The Steadfast Love of the Lord
The Steadfast Love of the Lord: Experiencing the Life-Changing Power of God's Unchanging Affection
By: Sam Storms
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2025]
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. (Jn 6:68) If God’s love isn’t real and steady and ultimately steadfast, what hope do any of us have? To what philosophy of life will we turn?”
Sam Storms begins his book by confessing that he doubts the love of the Lord. He sees the tragedy and evil in the world and he, like I think most of us, wonders where God is and what he is doing. Is his love for us real?
How can he write a book about God’s love?
“the only way I was going to press through this dark season in my soul was to bathe it in the repeated theme of Scripture that ‘the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.’ (Lam 3:22)”
We might never be able to explain all the evil or the tragedies and hardships we encounter, but I love what he says here:
“I cannot, I will not, allow my intellectual shortcomings to account for the problem of evil to blind me to the bright light of the everlasting, unchanging, soul-saving, steadfast love of God.”
And so this book looks at what Scripture tells us about who God is and how he loves us. In Lamentations, right before verse 22 that’s quoted above, Jeremiah says, ‘This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.’
If we have lost our hope, then we need to do a better job of calling to mind the truths that God has revealed to us about himself. And Sam Storms does a wonderful job sharing them with us in this book.
I appreciated Dane Ortlund’s (Gentle and Lowly) foreword in this book because he focuses on who Sam Storms is. Storms covers a few touchy or controversial topics in his book and so when we read this we may say- well who does Sam think he is? why should I listen to him?
Ortlund says that Storms is four things: an exegete (trained well in handling the Scriptures in the original languages), a theologian (thinking deeply and biblically with both nuance and boldness), a shepherd (writing to build up the church), and a lover (passionately sharing about the exuberance of God’s love).
Therefore we trust what he has laid out in this book because he is qualified to parse Scripture and he’s doing it from a place of pastoral care and love.
I found this book to be very encouraging, giving me lots of truth to meditate on.
Right out of the gate he takes on a controversial issue— the progressive concept that ‘love is love’— but I think this is a great place to start because we need definitions of what we’re talking about, especially when it comes to love
“So what do people mean when they say that ‘love is love’? Unless I’m mistaken, I think they mean that love is always accepting, never critical, entirely inclusive, and altogether affirming of the moral legitimacy of anything a person believes and however they choose to behave. To push back and argue that certain beliefs are false is not loving. It is hateful. To suggest that a particular lifestyle is morally perverse is not loving. It is bigoted. To employ any language that does not affirm the truth or legitimacy of something another person believes or does is an expression of intolerance and will probably subject you to being cancelled in some way.”
That is the world’s perspective of love. But Sam is not willing to acquiesce to such a concept:
“Let me say it clearly: to tell someone who is living in unrepentant homosexuality that his or her behavior is dishonorable, morally wrong, and puts their soul in jeopardy of eternal damnation is the most loving thing you could possibly say to them. I know that this runs counter to our society’s perspective today, but I don’t regard the world or its opinions as authoritative. Only God’s written word is authoritative.”
“You have a choice to make, and you have only two options: either you acknowledge and submit to the authoritative statements of the Bible or you acknowledge and submit to the passions, feelings, and opinions of your own soul. Either God defines your identity in his word or you define it according to your good pleasure.”
He defines love:
“My definition, the Bible’s definition, is that “love” is acting and speaking in such a way that the object of one’s affection is blessed in this life and in the age to come… To truly love a person you must say and do all that you can to direct them to beliefs and behaviors that align with their eternal destiny in the presence of God in the new heaven and new earth. That is love.”
Once we have that established, we use this framework to see how God’s love for us is, in the same way, giving us what we need to flourish now and in eternity. His love for us and our joy actually all converge to bring him glory.
So what do we learn about his love?
In Chapter 2 Storms walks us through Psalms to better understand the word ‘steadfast’ and that God’s love is enduring forever.
In the following chapters he looks at passages like Jesus washing the disciples feet, Jesus looking at Peter when he has denied him, and Jesus healing the leper to see how he is sovereign and serving and how even when we are his enemies he draws near to us and looks on us with compassion; no one is excluded from his love.
