Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Okay, friends. Hey, how are you?
[00:00:05] This is Shannon Williams, and this is the Grace and Grit Mindset podcast where faith meets real life.
[00:00:13] And that's exactly the kind of stuff we talk about is, okay, here's my real life, here's my. Here are my problems, here are my issues.
[00:00:23] How does faith fit into this? How does my Christianity, how does my walk with God? How do these principles that I know to be true about him? How can I take my situation and practically apply the truths that I know about God into it?
[00:00:38] So we've been in a series called the Steadfast One, and so far we've talked about, just in general, what it means, covenantly speaking about God being steadfast. Then we talked about God is my Father, and then we talked about God is my shepherd.
[00:00:55] If you haven't listened to those, I would highly encourage you to go back and listen.
[00:00:59] They are full of wonderful scripture truths and practical applications for you and what these realities mean in your life and my life so that we can take them into our real life. Because this is all about, hey, where does you know where faith meets my real life? I need to know how do I deal with these problems from a spiritual standpoint, practically. So those are great for you to go back and listen to and just kind of boost your faith and remember that he is the steadfast one.
[00:01:35] That is his character. And he's steadfast in so many different ways, not just one or two, but there are so many ways. We probably couldn't even cover it all in this series.
[00:01:46] But we can do our best to cover the big ones that I think make a difference in the way that we live our lives, the way that we show up for ourselves, for other people, and whether or not we're afraid or anxious or whether we're full of peace and joy and hope.
[00:02:05] Because when we know him in the steadfast way that he is, we can live according to that truth, realizing that he is who he says he is, that he does all the things that he says he will do, that he's steadfast in his nature. He will never change.
[00:02:21] And we can base our lives and build our lives on that rock of truth of who he is. Right? So this week we're talking about God is my refuge.
[00:02:32] And I love this idea of God being our refuge.
[00:02:39] As a matter of fact, a few years ago, I don't remember, it's probably been maybe eight years ago, I wrote a song called Sheltered, and I haven't released it. It is in. In the back of my mind, to potentially record over the next year with another batch of songs that I have that are going to be part of this steadfast experience. What I'll do is I'll release the book and then I'll also release the music, hopefully around the same time or a little after, whatever, maybe in the same year of, you know, just these.
[00:03:15] These songs that remind us of his steadfast nature.
[00:03:19] And these songs are beautiful musical expressions of these truths that I'm going to be writing about and sharing with you about today.
[00:03:32] So I'd written a song called Sheltered. And I remember I just sat down and I was thinking to myself, I want to write something kind of a little bluesy sounding.
[00:03:41] And if you know anything about music, the way that you achieve that is by using chords in the. In the song that are not normally in that key.
[00:03:55] So it's. That's what you're hearing when you're hearing blues, gospel, country. It's kind of like, okay, we have a set of rules that we use for this particular key that we're playing in. But if we break the rule and we use this chord in this key, then we get a distinct sound, which is what creates styles and genres, actually. So I wanted to. I wanted this kind of feel to this song that had a little bit of a bluesy sound to it. And I don't know why, to be honest with you, but I just. I did. And so I started playing chords and I started playing in 6, 8 time, which is like a waltz feel.
[00:04:39] And as I was playing all that, I really just felt.
[00:04:45] I felt drawn.
[00:04:47] Sorry, my voice is just not cooperating today. I felt drawn to sing about how I may not know what's gonna come in my life, but I know he's going to be there.
[00:05:01] And so the first couple lines that I wrote were, whatever may come I'm not afraid of the unknown unknown because you'll be here and you have conquered all of my fears.
[00:05:13] So that was the verse, very first verse. And I'm thinking, oh, dang, that's really good. You know, So I just continued writing and I went into the chorus and it says, because I'm leaning on you through the bad and the good I know you'll carry me through all of my days Covered by grace and I'm sheltered by your love and so that was.
[00:05:42] I just wrote that and I thought, man, I didn't even really honestly try to craft the words to make them sound good. It just came out that way.
[00:05:55] And it was just so sweet. It was such a reminder that the truth is that we are gonna face things, they're gonna be unknowns.
[00:06:08] We are definitely gonna face hard things. We're gonna go through trials, we're gonna find, find ourselves in moments of our.
[00:06:15] It looks like something's going to take us out.
