When God Feels Unsafe
Note: This article includes mention of spiritual trauma. Please be aware of this before you read, and consider clicking away if you need to protect your heart. If you have experienced trauma (including spiritual trauma or abuse) it might be wise for you to pursue clinically-informed counselors to help you process and navigate moving forward.
It is early in the morning. The dimly lit living room feels warm and inviting as you sit in your favorite chair, hot drink in hand, with a warm blanket draped around your legs. You are grateful for the Bible on your lap, but as you open it and start reading, you notice your heart starts racing and your breath gets shallow. Your focus shifts from God to the voice of perfectionism, which only gets louder and more oppressive: “Is this enough for God? Is he pleased with how you are spending this time with him? Have you meditated long enough? Did you cover everything in prayer?” Anxiety runs circles around you.
Or maybe you are feeling great pain. You know only God can comfort you. So you sit down to talk with him, but you realize you are going numb. You can’t sit with him in the pain; it seems easier to distract yourself by reading a book.
Or perhaps you open the Bible and start reading a familiar passage, but the tone of voice that comes through is the same harsh and demanding tone of that spiritual teacher or leader who disciplined you long ago with those words. Even though you are hidden in Christ and trusting him, God seems distant, punitive.
As a long time believer and as a lay counselor, I have seen myself and others go through seasons like this, where God feels more like a severe taskmaster than the compassionate Father he actually is. We default to either meeting with him to appease him or avoiding him—either because we are afraid of failure or because he seems dissociated from our reality.
I want to share with you 3 practices that God can use to comfort you with his safety in those seasons.
“We default to either meeting with God to appease him or avoiding him—either because we are afraid of failure or because he seems dissociated from our reality. ”
1. Know your story…to live in God’s reality.
When we start to perceive God as severe, it is often not simply because of sin or unbelief. It is helpful for us to explore that gently, as it usually involves some kind of suffering.
So before you feel guilty or condemned by these feelings, can I encourage you to get curious about what is distracting your new self from the life of faith? With compassion, ask for the Spirit’s insight and discernment to reflect on these questions:
What kind of suffering is happening or has happened to me that is driving me away from the love of my Father?
Why am I feeling the pull to take care of myself instead of entrusting myself to his care?
Who or what has most strongly shaped my perception of God?
Was there marked anxiety and shame in my relationship with a primary caregiver? Am I for some reason equating God with them?
How has my spiritual community historically interfaced with this kind of suffering, temptation, or sin? How has that response shaped my understanding of who God is?
Has a spiritual leader in my life misused their authority or the words of God to burden my conscience with commands that are not from God?
Your automatic visceral responses and thoughts don’t happen in a vacuum but in the context of your story. So as you seek to be aligned with what is true about God, you, and the world, look at your story honestly to consider the source of temptation, false beliefs, pain, and sin in your life.
2. Care for your body in the story…to receive God’s compassion.
I know that this article is about spiritual formation, so you may wonder why I am talking about caring for your body. Friend, our souls are embodied. So a biblical approach to dealing with our experience of unsafety with God considers our bodies. In her book A Still and Quiet Mind, biblical counselor Esther Smith quotes theologian John Murray,
“man is bodily, and therefore the Scriptural way of expressing this truth is not that man has a body, but that man is body… all the important theological dimensions of personhood (that is, soul, spirit, will, conscience, mind, heart) emerge or emanate from our physical beings.”
Just being curious about your story is not enough; you need to pay attention to how it has influenced your body. When our bodies show signs of dysregulation when we are seeking to enjoy the presence of God—sweaty palms, racing heart, numbness, shallow breathing, or even a sense of fight or flight—it is our brain’s way of remembering something painful that felt unsafe. When this happens, caring for your body is a key part of caring for your soul.
We Are Embodied Souls
You might know that the two hemispheres of the brain have completely different functions. The left hemisphere is logical, linear, linguistic, and literal. The right hemisphere is able to sense emotions and information from the body. It is non-linear, non-verbal, and can put things in context and see the whole picture.
I know this may seem obvious, but just as our body operates best when all our organs are working together, we need both brain hemispheres in order to function wholly. When one hemisphere takes over, we function from a place of disintegration.
