Steadfast; resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering.
This morning my squad and I did a devotional together over Psalm 136, which is the Psalm that ends every phrase with His love endures forever. The version of my bible says “His love endures forever”, but as other people read these verses out loud from their versions, many of them said His steadfast love endures forever. Dang. I loved that. It reminded me that a characteristic of The Lord is steadfastness. And since we have the Spirit of the Lord in us, we are empowered to walk in a spirit of steadfastness as well. As I’ve sat with that and processed it a little more, I really feel like this is one of the most underrated gifts that The Lord freely gives us. I’m so hyped up over it !!!!
A couple of thoughts..
The Lord and I have been working a lot on what it looks to be steadfast in our emotions. One of my deepest desires is to walk more freely in emotional intelligence, and sure enough The Lord has given me ample opportunity to practice this by helping me walk through some emotionally draining situations as of lately. Emotions are so easy to get caught up in. I’ve been reading a book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality which is helping me process this topic even more and it talks about how being self aware of what our emotions are is the first step. Then learning how feel emotions and usher The Lord into your emotions is next. Once The Lord is there, I think that steadfastness is close behind because that’s such a huge aspect of who The Lord is and what He wants to help us with. People who walk in a steadfast spirit are aware of what they’re feeling and they allow themselves to feel it, but it doesn’t effect what they know to be true about themselves. They know the truth and the truth sets them free.
This flows right into my next point, which is what it looks like to walk in steadfastness within groups. Living within a group of 40+ people for a year has kinda forced to me to step into this. I actually wrote a blog about this concept back before I launched on the race in December (it was called Community is Scary), and The Lord is reminding me once again about how being steadfast in who I am truly effects how I can love others well within my squad. Its really easy (at least for me) in large groups to struggle with my identity and where I fit in. Walking into the race I felt pretty solid when it comes to knowing who I am, and I felt pretty confident with where I fit in. 5 months in, and I’ve found myself at times falling back into the same old lies that I’ve believed for so many years before. That I don’t have a voice on this squad, that I don’t have a group to fit in with, that I’m awkward and weird and no one understands me, etc. etc. That everyone is bonding with everyone and I’m on the outskirts. Thankfully with a lot of growth I know all these thoughts to be really false. Those are lies that I’ve seen and walked in before, and I’m claiming freedom over them. BUT I think that the root of where I have really grown is just walking in a steadfastness when it comes to being confident in who I am in Christ. If we’re walking in steadfastness, we aren’t being tossed around by emotions and circumstances and other people. This is a paragraph out of my last blog that pretty well encompasses what The Lord is again reminding me about steadfastness in groups:
“Other people don’t have the ability to be our soul oxygen. I want to learn how to walk into the room with my 43 other teammates and look for ways to love them, rather than sitting there feeling like I can’t breathe unless they’re filling my own voids. I want to be able to trust that not everyone is out to get me. That distance doesn’t always equal rejection. That my paranoid assumptions about what other people are thinking about me are unfair to them and equally as damaging to me. That I don’t have to be in leadership to belong. That I can sit back, listen and relax while doing it. That what I have to say does matter. That I can be known. I can be seen. I can be myself and be loved fully for it.”
That’s walking steadfast in who The Lord created me to be. And out of that confidence, I have the ability to love others better.
The last point that I’ve been thinking about ties in what it looks like to walk in steadfastness when we wrestle with questions. A squad mate of mine encouraged all of us this morning to really press into the questions that we have. I’ll be the first to admit that I have been sitting in a lot of questions about God and who God is lately (also have a blog about that). I think that sitting in the questions and actually pressing into them is another really solid example of being steadfast. It’s not running away, not being scared off, not shoving questions down, not being tossed around like waves as it talks about in James (James 1:6 – because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea), blown and tossed by the wind, but rather asking questions embodies what it means to be steadfast. You are asking the tough questions and diving into what matters. You aren’t avoiding things and you aren’t making rash decisions/choices based off of emotions and doubt. You are choosing in. I really see how this produces fruit and how this keeps you rooted.
A prayer that I’ve been praying a lot lately is Psalm 51:10
“Create in me a pure heart, Lord
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
We are empowered to walk in steadfastness. I’m hype about that. Thanks Jesus!!!!
Thanks for reading and following along! Love ya’ll.
Heather