[00:06:20] That's a given. We're all going to face those.
[00:06:23] No matter how hard we try to maybe even shelter ourselves from it or our children, they're going to happen. Those times are going to happen. And the question becomes, okay, when these things happen, am I going to run to God or am I going to run away from Him?
[00:06:42] And I think when I wrote this song, I was in that moment of clarity where I knew that I needed to run to him because of the things I was going through and not run away.
[00:06:52] Running away never fixes the problem. It actually intensifies it. But, you know, a lot of times we. We find ourselves in these moments of sheer panic because we feel like whatever we're facing is going to take us out. And so we go into a flight mode and we run from God and we try to handle ourselves and we try to fix it and problem solve mode and all these things. But, you know, sometimes you're in a pinch man like David, and there was no.
[00:07:27] There was nothing he could do. And I think about some of these situations where he is being chased by Saul and it's literally life or death for. For him, it is not just figurative. This is. If I don't hide somewhere and find a place of refuge, he's going to kill me. He's already tried to kill me multiple times.
[00:07:51] Why would this be any different? So he would run into these places of. Of safety, refuge, caves, places that were almost impassable to other people to get through, and he would have to hide.
[00:08:05] And so sometimes we see this language of him talking about God as his refuge and we forget that this was like an experiential thing. This was really life or death for Him.
[00:08:16] But I feel like understanding that is important for us because we have to know that if David can write about this from a very real literal standpoint, then how much more can we trust in God to be the refuge for us? In a lot of times, what is not a literal situation, it is not, you know, it's more of a symbolic, figurative situation where it feels like life or death for us.
[00:08:46] That, that if God. That if we don't find security and safety in him, that we will be taken out.
[00:08:53] So I love that, that these psalms, a lot of them are written from the. This place of like, this is, like, real for me, like, this really is life or death, so that we can relate to them even more.
[00:09:09] So I want to just read to you Psalm 46, but I want to read it in the Passion translation, because I don't always do that. But today I feel like this translation is really spot on, and I love some of the language he uses here. So he says, God, you're such a safe and powerful place to find refuge.
[00:09:31] Proven help in time of trouble, more than enough, and always available whenever I need you.
[00:09:36] So we will never fear, even listen. He says, even if every structure of support were to crumble away, we will not fear even when the earth quakes and shakes.
[00:09:48] So that's a given. He's saying it's going to quake and shake, moving mountains and casting them into the sea.
[00:09:54] For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in you.
[00:10:02] God has a constantly flowing river whose sparkling streams bring joy and delight to his people. His river flows right through the city of God Most High into His holy dwelling place. God is in the midst of this city, secure and never shaken. At daybreak, his help will be seen. With the appearing of the dawn, when the nations are in uproar with their tottering kingdoms, God simply raises his voice and the earth begins to disintegrate before Him. Here he comes, the commander, the mighty Lord of angel armies is on our side. The God of Jacob fights for us. Everyone look. Come and see the breathtaking wonders of our God. For he brings both ruin and revival. He's the one who makes conflicts in throughout the earth, breaking and burning every weapon of war.
[00:10:45] Surrender your anxiety. Be still and realize that I am God. I am God above all the nations, and I am exalted throughout the whole earth.
[00:10:54] Here he stands.
[00:10:57] So this word that we see translated as refuge, practically in every translation that I looked at, the word that is used is refuge.
[00:11:10] And I don't even know. Okay, so you say this word. It's the Hebrew word makasa.
[00:11:16] Makasa?
[00:11:18] Yeah, Mak asa macassa.
[00:11:21] And it means hope.
[00:11:24] A place of refuge, a shelter and a trust.
[00:11:30] So this is literally or figurative? Figuratively speaking. But I love that it pulls in this word hope that God is a place of hope for us.
[00:11:42] Because that to me also illustrates not just safety, but hope that he's going to take care of you, everything's going to be okay. Like there's hope for this, even this situation you're facing because of who he is.
[00:11:58] Some other interesting information about this word is that it portrays a place of, or condition of safety, security or shelter.
[00:12:10] And it's. It's a literal hideaway from weather and enemies.
[00:12:16] But it's far more often used of the Lord himself as this sure refuge for his people.
[00:12:22] So oftentimes, in ancient biblical days, people had to hide, they had to find places of refuge.
