Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hey, guys.
[00:00:02] This is Shannon Williams with the Grace and Grit Mindset podcast. And this is a place where we just really deal with all of the stuff that can really mentally hold us back from walking in the fullness of all that God has for us. And there's so many things that he has for us, and we can't fully step into that without dealing with some, oh, some mindset issues or some faulty belief systems that we might have. And I'm excited because we are starting a new series. I'm starting a new series.
[00:00:41] It's going to be probably called the Steadfast One.
[00:00:46] I'm also writing a book about that, but I thought I would spend a few weeks here looking at different aspects of God's steadfastness in all these different areas.
[00:00:59] But this week, I want to set it up as, you know, what does steadfast mean? What does it mean that we have a steadfast God?
[00:01:09] And is that even. Like, where is that in Scripture? And what is it? What does it mean in terms of, like, should that be something I get excited about or should I really?
[00:01:20] Even honestly, that's not a word that we use nowadays. So it's kind of one of those archaic words that I love because I love words that have such rich meaning, and this word steadfast does have such a rich meaning and context. But I just want to say, you know, the reason I want to talk about this is because the last.
[00:01:43] Oh, gosh, if you've been listening to me, you know, the last five or six, seven years of my life have been extremely difficult, and I feel like a broken record sometimes. And I want to glorify how hard it's been.
[00:01:55] But I certainly don't want to discount how challenging it was, because I want you to understand if you're listening and you struggle because things are hard, I get it. I so understand. But, you know, there is always.
[00:02:12] There's always hope when you're in covenant with God.
[00:02:15] And one of the words that kept coming to me over the course of the last six years was steadfast.
[00:02:21] And I really felt like the Lord was just reminding me that he was steadfast towards me. His love was steadfast, his mercy, his kindness, his grace.
[00:02:30] He was just steadfast in that way. And so I just kind of tucked that word into my heart. And when I would get discouraged or feel disconnected, really, I think it. It's more so when I feel disconnected because, you know, you can go through something hard, but as long as you have God, it seems to be a Lot easier. And you don't feel alone. But it's when I feel alone, and maybe you can relate. When I feel alone and the test or trial or whatever, the situation just goes on and on and on, and I start to feel like it's just me and the problem, and I don't even know where he is anymore. And. And it's not like I intentionally try to move in that direction, but I find myself there because I have been.
[00:03:17] I'm just kind of debilitated by it. You know, The. The. The problem at hand is just wearing me down to the point that I start to feel like the problem is mine and I have to fix it. I have to handle it, or I have to live with it or whatever the. The issue may be. So I just want to encourage you that if you feel that way right now, that you feel very disconnected from God, you feel very alone, and it's just you and your problems.
[00:03:46] I just want to encourage you that if you are in covenant with him, that that's never the case. You are never alone. He's always with you.
[00:03:54] He's always standing beside you. He's always offering you kindness and grace and mercy, help and encouragement.
[00:04:04] The enemy wants you to believe that it's you and the problem, that it's you always struggling, that you're all alone in it. But there's so. There's so much rich scripture that reminds us that nothing can separate us from the love of God. And sometimes that's all you have to hold on to, is all I. All I have is that nothing can separate him from me. And even in this moment, when I feel so alone and the struggle is real and life is laughing constantly, I know that he can never leave me because he is a covenant God. And I think that's where steadfast gets its richness and power, is the fact that it's a covenant thing.
[00:04:41] I want to just read you a couple of verses here that talk about the steadfast love of God. And then I'm going to jump over into what it actually means.
[00:04:49] Lamentations 3, 22, 23. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.
[00:04:56] They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.
[00:04:59] Psalm 136. 1. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. And as a matter of fact, if you look at Psalm 136, it just keeps. It has different verses. And then it will constantly come behind and say, for His Steadfast love endures forever. And by the way, this is the English Standard version, so not every version is going to say steadfast love.
[00:05:22] Some of them are going to translate this steadfast love different.
[00:05:27] But I'm going to be reading from this version, and I'm going to tell you why in a minute. Psalm 105 for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
[00:05:38] Psalm 117, 2. For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.
[00:05:47] Psalm 103, 17. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children.
[00:05:58] So there's so many of these, and I could keep going.
[00:06:02] I want to look at there's one that I really like that's from, I believe Exodus.
