A Spiritual Checkup for the Heart

There was a time in my life when I thought spiritual strength looked mostly outward.

Showing up.
Serving.
Smiling.
Doing all the “right” things.

And if I’m honest, I think I believed that if I kept checking enough spiritual boxes, my heart would eventually catch up too.

But hearts are funny that way.

You can sit in church while quietly carrying resentment.
You can read scriptures while still feeling exhausted inside.
You can pray while also wondering if God feels far away.

I know because I’ve lived there.

Recently while studying Deuteronomy, I noticed how often the Lord talks about the heart. Not appearance. Not performance. The heart.

And it made me pause.

Because I think sometimes we become so focused on looking faithful that we stop asking ourselves if we are actually healing.

The graphic I shared this week became almost like a spiritual checkup for me. As I studied each scripture, I started noticing two things:

What the Lord was asking me to let into my heart.
And what He was asking me to remove.

That second part felt tender.

Because some things settle into our hearts slowly.

Fear.
Pride.
Self-reliance.
Comparison.
Forgetfulness.
Disappointment.

Not all at once. Just little by little.

I think that’s what struck me most reading Deuteronomy 8. The warning wasn’t only about rebellion. It was about forgetting.

Forgetting who led you.
Forgetting who carried you.
Forgetting who provided for you in the wilderness.

And honestly, I understand that kind of forgetting more than I wish I did.

There have been seasons where life hurt enough that I started surviving instead of connecting. Seasons where I was carrying heartbreak, confusion, disappointment in relationships, and prayers that felt unanswered. I was still functioning. Still helping others. Still leading. But internally, my heart was tired.

A little harder than before.
A little more guarded.
A little more self-protective.

And maybe you know that feeling too.

The feeling where you don’t stop loving God, you just slowly stop bringing Him the real parts of you.

But what I love about the Lord is that He never reveals the condition of our hearts to shame us.

He reveals it because He wants to heal us.

One verse especially stayed with me:
“The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart…”

That scripture feels different to me now than it used to.

Because healing often requires removal.

Sometimes God lovingly cuts away things we cannot carry into the next version of ourselves.

Old fears.
Old identities.
Old bitterness.
Old coping mechanisms.
Old stories we built our lives around.

And I think that process can feel painful because it is deeply personal.

But it is also deeply holy.

I’ve learned that spiritual health is not pretending everything is okay. It’s having the courage to sit before God honestly and let Him show you what is happening inside of you.

Not just externally.
Internally.

What are you feeding?
What are you protecting?
What are you holding onto that is quietly hardening your heart?

Because eventually whatever fills the heart begins shaping the life.

And maybe that’s why I loved this invitation from Deuteronomy so much. It reminded me that God is not only concerned with behavior. He is concerned with becoming.

He wants soft hearts.
Remembering hearts.
Trusting hearts.
Whole hearts.

Not perfect ones.

Just willing ones.

So lately I’ve been trying to ask different questions during my scripture study and prayers:

Lord, what needs healing in me?
What have I allowed to stay in my heart too long?
What would it look like to trust You here too?

And maybe that’s the invitation for all of us this week.

Not just to go through spiritual motions, but to actually let God examine the condition of our hearts.

To notice what belongs there.
To notice what doesn’t.
And to trust that the God who reveals the wound is also the God who knows how to heal it.

Little by little.
Prayer by prayer.
Grace upon grace.