[00:12:32] They had to build fortified cities and strongholds that were higher up than the land elevation, so that they had the advantage of protection and safety and being able to see what was going on. So you have this idea of God being exalted. And even Psalm 46 talks about God being so exalted. I mean, that's kind of the whole point of the psalmist. He's saying all these things are happening, but God is exalted above everything, and he's always available to us. So Psalm 62:7 says, and God is my salvation and my glory, the rock of my strength, my refuge is in God.
[00:13:20] Isaiah 25, 4, for you have been a stronghold for the poor. I love that. A stronghold for the needy in his distress, A shelter from the storm and a shade for the heat. Man, that's good.
[00:13:34] Joel 3:16. The Lord will roar from Zion, but the Lord will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the children of Israel.
[00:13:43] So you see all these. These words like refuge, stronghold, shade, shelter, to give us these places of imagery in our mind that we can see him, that he's whatever we need him to be in those moments, whether it be shade, whether it be a shield. Sometimes I've seen shield used, whether it be a refuge or a shel, shelter or a stronghold.
[00:14:08] But the thing is, we have to choose to run to him, right? We can't just something bad happens and we go into freeze or flight, and we just. We don't make that conscious decision to go after him in that moment. And I know it can be hard because when something catastrophic hits you, your first thought is, I've got to get. I've got to protect myself, and I'm going to go into survival mode. And survival mode is not meant for a lot of these situations. Survival mode is literally meant for moments when we are facing naturally something that is life or death.
[00:14:53] But oftentimes what we're facing is something more emotional or something more relational.
[00:15:00] A lot of times for me, it's been relational struggles, and they present themselves as being life or death. And for sure, these situations could change my life, but that doesn't mean I'm going to die. But I have to make a choice in those moments.
[00:15:17] Am I going to run to him as my stronghold?
[00:15:23] Or am I going to go inside of myself and try to find my own answer, my own solution?
[00:15:29] Or am I just gonna stand there and be numb? Because that's happened to me, too. I remember this one time I was going through some stuff with Mike, and, you know, something came out that I had no idea was gonna come out. And I remember at that moment, I was serving in a church.
[00:15:51] It wasn't a church. We had a.
[00:15:54] An intercessory worship team, a group of us that we were meeting at a facility, and we were doing these worship sets and prayer sets together. And I wasn't even on that day to lead a set or be involved with the set, but I knew they were having a set. So I ran in there and I just laid myself.
[00:16:18] I think I sat on the floor and just wailed and bawled my eyes out.
[00:16:23] Because to me, that was a picture of. I ran into his refuge. I ran into him into his shelter. Because this situation was beyond anything that I could fix. And I knew it.
[00:16:35] I knew it. There was no point of even trying.
[00:16:38] And I just found myself at the mercy of God. And I did the only thing I knew to do, and the only thing I've ever done my whole life is I ran to him.
[00:16:48] There's very few things that I think that I do well or do right, but one of the things I have done somewhat well is to run to God as my shelter, as my refuge. And I think that's because God did me a favor and made me such a kind of weak, needy person in my own personality, in my own strength. I'm not.
[00:17:12] You know, people think of me as super introverted or super insecure maybe, because I don't. I don't.
[00:17:20] I'm not a real outgoing person when you first meet me, quiet. Usually. I'm very introspective, and I'm watching things. So I've always been kind of labeled as weak or quiet or whatever.
[00:17:34] But the truth is I'm actually very creative and artistic, and I'm introverted, so people just mistake that.
[00:17:42] But I have found that because of my weaknesses, because of some of the handicaps that I felt like I was born with, in some ways, it really made things easier for me to run to God. So, like, I pretty much know I can't save myself, and I've learned that no one else can save me.
[00:18:04] Mistakenly believe that other people can save me, and they can't.
[00:18:08] Only God can. Can save me. And that's a good question. To ask yourself, are you.
[00:18:16] Are you thinking and are you trusting in other people to save you?
[00:18:21] Are you continually running to someone else when your life falls apart and you're looking for a place of shelter, of safety, of refuge?
[00:18:31] Or are you running to God first?
[00:18:33] And I know that can be hard because God is not physically at a place where he's standing in front of us and we can see him and feel him with all of our senses.