[00:06:13] Let me find that for you, because it is probably my favorite. And this is the way that God describes himself in these terms. He says, and he's telling this to I Believe Moses, Exodus 34. It could be the whole the whole group, though, of Israelites at the time. Exodus 34, 6, 7. He describes himself this way, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. I love that verse because when God, he's introducing himself to them, he's saying it.
[00:06:56] He didn't say, I'm a God of wrath.
[00:06:58] He could have even said I'm a God of justice, which he is.
[00:07:01] I'm a God of vengeance.
[00:07:03] I'm a God of perfection. I'm a God of righteousness.
[00:07:07] But he introduces himself as this covenant God with words like mercy and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Now, this steadfast love word comes from the Hebrew word hesed.
[00:07:24] Actually, I think they say kassed, actually. Interesting. There's a K in front of it, Ksed.
[00:07:32] So and here's the thing. Our translations in English don't really know how to translate this word into one word because it is so big and it's so rich and it means so many beautiful things.
[00:07:46] So there's not one single word that can capture it.
[00:07:49] So it's oftentimes, depending on the context of the sentence, you will see it translated as sometimes steadfast love, this cassette, or loving kindness. Or you may see it as mercy, or you may see it as unfailing Love, faithful love, loyal love.
[00:08:08] But what does all that really mean? Because all of those words, steadfast is relating to all of these words, but it's not a big enough word to really illustrate what these scriptures are saying.
[00:08:20] So what does cassette actually mean?
[00:08:23] At its pen, very hard and core. It is. It is covenant love.
[00:08:28] That's probably the best way to describe what this word means. So when God is saying, I am the Lord God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in covenant love, that would be another way to see that scripture and to translate it honestly, covenant love.
[00:08:52] And this is just. To me, it's. It's just remarkable because it's so much bigger than what they can even translate it. But if you even look and say, okay, what is covenant love? Right? I mean, like. Because that's something that's foreign in our world. And I think that's one of the reasons God really spoke this word to me. Because I had been.
[00:09:16] I had been.
[00:09:18] I had been in different seasons and times where I had been abandoned and neglected and betrayed.
[00:09:30] And so my version of covenant love was not healthy.
[00:09:37] Because in our world, covenant love doesn't really exist.
[00:09:43] We have contractual love. You do this for me, I do this for you.
[00:09:48] We don't have a great understanding of covenant love because it's almost ancient. And honestly, the only one who can adequately or sufficiently walk in covenant love is God. He is the one that created it. Covenant is all through the Bible. And every time God's people, they continually fail him, but he always keeps his word.
[00:10:14] And even if we are faithless, the New Testament says he remains faithful.
[00:10:19] Even when we're faithless, he remains faithful to us. And so I don't think that we truly grasp this idea of covenant love and what it means. And I didn't. And I think that's one of the reasons God kept reminding me of his steadfast love to me was that it was a covenant love. And it was much bigger and much more stable and consistent and real than what I had had up to that point in, quote, unquote, covenant love with my spouse. Because although a marriage in God's eyes is a covenant, it is obviously not at the same level of the covenant that we have with God. And oftentimes our spouse breaks the covenant. And so we deal with constant feelings of betrayal and loss and grief. And we struggle to not get jaded. Because if I'm in a covenant and it constantly gets broken by someone else, we start to feel that way towards God. Well, you know, I Mean, if this is what covenant is, then is he this way too? And it can feel really like just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the next bad thing to happen and God, then maybe it's just like all the other people that you've had in your life. But the thing is, he's not. And then that's why he kept reminding me of that when everyone else would leave, he would not leave me, he would not forsake me.
[00:11:46] And so this hesed covenant love, some of these descriptions that we see about it, and what it is, is it's faithful.
[00:11:57] So it's like faithfulness, it's loyalty, it's commitment, it's enduring, it's unfailing, it's kind, it's merciful, it's gracious.
[00:12:07] So it's, it's this love that is not rooted in emotion anymore. It is a choice.
[00:12:14] And it is, it never gives up. This is First Corinthians 13 in a nutshell.
[00:12:21] You know, when it talks about love and what it is, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. That is this love, that covenant love, that steadfast love of God.
