The Symptoms Of Your Heart

The Symptoms of Your Heart

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

IF YOU’VE EVER WONDERED how fully you believe something, how settled you are in your faith that God will answer your prayers, you can tell from the lightness of your step and the praises on your lips. When your heart is truly confident in him, it is at rest. When your heart is filled with doubts and uncertainty, it isn’t. The peace within tells you a lot about the faith you’re carrying.

With that in mind, become very familiar with the symptoms of your heart. Notice when you are unsettled and investigate why. If gratitude and praise aren’t coming naturally, ask yourself what you aren’t seeing correctly. If you’ve prayed for something important and feel hopeless about it, be honest enough with yourself and God to ask why it’s difficult for you to believe. Your attitudes and moods are reliable reflections of your inner beliefs.

One exercise that might help is to envision yourself in the throne room of heaven, where praise and gratitude flow freely. There, where your vision is clear and God’s power and love are undeniable, you’ll see no fear, discouragement, or insecurity. Whatever God says is unquestionably true; whatever he does is unquestionably good. Now bring that vision into your present circumstance. What in the situation around you overshadows that glorious environment? Whatever it is, your heart is making too much of it. That’s where your perspective is off and your confidence is under assault. That’s where you can begin to reorient your thoughts toward truth.

Discouragement is almost always based on a lie, a misperception about God’s purposes and promises, a skewed perspective on your circumstances, a lack of trust or faith in what God intends for you. Once you replace those lies and misperceptions with truth and a heavenly perspective, you will find your confidence in God growing and your praises flowing. You will begin to see through the lenses of his wisdom, power, and love, and all contradictions will begin to fade away. Your heart will return to the peace and freedom it is meant to have, and your faith will revive once again.

A little faith will bring your soul to heaven, but a lot of faith will bring heaven to your soul.