[00:18:46] So I know it can be hard.
[00:18:49] But I want to give you just some thoughts about what can you do when you find yourself in these situations. Because he didn't promise us that trouble would never come.
[00:19:03] And you don't. You don't need a refuge unless there's something you need refuge from, right? So these situations are gonna happen. You're gonna feel like you're being chased down by circumstances or a problem in your life.
[00:19:18] So we're always gonna have that. Jesus said, you're always gonna have trials in this life.
[00:19:25] So what do you do when it does happen?
[00:19:27] And I want to really challenge you in something that I know is going to be difficult. It can be done, and it can be done because of the Holy Spirit living inside of you. And he can help you with this.
[00:19:41] You have to go into a place of worship.
[00:19:44] And this is what I love about David.
[00:19:47] This is what I love about him, is you'll see him. He's honest. You'll see him in the psalms where he's talking about running, you know, running to God. And he is talking about, they're pursuing me. They're trying to take me out.
[00:20:00] But then he'll say something like, but you are a refuge for me.
[00:20:05] You've never left me, you never will.
[00:20:09] Till my hair is. I'm old and gray and you still are there with me. All these beautiful psalms that he wrote, he wrote them because he was running for his life.
[00:20:21] So he learned to make God his refuge. So it's not that you don't identify and acknowledge that, yes, this is really hard. This situation is really hard. But in this moment, I'm going to choose to turn to him, to face him, to not run away, but come to a place of worship in him.
[00:20:48] And that can be really challenging because you can feel so overwhelmed by the thing that you're going through, that worship is the most furthest thing from your mind. I don't even know if that's a correct way to say that it's the furthest thing from your mind to stop and to worship.
[00:21:07] But that's exactly what we need to do.
[00:21:10] That's exactly what we need to do. Because as we do that, we're going to connect with him again. We're going to hear him, he's going to tell us what to do. He's going to remind us that we're protected in him.
[00:21:22] This is how I made it through some of the worst times in my life was I learned to run to God as my refuge and I learned specifically how to worship.
[00:21:32] And when I say worship, there's a lifestyle of worship that we can talk about. That's a whole other series that I could do or I can or can talk about worship being going to church.
[00:21:45] But what I'm really talking about right here is specifically using your body and your mouth and your voice to release worship and praise unto God. There's something about that that's so powerful. And this song that I'm, you know, I was reading to you, that I had written, that's what it was about. My life was not great. I was falling apart.
[00:22:11] But I chose in that moment to look at him.
[00:22:16] I had to look at him.
[00:22:18] And when I looked at him, I was reminded that he is my refuge, he's my shelter, he's my shade, he's my shield, he's my stronghold.
[00:22:29] And when you do that, the problem becomes so much smaller in your life.
[00:22:37] There's something so amazing and I can even see it visually. Like, I can see that, you know, here you are, you're facing something horrible that you never saw coming that looks like it's gonna take you out.
[00:22:51] But behind you is this huge stronghold that God has built. And it's really high up off the ground, it's towering, it's got like this castle approach that, you know, like this castle feeling of being really tall. And it's a big structure and it's fortified. And all I have to do is turn around and walk back and get into that shelter, get into that refuge. Because he's there, he's there, he's already built it, he is already there.
[00:23:23] And if it's. It's as simple as, and it sounds simple, but it's. It can be really difficult when you're in survival mode to choose to worship.
[00:23:34] But it's so powerful and it's so life changing. And I'm telling you, this is the key.
[00:23:40] This is the key to really learning and leaning into God and not being driven by emotions and feelings, fear and anxiety, but choosing to turn into worship in these moments is how we get through these seasons of our life or these circumstances or these horrible Things that seem like they're going to take us out.
[00:24:05] And so for you, you know, that may look different than it does for me. I highly encourage you to find an expression of art for yourself and use that as worship.
[00:24:19] So for me, historically, what I've done has been to write songs. And I still do that sometimes.
[00:24:27] And I get so much breakthrough.
[00:24:30] I can just be so distraught and overwhelmed and almost just paralyzed.
[00:24:38] And I'll make a choice and I'll say, I'm going to go sit at the piano and I'm gonna see what comes out, right? And so I'll start playing. And at first it's terrible and there's nothing there, but then I'll keep playing and chords will start coming together and I've got a chord progression going, and I've got. I feel this. Like this. The song wants to go a different, a certain specific way. I feel the song.