[00:12:32] So you can, you can kind of think of this way. Love can be a feeling. So just love in general, when the world people, when the people in the world talk about love, they're just talking about feeling most of the time. But steadfast love is a love that keeps showing up in our life, like when we don't deserve it or when we become faithless or when we have actually said, you know, I can't do this anymore, I'm done.
[00:12:54] His love continues to seek us out and to help us and to save us and to walk with us, even when we don't feel like he's walking with us. And I love that that this word appears in scripture. You know, like some of the translations translate it. A steadfast love, this covenant love.
[00:13:19] But the thing is, it's, it's, it's, it's steadfast because it's unwavering. That's, that's why the word is often translated sometimes as steadfast. Because there is really no word in the Hebrew language that is a word for steadfast. But in our language, in English, we do have it. And it's this idea and just like close your eyes for a minute and think about this, meditate on this, that God's love is unwavering.
[00:13:48] So it doesn't matter about your performance or lack thereof or your commitment or your inability to do things right or you making bad decisions.
[00:14:01] His love towards you is still unwavering. It's still immovable. It's still dependable. It's still constant and still faithful.
[00:14:08] Ooh, faithful through every season.
[00:14:11] Man, I don't know anybody else like that. I don't know anybody else that has that kind of love for me. I had been let down by so many people, and I know you have to. And it hurts. It hurts so bad.
[00:14:24] But what's beautiful is this is a covenant love that we have with him. It's a steadfast love.
[00:14:31] It's immovable. It can't be changed. It can't be shaken.
[00:14:37] I just love that he keeps his covenant.
[00:14:40] He never walks away. He never changes. He never says, you know what?
[00:14:45] I've changed my mind about you. I'm tired of you. I don't want to do this anymore. I want out.
[00:14:52] I think that that is amazing, and I hope that that's encouraging to you today. And, you know, where I want to land with you is like, okay, we talked about him being steadfast, and that's amazing, right?
[00:15:07] But do you know how important it is or understand?
[00:15:13] Because I didn't understand that what we behold and what we meditate on and what we look at, we eventually become like.
[00:15:24] And so here's the thing.
[00:15:27] We have to learn how to meditate on these qualities of God.
[00:15:32] And right now, I am choosing to focus on his steadfastness, his steadfast love and all these beautiful words that describe that, because I need that right now in my life. That's what I feel drawn to. I need to be reminded that he's in a covenant with me, like a marriage covenant. Like the kind that nothing can separate. Like, we're going to make it to the end type thing, you know, like, no matter what happens, no matter what comes our way, no matter what losses, what death may bring, it's at some point, sickness, whatever, we're in this together forever. And he's never going to leave me. Even if I get tired and lay down and give up, he's going to. He's not going to quit. He's going to keep. And that's amazing.
[00:16:20] And that's the kind of stuff that we have to learn to meditate on.
[00:16:24] Because if we don't learn to meditate on these qualities of God, what we begin to do is we begin to meditate on the problems we begin to think about and mull it over in our brain and constantly rehash the bad things, the things we feel like we don't have the constant battles that we face.
[00:16:47] And then those things become so big in our life, they actually become our God.
[00:16:53] And we begin to see God in such a small, tiny way. And we begin to think that his love, his steadfast covenant love is not big enough to hold us through or to save us or keep us, or to take us through these situations or even to, you know, fix some of these issues that we face and pull us through the problem. We begin to think that it's all on us.
[00:17:16] And we begin to look more like the world, more like a person with uncontrollable anxiety and depression and overwhelm and just wanting to just throw in the towel.
[00:17:31] But if we learn to meditate and meditate, I said, that's something I'm going to talk about in some of my upcoming episodes. Because the book I'm writing is going to be about meditating on the steadfastest of God. And I'm going to pull in about 12 different aspects of his steadfastness and how we can meditate on those.
[00:17:56] And as we behold him in this way, what happens is we become that way. So let's just say I'm a person who, and this is so true, I'm not very steadfast.
[00:18:07] I mean, I am loyal and I am committed, but I'm inconsistent sometimes and I don't want to be like that. I want to be a steadfast person in. In my relationships with him, with the people I love.
[00:18:21] But as I behold him, see, I don't become steadfast by trying harder. I become steadfast by beholding him and being in close proximity to him.
[00:18:30] And as I'm around him and I see him, I'm an image bearer. So I begin to look like him.
