[00:00:01] When the world is closing in on me and it gets so heavy.
[00:00:09] Hey there. Welcome to Grace and Grit podcast, and I'm your host, Shanna Williams. So what is this all about?
[00:00:19] Grace and Grit is a faith filled journey designed to empower you with spiritual strength and resilience. Each episode, we're going to delve into biblical topics, offering insights and teachings to help you overcome life's mental and emotional challenges. We're going to use scripture. I'm going to tell you stories. It's going to be a blast. I can't wait to see you today.
[00:00:51] Okay, here we are again. It's another week, right? And hopefully that's a good thing and you're excited about that and not dreading it.
[00:01:02] Yeah. So it is a Friday for me. I am kind of winding my week down and wanted to just share with you kind of what encouraged me this week from the Lord.
[00:01:16] Last week, I talked about anxiety, which I seem to talk about a lot.
[00:01:24] So, you know, I had undiagnosed general anxiety disorder for a long time and didn't know that I had it. I just assumed everybody lived that way.
[00:01:35] I assumed everybody lived stressed out and anxious all the time. Well, I found out later in life that they didn't. And the toll had taken on me physically and the issues that I deal with now from years of being anxious and stressed out. So I obviously have a, you know, I have a lot to say about that, and I also want to help people and that struggle with that. And so this is kind of like, if you didn't catch last week's episode, definitely want to go back and catch that. I think that it will probably really speak to some of you.
[00:02:12] I do know that right now we are in tumultuous times. We are in. I feel like this last year, even this, the last few months, have been the most intense in America, in, in the spirit world. You can feel in the supernatural. There's a lot of intensity right now. There's a lot of spiritual warfare over our minds.
[00:02:38] There is so much going on in the political world as well as just internationally, with all the nations and the wars that are going on. And, I mean, Jesus talked about this and a lot of scripture talks about the end of days and how hard it's going to be and how tumultuous in the wars and the constant natural disasters that are happening all the time, tornadoes and earthquakes in places that never have them. And so if you are not actively, if you're a person who, who already is anxious, like, you know, like you're just kind of wired to be super anxious all the time.
[00:03:22] If you don't learn how to get a handle on that and how to deal with, you know, how to learn how to surrender to the Lord, how to learn how to fix your mind on him, which I talked about in the couple episodes back. So you want to listen to that, too. But if you don't learn that intentionally, things are just going to get worse. And I'm telling you, it's going to pull you down. And I think we're going to see a lot of people who can't just, they just can't deal with it anymore. The stress, the struggle, the constant mental battle, the constant warfare over their mind.
[00:04:00] God wants to strengthen you up in this area because of the things that are coming. So I don't know how else to say this, but if you think things are bad now, just wait. Just wait. They're actually going to intensify and get worse. And that may sound terrible, but I'm not saying that to make people feel overwhelmed and like they just want to give up. I'm telling you that to encourage you to work with the Lord and let him strengthen you, let him build this foundation in you that you are not afraid of. I love some of the things that psalm 91 says. You're not afraid of the terror at night and the arrow that flies by day. I probably got that wrong. You're not afraid of the pestilence at noon time. You're not afraid. And you're not living your life in a constant place of fear of what could happen to you, because you've learned that God is faithful and God will take care of you, and God knows what's going on in your life, and he knows what's coming. He knows how to get you where you need to be. He knows how to protect you. All the stuff, right? I mean, that's, that's what this is all about. And so today, because the podcast is called grace and grit, and I'm gonna tell you, this is a lot of grit today. And I think we need a lot of grit to make it through what we're all about to go through, especially with the elections coming up in a couple months.
[00:05:20] Good Lord, all the things that are going on every day, things are being exposed. I mean, you know, President Trump was almost shot, what, like last month, barely escaped from not being murdered. And at the event that he was speaking at. And I mean, crazy stuff going on that you, you know, if you don't have your mind right, you might not make it you know, and that's just the truth. So. So I talked about last week with anxiety, but this week I am talking about where Paul is in, he's writing in the book of two corinthians. And, man, anytime I feel like I am so discouraged and despairing even of life, because he talks about that like, you are crushed. You are crushed with trials.
