Trusting Your God-Given Gut
Reclaiming spiritual autonomy
Growing up in high-control religious spaces, the most dangerous thing you could possess was an internal compass. If you ever had a strong gut feeling that clashed with the system’s rules, or if something in a sermon felt instinctively wrong to you, you were immediately handed a weaponized proof-text from Jeremiah: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
We were taught that our internal wiring was completely broken from the factory. We were trained to default to a position of profound self-doubt.
But this wasn’t just abstract theology—it was an incredibly effective tool for behavioral conditioning. And for me, and so many women like me, this systematic dismantling of self-trust was exactly how we were groomed for a patriarchal marriage.
From a very young age, the subtext of every purity talk, relationship sermon, and “complementarian” study was clear: Your desires are dangerous. Your intuition cannot be trusted. Your body is a trap. You were taught that spiritual maturity meant completely flattening your own boundaries, ignoring your gut checks, and outsourcing your discernment to an external authority—first to your father, then to your pastors, and eventually to a husband who was designated as your spiritual “head.”
If you felt a wave of anxiety or reservation about a relationship, you were told it was just your “sinful flesh” resisting God’s plan. If you wanted to speak up, you were told to practice a “gentle and quiet spirit.”
By the time you actually walked down the aisle, the system had successfully disconnected your mind from your body. You had been completely untethered from your own God-given gut so that you would willingly step into a structure designed to keep you small, compliant, and silent.
The Psychological Trap of Outsourced Faith
When you live inside that kind of conditioning, deconstruction feels like terrifying vertigo. The moment you start questioning the church’s theology or walking away from traditional structures, the old programming triggers a massive wave of panic. You begin second-guessing every choice. You make a decision about your life or your faith, and then immediately spiral into anxiety: “Is this God guiding me, or is this just my deceitful heart? Am I being led by the Spirit, or am I just falling into selfish rebellion?”
It is a brilliant psychological trap. If the institution can convince you that your own mind, your own empathy, and your own body are fundamentally untrustworthy, you will always have to return to them to do your thinking for you. You will stay dependent on their rulebooks, their definitions, and their gatekeepers just to feel safe.
But if we are going to fully pull the weeds this month, we have to break the back of this self-loathing theology.
The truth is, God did not design you as a broken machine that requires an external institutional manager to run your life. When the scriptures talk about a shifting covenant, they describe a beautiful promise: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” (Jeremiah 31:33).
Spiritual adulthood is not about outsourced compliance. It is about reclaiming your sacred, internal autonomy.
Reclaiming the Compass
The most liberating—and subversive—realization of your deconstruction journey is this: Your empathy is not deceitful. Your gut check is not wicked. Your boundaries are not a sin.
When you look at a church policy that hurts vulnerable people and your stomach twists in anger, that isn’t your “sinful nature” talking—that is your humanity refusing to be sanitized. When your body tenses up and signals that a relationship or an environment is unsafe, that isn’t a lack of faith—that is a sacred, God-given warning system trying to protect you.
Jesus did not come to replace a high-control religious system with an even tighter psychological cage. He came to invite us into a life of freedom, wisdom, and internal alignment.
Trusting the Soil
If you are sitting over your notebook today trying to navigate a major decision—or just trying to figure out who you are outside of the patriarchal expectations you were handed—I want you to stop looking outside of yourself for a permission slip.
You don’t need a pastor’s approval, a husband’s validation, or an institutional checklist to tell you if you are okay.
Your heart is not an enemy territory that needs to be occupied and policed. It is a garden. The questions you are asking, the boundaries you are finally drawing, and the fierce, protective instinct rising up in your gut are signs that your soul is finally waking up. Trust the ground beneath your feet. Trust the wisdom in your bones. You are allowed to take up space, you are allowed to speak, and you are entirely capable of steering your own ship.The Garden Notes
📚 On the Nightstand
To wrap up our month of sorting the seeds, pick up a copy of "The Wisdom of Your Body" by Dr. Hillary L. McBride. As a clinical psychologist, she beautifully explores how to dismantle the religious and cultural systems that alienate us from our physical selves, offering a practical, healing pathway to reclaim our bodies, emotions, and intuition as sacred spaces of divine connection.
🌿 From the Shop
If you want to take this week’s reflection deeper into your own life, I designed the Cultivating the Word specifically for this
Quote of the Week
High-control religion teaches you that your heart is deceitful because a person who doesn't trust their own gut is incredibly easy to manage. Reclaiming your spiritual autonomy starts the moment you trust your own empathy over their policies.
The Greenhouse Preview
This Friday in The Weed-Puller’s Lab, we are practicing The Autonomy Audit. I’m giving you an explicit mental checklist to help you decouple the voice of outsourced compliance from the voice of your sacred intuition. Plus, we have 5 deep, reflective journaling prompts specifically designed to help you untangle patriarchal programming, heal from self-doubt, and write a Personal Liturgy for the Wise Heart to firmly claim your spiritual adulthood. Upgrade your subscription to join us in the lab!
The Closing Question
In what ways did your old church programming train you to ignore your own physical and emotional boundaries, and what is one choice you can make this week where you choose to completely trust your own God-given gut?
P.S. If you are in between churches, or just don’t feel comfortable attending a physical building, but you are looking for something more, join us at Streams of Grace. You are welcome here! Sterams of Grace is an open and affirming, trauma-informed church. www.streamsofgrace.life