[00:18:35] But if I flip that and I don't do that and I decide I'm just going to look at my problems, then I begin to look like the problems. I begin to look like stress and anxiety and the worst possible, I hate to say it, version of myself, because that people just overuse that phrase a lot to me. But we do. We become the worst possible version of ourselves when we really need an upgrade. We need an upgrade that makes us look more like him. And we only can get that bad beholding him.
[00:19:06] So this idea of meditating is literally just thinking about something. You know, it's all through scripture, but it's been hijacked by a lot of Eastern religions, you know, and they, when they do meditation, a lot of times they try to Empty their mind.
[00:19:23] That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is very biblical. It's. It's about meditating on or thinking, thinking about these attributes of God, these words of God. You see it in scripture. I'll meditate on your word day and night.
[00:19:37] So he is his Word. So we can oftentimes take a scripture like this one. The Lord, the Lord, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. This is something that I could think about all day long as I.
[00:19:53] Not every second of the day, but if I'm having a moment, even if I'm not having a moment, I can just remind myself, God is merciful.
[00:20:02] He is so merciful. Thank you for your mercy, God, because you could have been.
[00:20:08] You could have demanded justice, but instead you gave mercy to me when I messed up. You're gracious.
[00:20:15] The Lord God is a gracious God.
[00:20:18] I thank you for that, God, that you're gracious toward me. Your heart is always toward me. To. To extend kindness and grace to me that I don't deserve, to help me in my time of need or. You're slow to anger. And I'm so grateful that you're slow to anger, Lord, because there have been so many times where I deserved your anger, I deserved your wrath. But instead, you. You didn't. You didn't punish me or you rebound in steadfast love. I'm thankful that your covenant love, your cassette, is always, always operating in my life. There's never a day where you are withdrawing your covenant. There's never a day where you're saying, you know what I want out of this.
[00:21:03] You're not a man that you should lie.
[00:21:05] You don't change your mind.
[00:21:08] Do you see what I'm saying? Do you see how that.
[00:21:11] That type of turning your thoughts in, meditating on just that one scripture. And really, I just kind of turn it into a prayer. I just read. Read part of it or all of it. And then I just have a conversation with the Lord about it.
[00:21:27] Or maybe there's another way to meditate on the Lord is you actually. You actually close your eyes and you envision. You envision this, like, okay, I want to remember, when has God been merciful to me? Me, when has God been gracious? I want to recall those things. But maybe it's also, I'm using my imagination to picture in the future, what would it look like for God to show me his steadfast love, his covenant love? To me. What does that look like in my situation, in my life right now?
[00:22:01] Can I picture him reaching his hand? Can I. Can I see Jesus reaching his hand out to me to help me, to pull me up out of the. Whatever I'm in. Maybe I'm sinking in the water like Peter, and he's reaching out his hand.
[00:22:19] He's extending this covenant love to me.
[00:22:23] That is meditation and it is so powerful. And it's. It's a gift that God has given us. But what we typically do is we rehearse our problems. We rehearse the circumstances we find ourselves in and how overwhelming it is. We sink in the water just like Peter, and we forget that he is a covenant God with covenant love, with steadfast love toward us. So I'm excited about this book and where it could go and how it could potentially help all of us. Because as I'm writing, I learn so much and I grow in these areas because I have to study.
[00:23:05] And studying really just opens my eyes and I get to.
[00:23:11] I get to experience the richness of what God is saying first before I release it.
[00:23:17] So I'm excited. And I hope that this message, you know, if. I hope that it didn't encourage you. If you, if you are struggling, you feel alone right now, you have a covenant God who will never leave you or never forsake you. He's not like a man. He doesn't walk away or betray you or reject you or neglect you. He's a covenant God who's faithful all the way to the end.
[00:23:39] And hey, I hope this finds you and encourages you. And would you like and subscribe to this podcast and share it? Maybe share it with someone who needs it? Also, you can go to my website, Shannon Williams.com you'll find other blogs to encourage you. More podcasts. I have a couple of different podcasts you can check out. I actually have three out there. You can go check out each one, see which one might be what you need. You can also go to Amazon and find my Choosing Better book and to help you if you struggle with mindset issues, overcoming some things in your mind. So, hey, until next time, I hope that you are blessed.