[00:06:15] Anytime I feel like woe is me and I'm a victim and I have it so bad and nobody understand, nobody know type thing, I go back and I look at some of the things that the first, the apostles went through and the disciples and what it cost them to build the church. It cost them everything. It cost them their lives. It cost them their sense of just having, I don't know, just a normal life, you know? I mean, we have no idea how hard their lives were. And I think sometimes we can get really disillusioned and really kind of disconnected to reality. Things could be so much worse. Like, things could be so much worse. And that may not make you feel better, but sometimes we need a reality check and we need to say, okay, you know what?
[00:07:08] Let me put my pain in perspective. Let me put my struggles in perspective, because maybe they're not as bad as I think they are. Okay? Right. So. Because when you really think something's terrible, horrible, awful, well, obviously, if you believe that your behavior, your emotions are going to follow suit and you're going to be depressed and you're going to be frustrated and you just want, you know, you may even want to die. I mean, that's. It's the truth. You know, I get it because I've been there. I've been to the low place many, many times.
[00:07:41] And so I just want to read a little bit about what Paul is saying in two corinthians, a couple different places that I think are just phenomenal writings that he shares about the struggles of what he's been through. And so, first of all, I just want to start with two corinthians, chapter one.
[00:08:02] I am going to start with verse eight. And this is what he says.
[00:08:09] He says, for we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction, which came to us. Oh, how nice. It came to us, right? Like a gift. It came to us in Asia that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life.
[00:08:31] Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a peril of death. And will deliver us.
[00:08:48] He on whom we have set our hope and he will yet deliver us. So I was reading this last week and gonna be honest, had a really bad couple of days where, you know, and I talked about this last week, how the last two years keep dragging on. So I think this is like part two of the teaching of last week almost. But things have been dragging on for the last two years. They've been excited excessively hard. It feels like a trial that will never end. It feels like just when I think it's gonna turn and get better, it actually gets worse. And there's like this weight and this crushing and this constant pressure on me and my husband that for us it did mostly seems to be financial. Like never knowing, I said this last week, never knowing from one month to the next how we're going to make it. Like, we don't even know how we're going to pay our bills half the time. Right? I'm being so honest because I know there's got to be people who are in this same place that I'm in, that you're doing what God told you to do, and it is so heavy like it is. There's so much pressure in it, and you really just want to save yourself and you really just want to get out, and you keep trying to figure out ways to get out of the situation. But here's the thing. God has you in the situation just like he had Paul.
[00:10:15] In this situation where Paul is doing the work of God. God has called him to be an apostle. He is sharing with the gentiles, you know, which was really the ultimate goal of God's plan, was not just to share. I mean, of course he tries to take the message to the Jews and they pretty much are like, no, we don't want to hear it, you know? So God's plan all along was to take it to the Gentiles. And eventually, when the time is right, the Jews, the Israelites will hear the message God will use the gentiles to bring to cause a jealousy in the heart of the Jews so that they will actually come back. They're going to be like, who is this mandev that these Christians keep talking about? You know? Like they actually get jealous. They're spurred to jealousy, but that's part of God's plan. So God. So Paul is taking. Taking this message to the gentiles, and it's costing him everything.
[00:11:13] I'm talking about everything. And I'm going to read the list of things. It cost him a few chapters over in two corinthians, the same book.
[00:11:22] But what stuck out to me because of what I'm going through, what my husband is going through, what I feel like so many of you are going through, is that he says, indeed, okay, I'm gonna go back to eight. For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction, which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength. So he's like, we couldn't even hold up to it, and we just didn't even want to live. We were despairing that we despaired even of life. Indeed, we had this sentence of death within ourselves. Like, this is almost like they were internally saying, we want to die, and we believe we're going to die. And we honestly just wish it would just come, because this is so hard. We can't keep doing this anymore. Right? And I think a lot of you have said that I just can't keep doing this anymore. Indeed, we had this sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves. Here it is. But in God, who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a peril of death and will deliver us, he on whom we have set our hope, he will yet deliver us. What stuck out to me was that he said this happened so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God. Have you ever thought or considered that what you're going through right now is to teach you this valuable lesson, vital lesson that we all have to learn, which is God doesn't want you to trust in yourself.
