Struggling to Feel Connected to God? Three Words to Guard Your Heart
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” — Proverbs 4:23 (ESV)
Sometimes we just can't seem to feel close to God. Life gets busy, we get distracted, and the quiet time that once felt alive starts to feel like going through the motions. Nothing's wrong, exactly — but nothing's connecting, either. If I'm honest, I've been through more than one season like this. It's part of the Christian journey. Life shifts, distractions pile up, and somewhere in it, the closeness with God just flattens. It feels mundane, lifeless. Blah. Distant. Ugh.
As I sat in a season of distance, I cried out — Lord, draw me near. And He answered. He pressed three words on my heart: input, output, and throughput. I wondered why those three — until it clicked: all three point back to the one thing Scripture tells us to guard above everything else. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23, ESV). Everything flows from the heart — including, it turns out, our sense of distance from God. So when you feel disconnected, look to the heart — not your schedule, not your circumstances, not even your quiet time — but the heart. And input, output, and throughput are simply three ways to guard it.
And here's why this matters so much: a drifting season is exactly when the enemy moves. He waits for a distraction, uses it to nudge us toward sin, and sin only isolates us further — deepening the very distance we already feel. So this isn't the moment to coast. It's the moment to be vigilant. Input, output, and throughput should guide our vigilance.
Input — what you let in. Whatever your weak spot is, it works overtime in a season like this, so guard the gates. If lust is your struggle, be ruthless about what your eyes take in. If it's envy, steer clear of the people and places that stir it. If it's the craving to be liked, get off the feeds that feed it. You know your own soft spots — so watch what you let into your heart and mind, and in the empty space, pour in God's Word instead. Paul said it directly: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14, ESV). Don't hand your weaknesses the ammunition. Guard what you let in.
Output — what comes out. Your words are the readout of your heart: “out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45, ESV). So pay attention to what's coming out of you. When your language starts to drift — sounding more like the world than like Christ, or turning sharp and wounding — don't shrug it off; it's a gauge telling you you've drifted. Watch your words, your actions, and the attitudes beneath them. And here's a practice that helps me: don't wait to feel connected before you act connected. Faithfulness doesn't wait on feelings. When you're not feeling close to God, choose to speak, serve, and love as though you are — and let that obedience lead your heart back. Guard what you put out.
Throughput — what runs through you. Beneath the input and the output lie the thoughts and stories you tell yourself in the quiet. When you feel far from God, your mind starts to play tricks. So watch the thoughts that circle in there, and hold each one up against the truth; anything that doesn't square with God, name it and let it go — because much of it isn't even coming from you. Scripture calls the enemy the Accuser (Revelation 12:10); he loves to whisper lies about you and God, and those lies breed shame that drives us to real damage. So take your thoughts captive and fill your mind with what's true: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable… whatever is lovely… think about these things” (Philippians 4:8, ESV). Lay the lies at the feet of Jesus, take hold of His truth and His love for you, and keep moving. Guard what runs through you.
Input, output, throughput. When the distance sets in — and it will — don't just wait for the fog to lift. Guard your heart on all three fronts and keep walking toward God. The sense of closeness may lag, but He never does.
Big Idea
When you feel far from God, guard your heart on three fronts — what you let in, what you let out, and what runs through your mind. You may not feel close right away, but faithfulness in these three is the road back.
Questions to Ponder
First, learn your early-warning signs. Think of input, output, and throughput as a dashboard that tells you when you're drifting. What does the drift usually look like for you in each — the kind of input that creeps back in, the tone or words that start to leak out, the lie your mind begins to replay? The sooner you can name your own signals, the sooner you can catch the drift before it grows. And if one of them is already flashing red as you read this, don't rush past it — that's the Lord's invitation to deal with it, and the exercise below is where we'll start.
Application
With your journal in hand, take whatever the Lord has surfaced and work it back toward Him. Start where you always should: recognize the drift instead of pretending you're fine, and confess it — bringing the distance and any sin tangled up in it honestly to God. Then ask Him for help; you were never meant to find your way back on your own. Then act on each front you're fighting. If it's input, name the thing you keep letting in and cut off the supply — then fill the space with His Word. If it's output, name the word or tone that's been leaking out, make it right where you've wounded someone, and choose to speak and serve as though you're connected, even before you feel it. If it's throughput, name the lie on repeat, hold it against what God actually says, write His truth beside it, and leave it at Jesus' feet. Take one real step today. Feelings follow faithfulness far more often than they lead it — so keep turning back to Him, and don't stop.
Before the Lord — a daily devotional by Blake S. Crawford. Read more and subscribe free at blakescrawford.com/before-the-lord.