12 Signs You Have a PUNISHMENT-BASED Relationship with God

Do you live with an anxious dread about connecting with God? Do you find yourself living a performance-based lifestyle so that you won’t be punished by God? Do you find yourself relating to God through a lens of punishment? If so, you are not alone and today can be a new step into freedom.

In this broadcast, I share from my own journey and years of working with people to expose what I call a punishment-based relationship with God. If you often relate to God through fear, anxiety, dread and a constant pressure to “get it right,” for fear of being punished, this is for you. I unpack how a punishment-based relationship works beneath the surface—how it begins with a lie of disconnection, leads you into misdiagnosing why you “feel far from God” and then drives you into endless performance, striving, and spiritual burnout.

I’ll walk you through key signs that this is operating in your life, from shame spirals after you sin, to obsessive self-inspection, to feeling like God is distant, disappointed, or even working against you. My passion is to help you recognize these toxic patterns, see how they are affecting your mental and emotional health, and then invite you into the safety of God’s love, grace and mercy. If you’re tired of living in fear of punishment and want to experience a healthier, more secure relationship with God, subscribe and join me on this healing and freedom journey.

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Is there a chance that in all your struggles and battles, as you’re navigating your mental, emotional and relationship journey, you’re recognizing that you have a punishment-based relationship with God? Maybe you’ve lived with it for so long you didn’t realize it. Or maybe you’re just now coming into a place where you’re saying, “Yeah, I relate to God primarily from a fear of punishment.”

A punishment-based relationship with God can invoke a lot of fear, anxiety, avoidance, a sense of withdrawing and shame. It can bring about a lot of avoidance and even torment. It welcomes the influence of condemnation. And it can keep you locked out of the beauty of who God really is — His love, His grace and the freedom that the cross of Jesus Christ brings to our lives.

I think it’s really important that we uncover this, because so many people have carried this for years without realizing they don’t need to. But it’s going to take some teaching, some learning and some untangling from the mindsets that keep us locked in this.

The God Filter

When you work with people on their mental, emotional, or relationship health journey, it doesn’t take long to see how they relate to God. In fact, I find that within 10 to 15 minutes of talking with someone about their battles and struggles, I can pick up on the way they relate to Him. I call this the God filter.

Some of what surfaces is powerful, biblical and beautiful. But a lot of it isn’t from God at all. So we have to be willing to look at our God filter — the primary lens we stand on in our relationship with Him. Because if you have a punishment-based relationship with God, it will infect the foundation. In fact, it wants to get into everything.

So I’ll often ask believers, “Who are you talking to when you’re relating to God?” Because how you see God impacts everything. And for many people, the battleground they’re working through is revealing a toxic, punishment-based way of relating to Him. They can even put a “God label” on thoughts and perspectives that are actually God distortions, not God Himself.

I had to walk through this in my own life. I had to recognize that the way I related to God was punishment based. It was performance based. It was perfectionistically influenced. And it fed a lot of fear, anxious striving, apprehension, hypervigilance, with shame-and-guilt spirals. I was talking to God based on a distortion of who He is. And when distortions infect our faith, they affect how we talk to Him, how we relate to Him, how we see ourselves and how we relate to the world around us.

Do you relate to this?

The Foundation: 1 John 4:18

First John 4:18 lays the foundation for what a punishment-based relationship looks like — and what it needs. The NIV brings out a nuance here that gives us an incredible mental health insight:

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear. That’s how powerful love is — it has the power to drive out, or “cast out,” the influence and effects of fear. Why? Because fear has to do with punishment. Some translations say “torment,” which is also true — fear acts like a terrorist. It wants to bring about a lack of peace, an instability of mind, a mind that’s scattered and anxious. But this translation brings out something important: fear keeps its grip on our lives partly through the fear of punishment.

The verse continues: the one who fears has not been made perfect in love. That word “perfect” speaks of the perfecting, wholeness-bringing work of God in our lives — maturing us, growing us, bringing healing and freedom. And the antidote isn’t found in performance. It’s not in getting it all right, or doing more and doing better. The antidote is being made perfect in love. God is love. We love Him because He first loved us. There’s a need for us to learn how to receive His love.

In the absence of that love — wherever love hasn’t taken deep root in our lives — fear wants to invade. And here’s the trap of a punishment-based relationship with God: you attribute those fears to being valid. You build a fear-based, rejection-based, condemnation-based way of relating to Him.

How the Punishment-Based Cycle Works

Before I get into the 12 signs, I want to show you the three simple steps of how punishment-based thinking operates.

Step One: The lie of disconnection. This is where most of our mental health battlegrounds find their common root — a sense of disconnection. Disconnection from others, from the world, from ourselves, and most of all, from God. But in Christ Jesus, Jesus paid the price to secure that connection to God. So this disturbance — the sense that God’s presence isn’t there, that back-and-forth feeling of “He’s close… He’s not” — is based on a lie.

But we feel it, so we believe it.

Our feelings get entangled, other people reinforce it (“I feel far from God too”) and we get pulled into feeding something that isn’t true. Within this lie comes a rejection mindset: I am separated.

And that fuels endless striving:

I’ve got to perform

I’ve got to appease Him

I’ve got to earn this.

ear partners with that sense of disconnection to amplify it, bringing avoidance and withdrawal. And wrapped around all of it is condemnation — shame, toxic guilt, judgmentalism, and accusation. That’s the ammunition of a punishment-based relationship with God.

Step Two: “Diagnosing” the disconnection. Now we’re dealing with a lie, but we start diagnosing the lie. It’s like someone saying, “You punched me,” and instead of saying “I didn’t punch you,” you go into a whole story trying to figure out what your punch did and why.

