Does your heart feel shut down?

Do you feel fear or shame faster than you feel hope or faith?

Here are three reasons this might be happening—and what you can do to awaken your heart again.

1. Our heart can start to shut down when we listen to fear.

Some people say that fear is “false evidence appearing real.” Fear is a lie. Though it appears true, it is actually telling a very clever falsehood.

Sometimes we look to our emotions to help us know what’s real, but our emotions don’t always speak the truth, especially when we’re dealing with fear or shame. There is a better voice we can listen to when we’re trembling.

When all you can feel is fear, practice listening to God’s voice, and purposefully choose to believe what the Bible says about Him.

He is kind (Rom. 2:4).
He is gentle (Isa. 40:11).
He can defeat His enemies (like your fears) with ease (Ps. 37:9).
He’s always a good Father (Luke 11:13).

Those are just a few descriptions of what He’s like. The more you think about who He is and take those descriptions seriously, the more you will be able to stand up and say, “This is my God, and I trust Him.” Simple statements like that one are incredibly powerful when they are said in faith.

2. Our heart can shut down when we allow self-rejection and shame to rule us.

Self-rejection of any kind can be sneaky. It doesn’t always “feel” like self-rejection. In fact, it often feels pretty normal, and you might not realize how much your heart is really hurting.

“I’m a bad person. I have nothing good inside me. I can’t do good things. I can’t be trusted.” All those thoughts are based on some form of self-rejection, which causes the heart to shut down.

When you can’t feel God’s love for you, go back to what the Bible says about who you are as His child. Make a list of the verses or biblical truths that stand out to you.

If you have no idea where to start, that’s okay. Choose a chapter of Scripture—a psalm or maybe something out of Isaiah—and go over it slowly, writing down any verses that stand out to you. Take note of the ideas and phrases that describe who you are as a child of God. Revisit this list again and again, declaring who you are and how God made you.

“This is who God says I am. This is His truth about me. I am not what the world says. I am not what fear and shame say. I am only what He says, and He made me in His own image.”

3. Our heart can shut down when we continually second-guess ourselves.

My heart is confident in you, O God;
my heart is confident.
No wonder I can sing your praises! (Ps. 57:7 NLT)

Confidence in the Lord begins as a choice, not as an emotion. The emotions come later.

Rick Sizemore is the author of Emotions: What They Are and What We Do with Them. He calls this delay between belief and emotional agreement the “lag factor.”

When dealing with soulish emotions, we need to be aware of what I call the “lag factor.” The lag factor is the gap in time between the revelation of truth and a change in our emotions… In the midst of the lag factor, we need to hold fast to our revelation of truth and allow our emotions to catch up with that revelation.

That’s often how it works with faith and what we feel. We declare what’s true because we’ve had a specific word from the Lord or because the Bible says it’s true—not necessarily because we “feel it” in the moment.

But one day, we will feel it because our heart is going to come awake again, and it will know the truth, and it will chose to trust the Lord.

Choose to be confident in the Lord and what He’s saying to you. Declare it as truth, even if nothing about it feels true right now. Faith is more than an emotion. It is stronger than emotion and surpasses emotion.

“This is what the Lord has told me: _____________. I believe Him, and I will trust Him as He brings it to pass.”

Finally, if you feel overcome, tired, full of despair, or heartbroken right now, please let us pray for you. Click the button below.

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Does your heart need to remember who God is? Check out these other devotions:

For more information on sex, marriage, and finding the person who is right for you, get a copy of Becoming the One by Salomé Roat. Click here to learn more. The book is also available in Spanish.

3 Ways to Awaken a Sleeping Heart