I have been learning the importance of parenting with these things in mind. Sometimes when our kids’ nervous system is really dysregulated, we try to calm them using a left-brain approach. We redirect them with solutions and logical explanations. Yet, logic often doesn’t work until the right brain’s emotional needs are met. Our right brain won’t connect with the left until it feels “felt”, nurtured, and seen with compassion and empathy. Felt safety is a huge component of brain integration.
Well, guess what? Our Father—who made our brains—parents us with that awareness. So we too must pay attention to what is happening in our bodies. When our nervous system becomes dysregulated, our brains struggle to stay integrated and the truths we know with our left brain are not connected with our right brain.
The Lord has given us mechanisms that help us regulate and integrate. Some of the tools to help your brain are:
Deep breaths. When you breathe deeply, it opens pathways and communicates safety to your brain. You may even want to do short prayers as you inhale and exhale:
I come to you, Lord (breathe in)
Please give me rest (breathe out) (based on Matthew 11: 28).
Go on walks. The bilateral movement helps your brain to regulate and process emotions. Picture Christ walking alongside you. Talk to him about what you felt as you were trying to pray or read the Bible. Or, if you feel like you can’t string words together, ask him for grace to enjoy his presence with you. He is delighted to be with you.
Just go outside. Notice what is around you. Name three things you can see, breathe, touch, taste. Thank our Father for all those gifts.
Sister, engage in embodied spiritual practices. When you do, it helps calm your brain. Then you are better able to notice the deep compassion of the Lord. He doesn’t care for you as a disembodied being. He cares for you. All of you.
“As you take hold of Christ’s sufficiency and receive the care, compassion, and wisdom of God, may his safety keep you near his presence.”
See Christ’s life in your story…to take hold of Christ’s sufficiency.
The biggest gift we have as believers is Christ himself. His story has become our story, and by a radical exchange our story has been swallowed up in his. In him, our story—every part of it—is redeemed, restored, and reinterpreted.
If you feel that God is unsafe or displeased with you, turn your gaze to Christ. See how he is able to understand you. See how he is able to help you as you are being tempted. See how his story gives you hope for yours. Ponder his life, his death, and his resurrection to ground your hope in his sufficiency for every part of who you are.
Consider how Christ understands the temptation to doubt the love of his Father. Before he engaged in public ministry, he faced spiritual oppression. So intense was this testing that angels came to minister to him when it ended (Matt. 4: 11). He knows what it is like to be needy—hungry, thirsty, and physically weak (Luke 4:2). He too heard the voice of the evil one, “If you really are the son of God….” He experienced the attack of his enemy, especially on his sonship and belovedness.
Ponder too then, Christ’s surprising response to that attack: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Christ wasn’t just saying, “man lives by the words of the Bible.” More specifically, the words Jesus had just heard from the mouth of God were, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Luke 3: 22). Those were the words that he lived by, that sustained him. The devil knew if he succeeded in attacking Christ’s ability to live and die as the Son of God, he would succeed in defeating God and the spread of his kingdom. But he didn’t (praise God!). Christ conquered that test in the wilderness on our behalf.
My friend, does that comfort you? Yes, the devil knows how to strategically target the pathways to the comfort of the Spirit, especially as you seek nourishment from the Lord and as you minister to others. But Christ is not only familiar with these temptations, he also conquered them in you and for you.
Remember Your Sonship
So when you find yourself hearing voices that make you question whether God is pleased with you, remember you live now in the Son. Whether there is deep suffering in your story or even if failure marks your walk with Christ, know that you are safe in the Son. You have heard a voice that is more powerful and sure than those voices. You have his life in you to reply to them: “I live by the words that come out of my Father’s mouth. I am his beloved and he is well pleased with me because I am in his Son and His Son is in me. That is enough for him, so it is enough for me.”
As you take hold of Christ’s sufficiency and receive the care, compassion, and wisdom of God, may his safety keep you near his presence. And as you enjoy him, may you, like Christ, engage in the power of the Spirit with the life and ministry God has given you (Lk. 4: 14).
Aylin Merck is a wife, mama, lay counselor, and writer currently living in the Middle East. Originally from the Dominican Republic, she has moved cross culturally multiple times. Of all the adventures she has had, her favorite is the endlessly satisfying adventure of knowing the Father through the Son. Aylin has written for ministries like Risen Motherhood, Well Watered Women, and Revive Our Hearts. You can read more from her at her website aylinmerck.com and by subscribing to her newsletter, Home At Last, via Substack.
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