Storms draws on Ephesians 3 to explain how we actually need God to help us experience his love:
“Paul is praying that we would be strengthened… [because of] our inability to wholeheartedly believe in, feel, and rejoice in the love that God has for us in Jesus… To think that God loves me so deeply and intensely and sacrificially that he works in me by his Spirit to make it possible for God himself to fill me up with God himself— what words can adequately account for this?”
I think the chapter where he goes through John 3:16 may be my favorite chapter of the book. It’s a well-known verse but we don’t totally grasp the depth of what that verse means for sinners. He explains each part of the verse and has a lot of really good truth in this short chapter.
“I can assure you that neither [I nor my wife] said anything along the lines of, ‘I’m willing to marry a person who utterly despises me, who is worse than indifferent toward me. I’m hoping for someone who hates me, treats me with contempt and disdain, and who wants nothing whatsoever to do with me.’ But God did. When the Father sought a bride for his Son, he set his affection and love on a people who were his enemies.”
It was poignant here too that he also looks back to the bronze serpent in Numbers 21 and the correlation to sin and the snakes and that even if we’re surrounded by sin, God provides a way to be saved.
Because suffering is a primary example of when we start to doubt God’s love, Storms has a chapter dedicated to it. He even says that one of the main jobs of pastors should be to prepare their people for suffering. Suffering can shake faith or strengthen it, but if we are unprepared for it, we’ll probably waste our suffering.
“Suffering accomplishes nothing good in us if we don’t reflect on how God uses it to build endurance and perseverance in our hearts.”
We won’t always be able to explain why bad things happen, but we know that it’s not because God doesn’t love us.
“Don’t ever think that your hope is only as good as your ability to experience or feel God’s love for you. He most assuredly wants you to feel it, but even when you don’t, you can know his love is real and sure and certain by reminding yourself of the lengths to which he went in making you his child: the death of his own Son on your behalf.”
There are also a couple chapters that answer the question- Will God ever give up on me? Is our salvation secure? He looks at Romans 5 and 8 to answer these questions to assure us that when we are in Christ we are sealed with his promise and nothing can then ever separate us from his love.
He talks a bit about election and God’s sovereign and loving choice to save us. He pulled a lot in from his book that I also recently read called Chosen for Life so if that topic interests you I would recommend that for a more in-depth look at those doctrines.
I also liked his conclusion. He ends by a short meditation on 2 Thessalonians 3:5 which says,
“May the Lord direct our hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ”
When we are struggling to feel or know God’s love, it is right to pray for it. The Lord can direct our hearts to his love and to comprehend the steadfastness of it. And part of how we do that, as stated earlier, is to dwell on what we know to be true of God. Hope comes from recalling and recalling is worship.
“Worship your way into the experience of God’s love… Often we must sing to joy rather than merely from it.”
I will say, as a fairly unemotional person, sometimes I wonder if I’ve ‘felt’ the love of God very often. I’m still pondering this, but I think it’s less about feeling and more about knowing. At least for me. Experiences are fleeting and feelings go up and down, but the character and love of the Lord is unchanging. That’s comforting to me because even if I don’t know if I’m feeling it properly, I know it to be true.
And this book has encouraged me to ask God about it; maybe he will open up my heart to new ways of knowing him if I just ask!
Recommendation
I would definitely recommend this book! Sam Storms has a pretty clear and loving way of communicating, even hard truths, and reminds us of so many different facets about God’s love.
Truly, we can’t fully comprehend God’s love, but he has given us minds and hearts to know him in some capacity and this book brings to the forefront some very comforting truths— the Lord’s love is steadfast and gives us assurance in salvation and in the blessings that come with abiding in Christ.
Further Reading:
He referenced lots of books in his book, but here are a few mentions that I’ve reviewed:
The Intolerance of Tolerance by D.A. Carson
The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by D.A. Carson (I just got this one in the mail to read)
Knowing God by J.I. Packer
Chosen for Life by Sam Storms
I also recently wrote THIS blog post that ties in some of themes that were in this book.
P.S. Also a shoutout for the book cover— really nice and applicable use of the infinity symbol!
**Received a copy from Crossway in exchange for an honest review**
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