The Muscle of Covenant Grit

When we adopted a puppy a few years ago, the rescue agency sent someone to our house to inspect the fence and make sure the living room was puppy-proof. But when the hospital handed us our newborn daughter? Nobody did that. Nobody checked my resume. They just put her in the car seat and let us drive away.

I remember the gripping anxiety of that moment. You're the parent now. There's nobody more qualified standing behind you, and you're terrified you're going to break something.

When that "imposter" panic hits — whether it's holding a newborn, taking a new job, or stepping up to lead something at church — we usually do one of two things. We retreat and refuse to try so nobody finds out we aren't qualified. Or we perform, trying so hard that nobody can see the gap between who we are and who we're supposed to be. Both of those options will completely wear you out.

Because that's how we navigate human relationships — where loyalty is often thin and love mostly follows performance — we naturally project that exact same dynamic onto God. We treat our faith like an ongoing performance review. The fear we rarely say out loud sounds like this: What happens if I fail at what He asked me to do? Will God still want me around if it turns out I wasn't really up to this?

In Exodus 34, God passes by Moses and tells us in His own words exactly who He is. And the phrase He uses completely shatters our performance anxiety.

The Fair-Weather Calf

Human loyalty is deeply conditional, so we build a false god based on the only template we know. We build the "Fair-Weather Calf."

This is a god who stays as long as you’re useful, impressive, and producing good spiritual results. He’s deeply invested in your outputs. We don’t have to look far to see where we got this idea. We breathe the air of a culture where friendships go quiet the moment someone stops being interesting. We watch people get cut loose the second they become inconvenient.

So we assume God loves exactly the same way. We assume He stays while we’re useful and moves on when we’re not.

Worshiping that god produces a very specific kind of exhaustion. You constantly hide your struggles, polish your spiritual resume, and manage your image. Deep down, you believe that if God ever sees the unvarnished version of you, He’ll cut you loose. That god doesn’t produce disciples. He produces terrified performers. Every act of obedience becomes a brand new audition you have to pass.

But that fair-weather god isn't on the mountain.

The Grit in the Foundation

Back on Sinai, the ink is barely dry on Israel’s agreement to follow God, and they’ve already melted down their gold to build a cow. By every reasonable measure, the relationship is over. This is the moment any rational party packs up and walks away.

Instead, God passes by Moses and declares:

The English language doesn’t do this phrase justice. The Hebrew word is hesed. Translators have argued about how to capture it for centuries because English simply doesn't have a single word for it. Love is too soft. Loyalty is too cold. Kindness is too fleeting.

A better way to understand hesed is Covenant Grit.

It’s the muscle love uses to keep its promises when the easy thing would be to walk away. It isn't a fleeting feeling. It’s the concrete decision to stay when the math says you should leave.

When God says He is abounding in hesed while a golden calf is smoldering at the bottom of the mountain, He isn't saying, "I’ll give you another chance if you shape up." He’s saying, "This is what My love is made of. It doesn't break when you do." Most human love tracks the relationship — you hurt me, the love cools. But hesed is a refusal to respond in the way we deserve. The vow is already made. The grit is already in the foundation.

Breakfast by the Charcoal Fire

If you want to see what hesed looks like when it walks around in a physical body, you have to leave the mountain and go to a beach.

In John 21, the resurrection has happened, and Peter is completely reeling. Peter — the guy who promised he’d die for Jesus and then denied Him three times on the worst night of his life — has gone back to fishing.

He isn't on vacation. He's trying to disappear into the version of himself that existed before he broke. The instinct after we experience a massive failure is to try to undo it by returning to who we were before. We tell ourselves we’re just being humble, but really, we’re just hiding.

Peter fishes all night and catches absolutely nothing. The professional fisherman can't even catch fish anymore. The old life doesn't fit him. Then the sun comes up, and Jesus is standing on the shore.

Before Jesus corrects Peter, He feeds him. And there's a detail in this scene that is almost too good to be true. The Greek word John uses for the fire Jesus built on the beach is anthrakia — a charcoal fire. That exact word shows up only one other time in the entire New Testament. It's used back in chapter 18, describing the fire Peter stood next to in the courtyard when he denied Jesus.

Jesus brought Peter back to the smell of his own failure. And He met him there with breakfast.

That's covenant grit in the flesh. He doesn't pretend the failure didn't happen, and He doesn't make Peter grovel through it. He builds a fire that names it, and He feeds him beside it.

Trust the Floor

Jesus asks Peter "Do you love me?" three times — one for each denial. And every single time Peter answers, Jesus says, "Feed my sheep."

He doesn't tell Peter to sit out a few rounds and earn his way back onto the team. The restoration isn't the destination. It’s the equipping. Peter will spend the rest of his life leading with tenderness because he knows exactly what it feels like to be fed by a Shepherd who refused to let him go.

So it's time to stop running. Stop retreating from a God you’re afraid has finally seen who you really are. Stop performing for a God you’re terrified will leave if you drop the act.

He isn't going anywhere. He bound Himself to you. The floor under everything you're trying to build is the floor He built. You aren't standing on your own competence. You're standing on His covenant grit.

He brought Peter back to the smell of his own failure and met him there with breakfast. He'll meet you, too.

This post was adapted from the series His Own Words, originally shared at the Glendale church of Christ.