[00:12:48] The reason you keep finding yourselves and yourself in this impossible situation is because he wants you to learn that you can only trust him. He wants you to stop trying to be so self sufficient. He wants you to stop trying to be independent of him.
[00:13:06] I've talked about this before, and this is all through book I wrote called Providence. Embrace your beautiful destiny, because I think it is so needed. There are so many self help books out there. There are so many books out there that I researched as I was writing my book. I wanted to make sure, first of all, that I wasn't crazy.
[00:13:29] Second of all, that there wasn't already a book out there that, you know, was too close to what I was going to write.
[00:13:38] But also I wanted to just research and learn more about Providence and learn about some of the things that I was writing about and what I came to find and what actually started to make my spirit sick. There's a particular author that's really. She was really popular back then. I don't know if she is now, and on the surface, and I'm not trying to beat her down, so I'm not even going to say her name, okay? But on the surface, her book looks so good, and what she was saying looks so good. And a lot of christian women were quoting from her book and talking about how amazing it was. And so I finally read it, you know, thinking, oh, okay, I think this girl's a Christian, and I think she says she is. But when I start reading it, I start feeling in my spirit, I feel convicted by the Lord that this is not true. Like, she's just talking about how if you want to make something happen, you got to get out there and do it. You got to work yourself to death. You got to climb the ladder. You got to forsake everything else. I mean, she's talking about how she forsook her marriage for, you know, not that she was unfaithful, I don't mean that, but she just would, like work, work, work, work all the time.
[00:14:58] You know, kind of just neglect her husband, not be at home, not be available to her children. But in the end, you know, she basically says it's worth it. And she's not the only one that teaches that kind of stuff. I mean, that's kind of everywhere. Everywhere I look, because I'm in the business world. Everywhere I look in the spaces of business world, all of the authors say things like this.
[00:15:22] They say, you have to make it happen. You have to be self sufficient. You have to be independent. You, you, you. And it really honestly makes me sick. It makes me sick because I feel when I hear that, I hear the Holy Spirit saying, no, that is not how it is in the kingdom. That is not how we do things.
[00:15:44] You rely on me for your, the strength that you need. Jesus said, come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, and you will find rest for your souls. So when I was writing the book, that is exactly where he took me. He took me to the Matthew 1128, where Jesus is talking about, you know, he is, his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And he was reminding me that his way of doing things is not the way the world does things. And it's almost offensive, you know, for a christian to be like, I'm going to double down here. I'm going to get this done. I'm going to work myself to death. A lot of ministries have burned out a lot of people have fallen away because they have taken that approach. And I'm bringing that full circle back to what Paul is saying. He's like, you know, God put us in this situation that was so unbearable and so hard because he wanted us to learn that we couldn't depend on ourselves. We had to fully trust in God.
[00:17:00] And so you, that is not a situation that you're ever going to get away from, okay? You're never going to grow so much spiritually that you're not going to need to remember and to live out what the scripture is saying, that you have to fully trust in God. All of your confidence has to be in him. I'm not saying you can't have any self confidence, and I'm not saying that, but I am saying that God's system in God's kingdom, the way he does it, is fully relying on him, fully relying on the holy spirit to lead you, to guide you, to give you everything you need. Even so far, even the struggle I have is. But am I even, am I responsible to take care of myself financially, Lord? Am I responsible to provide for my own needs, to pay the bills that I have created? You know, the debt I have gone into? Isn't that my problem, too? And even in that, I feel like the Lord's saying, no, I'm partnering with you. It's not that you aren't going to work, but you're going to trust me to give you what you need. You know, God knows you need a place to live, God knows you need cars to drive, and God knows that your needs, right? And so he's going to help you, but you have to fully rely on him, and you have to stop trying to fix it yourself or constantly worrying about it, because this lesson is. It's a hard lesson to learn, but once you learn it, you realize that life can be so much easier, life can be so much better, and you can get your joy back. Like you. That's, that's the main thing, I think, is, um, you know, because as a christian, one of your birthrights is joy, peace, right? Those are things that are yours the moment that you receive Jesus as your lord and savior. Peace and joy and righteousness, those belong to a believer. God gives them to us like a beautiful, packaged gift that we get to open when we get saved and we get to experience the thing that we've really been craving all along. The things we've been craving really all along were peace, joy, righteousness, which is the right standing with God, knowing that I'm loved and forgiven. And that he doesn't look at me like he wants to kill me because I'm terrible. He looks at me with love. He looks at me as being righteous because of his son. And I get to experience peace and joyous because I can know in any situation, doesn't matter what it is, because of what Jesus did, peace is mine. I can approach problems in life because I have the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding. Right? And I have the joy of the Lord, which will carry me through every circumstance in my life, no matter how dire it seems, no matter how much the enemy wants to tell me. You just need to dispel despair of life. You just need to give up. You just need to go ahead and crawl. Just crawl into a hole and die. You know, I feel that pressure from him, you know, to just give up. Right? But here Paul is saying, you know what? But the Lord carried us, and he taught us that day by day by day, he was going to take care of us. And that's another.
