Proverbs 13:12a Hope deferred makes the heart sick...
There are times when we are so hopeful of a particular moment, relationship, job, miracle, etc... When we feel we've waited and it doesn't happen, we let go of our hope and begin to slip into self-reliance. When hopes don't come to pass, we can become bitter or even angry with God.
This passage tells us that we slip into that process, our heart gets sick. Rom 10:10 tells us that it's with the heart man believes. The capacity to believe rests within the human heart. If our heart is sick, it affects our capacity to believe. The issue that arises is that Jesus ties everything to "believing". He says; when we pray, if we believe, anything we say shall come to pass, all things are possible to those that believe, when the disciples couldn't get a boy healed Jesus told them it was because of their unbelief.
If you've slipped into a heart sick state, your capacity and maybe even desire to believe gets stuck. When we get stuck, we jump into survival mode, we take back control of our lives and send a subtle message to our own hearts that God can't be trusted.
A hurt or offense gets lodged in our minds and hearts which further drives the nail of unfulfilled hope. Emotionally a bruising in our soul takes place. A bruise in oyur body is a place trauma has happened and the blood (life) can't flow through that place. In our heart, if a bruising occurs, God's life can't flow through that area and causes sickness.
The good news is that there's grace to get out of it. Grace is God's divine influence on our heart to empower us to do that which we can't on our own. Grace is when God breathes life through those hurts and pains in our heart to cause hope to come back to life. The problem is, when you touch a bruise, it hurts. It can feel like it hurts to try to believe again. It's too painful to allow life to begin to move through that bruising in your soul again. It's easier to just stay stuck and then blame God.
The truth is that God is always trying to bring life into our bodies, hearts and situations. The very thing we need to do becomes the very thing that we say hurts too badly. Daring to believe again may seem to hurt but it's the very thing that will allow God to breathe life back into you.
Do you want to stay stuck? Arise and dare to believe, there's grace to help in time of need!