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A conversation designed to encourage your faith with doubt seems to all be cripple you.
If you have ever felt exhausted from trying to be a "good Christian," constantly striving to avoid sin and wondering why your faith feels more like a burden than a relationship, then this post is for you.
I experienced this myself. At 22, newly married and working both in ministry and as a full-time high school math teacher, I hit a spiritual wall. Despite appearing to be a successful pastor's kid who checked all the boxes—youth group, Bible memorization, participation in bible studies—I was struggling internally. I was battling with sin that I couldn't shake, haunted by shame, and beginning to wonder if following Jesus was just a long, losing battle against guilt.
Maybe you’ve been there. Perhaps you are there. You know what it’s like to feel like you’re failing behind the scenes, even while people applaud you in public. You try harder. You repent. You recommit. And then you fall again. And again.
But here’s what changed everything for me: In the middle of my shame, God didn’t shame me back. Instead, the Holy Spirit whispered: You are loved. You belong. You don’t have to earn this.
This is the deconstruction of faith that we should pursue: not walking away from God, but walking away from a behavior-based understanding of faith.
Many Christians attempt to earn God’s love through their behavior. This assumption is frequently unspoken: we believe we would be closer to God if we could stop sinning. If we could control our impulses, we would finally feel worthy of His love. However, the hard truth is that managing behavior does not change hearts—it merely conceals them. Behavioral Christianity may keep us in line for a while, but it often drives us to live compartmentalized, shame-filled lives. We learn how to look holy while staying hollow. Instead of bringing our brokenness to Jesus, we hide it—hoping to clean it up before letting Him close. The pressure to be perfect leads to exhaustion rather than holiness. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” We need to die to performance and to the perfectionism that comes from presenting an ideal version of ourselves while masking our pain and sin. If we concentrate solely on fixing our behavior, we risk missing the essence of Jesus.
The gospel, however, was never a sin-avoidance strategy. It was a rescue mission to reconnect the human heart to the God who made it. Here is the good news: Jesus didn’t come to make bad people behave. He came to make dead people live. The Apostle Paul urges us: “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25). Jesus told his disciples to deny themselves, pick up their cross and follow him (Matt. 16:24). Practically this means our spiritual life is not a scoreboard; it is a walk—a daily, relational journey with the Holy Spirit.
Author and psychologist Curt Thompson writes about how shame thrives when we believe our value is tied to our performance. When we reduce our relationship with God to a scoreboard of right and wrong, we stop approaching Him as a Father and start approaching Him as a taskmaster. We become spiritual employees instead of beloved children. I remember one morning opening my Bible, not to hear from God, but to avoid the guilt of my sin from the day before. However, when I began to slow down—sitting in silence, praying thoughtfully, and lingering in Scripture—I discovered something more profound: the gift of presence.
Dallas Willard wrote in his book, The Great Omission that "Grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning.” This realization prompted me to change my perspective. Instead of asking, “How can I stop sinning?” I began to inquire, “How can I stay close to God and know his voice?” John Ortberg refers to this as the “with-God life”—a life that is not centered on self-improvement but on deep communion with God.
Jesus uses the imagery of the vine and branches to describe spiritual life: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). Abiding is not about trying harder; it’s about staying connected. It emphasizes the importance of presence over performance. It's what Brother Lawrence discovered centuries ago—true spiritual power flows not from grand religious acts but from consistent nearness to God in everyday life. When we move from striving to abiding, several things change:
We stop praying to prove something and start praying to be with Someone.
We stop reading Scripture to check a box and start reading to hear God's heart.
We stop serving out of obligation and start loving out of overflow.
Perhaps most importantly, abiding reorients our identity. When we abide, we remember that our worth is not defined by what we do for God, but by what He has done for us.
When my faith was unraveling, these passages anchored me:
Romans 8 – There is now no condemnation.
John 15 – Abide in me.
Galatians 5 – Walk with the Spirit.
These verses remind me that faith is not manufactured—it develops like fruit on a healthy tree. That fruit does not appear because the tree tries harder; it grows because it remains rooted.
If you’re weary of trying harder and faking better, you’re not alone. And you’re not disqualified.
Whisper a simple prayer: “Holy Spirit, help me walk with You today.”
Pause in silence before you reach for your phone.
Open your Bible not to perform, but to be present with God.
We don't need to completely dismantle our faith. Instead, we should deconstruct a performance-based approach to faith and rebuild a life centered on a close relationship with Jesus. If you're feeling exhausted from the struggle to avoid sin or have reached a breaking point like I did at age 22, consider that this wall may be where God wants to meet you. You were not saved just to escape being stuck; you were saved to walk with Jesus.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1963).
Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006).
John Ortberg, Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014).
Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1982).
Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015).