[00:20:21] Yeah, that's another point I want to make the day by day thing. So one of the other things that the Lord spoke to me about this week and reminded me so nicely of was just this, you know, reminder of the Israelites. And when God is bringing them out, the exodus, he's bringing them out of Egypt, he's going to take them to the promised land. There's the weird transition in the middle, right? That could have been like an eleven day journey that became a 40 year journey because they would not learn a couple of lessons. One of those being gratefulness, one of those being thankfulness and not complaining. And the other was trusting the Lord. They did not enter into his rest because they did not trust him fully. Like, what Paul's talking about, like.
[00:21:13] But one of the things the Lord reminded me of was how when they were in the wilderness, the, you know, it rained down manna at night, and so that when they got up in the morning, the manna was there. They collected the manna every day. They always had just enough for that day. And on the Sabbath day, they collected two days worth of manna so that they wouldn't have to do anything or, I'm sorry, the day before the Sabbath, they would collect two days worth on that day so that they would have plenty for the Sabbath. And it was day by day. And they literally had to trust the Lord to always give them that day what they needed.
[00:21:54] And I was thinking about, just as I was saying that I'm thinking about Jesus when he says the Lord's prayer. Give us this day our daily bread.
[00:22:02] I mean, there's something on that that I feel like in this moment right now. I know I need to learn it, but I've got to believe that I'm not the only one. This is a day by day season.
[00:22:15] It is.
[00:22:17] It's not necessarily fun, but once you learn how to let go, just let go.
[00:22:25] Like, how many times is God gonna have to save you before you just go? You know what? I think I'm just gonna let go and trust God in every area of my life. Right. You're doing it to yourself. I'm doing it to myself. I'm choosing to, you know, be. Be worried about things, want to control everything, instead of just knowing that he's always been faithful. Like, I cannot remember a time in my life where I didn't have what I needed. I mean, there have been moments where I didn't have more than I needed, but I had exactly what I needed. I never went hungry. I never went without clothes. I somehow was able to pay my bills every month, you know? And it was a miracle. And even right now, it's a miracle. I've never been late on my house payment.
[00:23:21] My car payments are always made on time.
[00:23:24] I always have groceries. I don't know. I don't know how it's happening, but it's happening. That's all I know. It's a day by day thing. And when I try to get ahead of the Lord, and I try to think about, okay, two weeks from now, Lord, I know. I don't, because I work in sales. I don't have anything in my pipeline. I don't know how we're gonna make it in two weeks, and all these bills are gonna be due. And I just feel him gently reminding me it's day by day. Trust me today, for the things that you need, right, I'm gonna send them to you. And it always happens in weird ways. It's never the same way twice, and it's. It's always unexpected. Like, right now, my husband's getting ton of overtime, you know, and that's probably. That was, you know, God's using that to help us, because really, honestly, we desperately need it. Right? And I'm making this sound like we're just so broke. And, I mean, yeah, things are hard, but I know there's a lot of other people that are in this place, and I'm just saying this. I want to be transparent. I want to be real with people because I want. You know, you're not alone. And you'll always get that from me. You always get honesty. I cannot stand when people teach and preach from a pulpit, but they don't do it from an honest place. And they make people feel like if you struggle, there's something wrong with you. No, I want you to know I struggle. I want you to know how faithful God is, even in my struggle. Right. So I want to encourage you with that. And I just want to read a little bit from two corinthians eleven. So I'm in the same book that I was in initially. When Paul is saying, man, we despaired even of life, let me tell you why he says that. Crazy that it's in the same book, right?
