at these scriptures. There's so many of them, and I only pulled in a couple that talk about him being our father.
[00:25:48] I hope that this reaches you in a good place. And I think that I'm gonna wrap up this week and say next week I'll probably be talking about another steadfast attribute of God, and that is maybe something like God is my shepherd. We'll see what comes out.
[00:26:07] But hey, if this is speaking to you and it's right, you know, right where you are and what you needed, would you like if this, especially on YouTube, especially drop me a comment. Tell me, tell me how I can pray for you.
[00:26:21] Make sure that you like and subscribe to this part podcast, wherever you're listening. That definitely helps me get.
[00:26:29] Get the word out.
[00:26:31] I think that people need as much help as they can get right now because the enemy is relentless and this world is hard to live in. So every time you like and subscribe or comment or share my podcast, it's helping someone else who needs to hear the good news to hear that they have an ABBA father who loves them. Them so much.
[00:26:53] So, hey, I hope that you have a great rest of your week. And hey, next week I'll be back with another episode about our steadfast father.