[00:25:06] It's so hard to explain it because I don't even have words yet, but I feel specific direction, a certain feeling that this song has.
[00:25:15] And so once I've played this chord progression multiple times, what will happen is I'll begin to hear a phrase, maybe one phrase, and I'll start singing that, and I'll start. I'll usually hear a melody before I even hear a phrase. So I'll hear the melody of something. And I just may hum that for a while, and then I start to move into a phrase.
[00:25:38] And this is how I write songs for the most part. It is a very deep spiritual place, but it's a place of worship is what I'm trying to say.
[00:25:48] And what happens by the end of it. I am in the shelter.
[00:25:54] I am in his refuge. I. I've taken refuge under the shadow of his wings. He's El Shaddai. And I've taken shadow. I've taken.
[00:26:04] I've taken comfort and refuge in the shadow of his wings.
[00:26:08] And that's what I'm telling you to do. And sometimes I'm just. Practically speaking right now. Sometimes we have to engage that other part of our brain that is artistic and creative and not logical.
[00:26:21] It bypasses that. And I love this, that God gave us this ability to bypass things, to get out of our survival, logical brain sometimes and go into an artistic place, a creative place, because what it can do is it can. Can connect us back to God.
[00:26:40] It brings us out of fight or flight. We can see past the emergency that we find ourselves in. And we're reminded because that art will connect us, like so. So if it's not music for you.
[00:26:55] Or if it is music, I mean, you can easily just put on a YouTube worship song and just worship.
[00:27:01] Right? You can do it that way.
[00:27:03] But I would encourage you to find an outlet or artistic, creative outlet, whether that be writing, journaling, poetry. Oftentimes I like to do two different kinds of writing.
[00:27:16] Journal writing, which might be complaining and just getting it all out, like throwing up. But then behind it, I'll write a poem.
[00:27:25] And the poem is what brings resolution to the problem that I'm facing as I write something in it. It's just like when David was writing the Psalms. He starts out almost throwing up about whatever he's going through, but by the end of it, he's created some poetic masterpiece that reminds him of who God is. That's what I'm trying to say. So maybe you do it through writing poetry. Maybe you write a blog. Maybe you go into visual art. I'm kind of moving in this direction now where you paint a picture and it doesn't have to be, like, amazing and beautiful and, you know, like it's gonna go in an art museum. Maybe you use map colors and draw something.
[00:28:09] Maybe it's just sketching.
[00:28:14] Maybe it is painting. Painting is so much fun.
[00:28:18] Or maybe you make things like, you know, you. You would work, or. That's kind of weird for a woman, but it could happen, right? Some women do do things like that.
[00:28:30] Maybe it's crocheting or making clothes or making any, any, any of these work because they engage that part of our brain. But the important part is, I think whenever you're doing it, you need to connect it to worship.
[00:28:48] You need to say, okay, I might be sketching out this, whatever this is, but what's really happening here is I'm. I'm connecting to God through worship. I'm seeing his majesty, and I'm creating some kind of expression of that, of what I see when I see Him. That's what art is really for Christians.
[00:29:12] So try that. I just. I think if we could learn, all. All of us could learn to be artists in our own way.
[00:29:21] You know, not everybody's going to be a professional musician or painter or poet or writer.
[00:29:28] But what we can do is we can use this method and this process that David used that. That I have used and didn't even know I was doing it for years, that a lot of people have used to connect that way, and it reminds them, oh, yes, I see him. I see how big he is.
[00:29:47] I see that he's my refuge, and I'm safe in him.
[00:29:51] So I hope that this has been encouraging to you today and that it gives you some ideas. I would love to know if you listen to this and you tried something email me shannashannawilliams.com Also please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen that definitely helps me get the word out so that I can help more people who struggle to make this connection between their faith and real life. Like how do they practically walk out what they believe that can help more people as my platform grows. And yeah and you can also at my website shannonwilliams.com you can sign up for my email newsletters and sometimes I send out information about upcoming events or books that I may have coming out or music.
[00:30:44] So if that feels like something you want to do and you want to know more about some of these resources I have, please go there and sign up. But until until next week I pray you guys have a fantastic week and that you run to God as your refuge.