[00:25:05] So, actually, it's chapter ten, I think.
[00:25:15] Oh, yeah.
[00:25:21] Mmm.
[00:25:24] I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to fix this. I know I am.
[00:25:38] Okay, here we go. So, yeah, it is eleven, but it is.
[00:25:44] This is verse 24. And he's kind of like.
[00:25:47] He's trying. He's kind of like saying, hey, there's these people that have come into your midst, and they're not. They're not coming from a place of honesty, and they're trying to teach, and they're saying, you know, they kind of attacked Paul, basically, and said that he's not really fit to be teaching and all this. And so he's like, okay, I'm gonna have to defend myself a little bit. I don't want to, but, hey, he talks about the things he's been through.
[00:26:14] Are they servants of Christ? I speak as if I'm insane. As if insane. I'm more so in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. So essentially, that's 200 lashes, right?
[00:26:32] Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.
[00:26:35] Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and day I have spent in the deepest floating around the ocean. I guess I have been on frequent journeys in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren. I have been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure of me, on me, of concern for all the churches. So he's trying to be a leader on top of, like, being beaten, being stoned, being starving all the time, being cold, being in need. I mean, if this doesn't like, like, pull you out of the despair. I don't know what will, because just seeing what he went through, who is weak without my being weak, who is led into sin without my intense concern, if I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness. That God and father of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying in Damascus. The ethnarch. I don't even know what that means. That's a new word for me. Under Eredus, the king was guarding the city of the Damascus.
[00:27:59] Of Damascus, in order to seize me, and I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped his hand. So he just. And he keeps going on about, man, I'm telling you, what if I got to tell you guys, just so you'll believe me? These are the things that I have endured. Well, really for their benefit, you know, he's telling them, hey, I'm. I'm not coming at you as someone with false motives or someone who doesn't really love you. I am coming to you because I love you. And these are the things I've had to go through because of my devotion to Christ and because of my devotion to you. And he's not angry about it, but he's just building a case. Like, please don't.
[00:28:38] Don't question why I'm doing this. I mean, I'm doing this because I love you.
[00:28:43] But I just am so taken aback by, you know, the things he went through. And it really is eye opening. If you get in that funky place where you're thinking, I'm just despairing of life and your problems, I'm not saying they don't matter. My problems, I'm not saying they're not big and they don't matter. They're big to us. Right? But things could be a lot worse. And not just that, but just seeing how Paul handled himself is so it's such an encouragement to me to not stop the work of service. So what happens with most of us, and I'll say this, and I'll end for the day, what happens with most of us is when we get in this place of trials, of intense pressure and trials, what ends up happening is we stop the work of service, we stop being and doing the things that God has called us to do because we're in such intense pressure and we are crushed, and we just want to walk away and we just want to tender our own selves, lick our own wounds, bandage them, whatever. But you can't do that. You can't do that. You actually have to keep doing the things and taking care of the people that God's put in your life to take care of, despite what you're going through. And here's the thing. He will. And I didn't read this, but in two corinthians chapter one, before, at the beginning of that chapter, he starts talking about, hey, I am able to encourage you because of the encouragement I received from Christ. He encourages me. And then the things I'm going through, and then I get to encourage you. And that's what happens. If you'll keep going, if you'll keep getting up, if you'll keep saying, you know, I feel crushed, but I know the Lord's with me. And ask him to encourage you. Allow him to minister to you, you'll find that you are still able to pour into other people. And that is.
[00:30:35] That's beautiful. And that's what we're called to do as the church. It's never going to be perfect. It's never going to be easy. You know, we may have easy days here and there, but you can always bet it's going to be a challenge every single day. It's probably going to be a challenge, especially. And, you know, when you're thinking about, hey, we're probably living in the end of days, you know, things are not going to be easy. So there's you some grit for the week. I hope that this blessed you. I always say that. I hope that it's an encouragement. Hey, feel free to drop me a line if you want.
[email protected] please subscribe to the podcast. Of course. Please like and share it and give me a review.
[00:31:14] And then until next time, I pray that you are blessed.
[00:31:20] I won't walk out. We'll run to the shelter of your wings like a prodigal. Come.