Many believers do this with God: “I feel so far from Him — you know what it is? It’s because of this.” So then a second lie shows up to explain the first: it’s because of a certain sin, because you’re not reading your Bible enough, because you’re not serving enough, because you’re in the wrong relationship, maybe you’re not even really saved. There are a thousand possible explanations that could jump in and every one of them is a false diagnosis.

Now we’re dealing with two lies stacked on top of each other — and this is where believers spin and spiral the most.

Step Three: Aggressively “fixing” and performing. Based on the false diagnosis, we react by trying to fix the perceived disconnection through performance. We believe if we just get things fixed, now we’re connected, now God really loves us, now we can be close to Him again.

Some believers get so busy with Christian activity that they get a high out of it — serving a lot, helping people a lot, having a great Bible reading day. There’s nothing wrong with those moments, but when we start chasing them as the metric of our standing, we get locked into something toxic. We’re constantly trying to fix and perform ourselves into being good enough for God — from a distance. “Let me get my act together, then I’ll come to You.” And the fear remains, because it’s all based on what we do and how well we do it.

Now, let’s get into the 12 signs. You may recognize all of them. You may recognize a few. I’ve spent a lot of time documenting the most common patterns I see. Let’s go through them.

1. Connecting with God brings up anxiety and dread

This is where fear is the driving force. Spending time with God, talking to Him, praying, simply connecting with Him — these become sources of anxious discomfort instead of joyous drawing near. Reading the Bible, worship, prayer — these topics become trigger places instead of places of joy.

And this creates avoidance. We try to keep a “safe distance,” or we swing the other way into intense, fiery, performance-based living. There’s often an anxious sense about God’s holiness that isn’t rooted in His love. And that combination creates a lot of torment.

2. Shame spiraling drives you away instead of toward Him

The moment you become aware of sin, flaws or struggles, shame spirals in and drives you to move away relationally — away from God, away from people. Adam and Eve did this from the very beginning and we’ve been tempted to do it ever since.

Shame keeps the punishment-based relationship alive because it accuses and points out flaws with no remedy offered. So instead of running to God when we need Him most, we run away — trying to fix ourselves from a distance before we dare come close, because we’re afraid of how He’ll react to us. You end up feeling like you have to earn your way back into good standing.

3. You spend your faith walk micro-inspecting what’s wrong with you

This becomes a focus that leads to disempowering, unnecessary trails — obsession, sin-focused living instead of Christ-focused living. Instead of dwelling on the beauty of who He is within you, you become fixated on everything wrong with you, believing you have to be “just right” before you can connect with Him. This can show up as compulsive asking for forgiveness, compulsive repenting, compulsive self-fixing and rearranging — and it’s never enough. It also bleeds into how you treat others; punishment-based Christians can become condemning, judgmental, critical, harsh, and shaming toward the people around them.

There’s a high level of condemnation at play here, and it’s worth understanding condemnation’s seven aspects, because they show up in so much of what people carry:

7 Aspects of Condemnation:

Expressing strong disapproval of someone. (shame and rejection)
To think ill of someone. (contempt: the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn)
Find fault with someone. (criticism)
To know something against someone and accuse. (accusation)
To pronounce guilt against someone. (guilt)
To exercise law against someone. (religious legalism/law based)
Placing a judgment upon someone and passing a sentence with punishment following. (judgmentalism, punishment based relationship)

Think about how frightening it is to take the stand in a courtroom — afraid that anything you say could be used against you. But in Christ Jesus, we are not pulled into that courtroom. That’s the power of the Gospel. Yet many Christians experience condemnation and mistake it for “conviction” — one of the most misunderstood concepts in all of Scripture.

4. You live a performance-based life out of fear of punishment

This distortion drives a lot of striving: if I don’t do this, then something bad will happen. It’s an interesting dynamic — on one hand you’re moving away from God out of fear, and on the other hand you’re trying to earn your way back through performance. You read your Bible, you take certain actions, because if you don’t, you believe God is going to punish you. So there’s a constant “do more, do better” pressure just to stay in good standing.

The deception here is that this pattern can produce a lot of admirable activity. People living this way can achieve a lot and look very busy and impressive — but deep down there’s little rest, little peace, very little recovery, and a real disconnection from the Father’s love. A punishment-based relationship with God will keep you at unease constantly.

5. You see God as distant, angry and even disappointed in you

Because you’re living by a performance metric, you’re always feeling the failure of never being enough. This frames how you read your Bible and interpret God’s nature in Scripture. I find this usually traces back to two things: how you were raised, and how the Word of God was taught to you. It’s easy to take the sword of Scripture — meant to empower you — and use it against yourself instead.

Maybe you carry this sense: “God loves me, okay, but He kind of has to. He doesn’t really like me.” Or you feel like an intrusion, an inconvenience, someone God merely tolerates. That belief keeps you from the beauty of His extravagant love and delight over you. And underneath it is always this sense that you’re disappointing Him, because your worth is tied to your performance — the same way many of us learned to find belonging in our families growing up, by performing for approval.

You’ll always land in disappointment, because performance living was never designed to produce connection with God. It doesn’t satisfy. It doesn’t bring peace, love, or wholeness.

6. A fear that God is working against you

Many carry a view of a contrarian God — if you enjoy something, He must not like it. Wherever you want to go, He doesn’t want you there. Whatever you’re hoping for, He wants the opposite. You feel like He’s authoring resistance in your life, working against your journey. And when bad things happen, you interpret it as punishment.

This is actually how pagans related to their gods historically — angering the gods, appeasing the gods, reading storms and disasters as divine punishment for something they did. That mindset can infiltrate how we relate to God today.

I remember growing up, we had a habit of praying for “traveling mercies” before leaving the house. One day, on the way to church, we got into a car accident and my dad immediately said, “This is because I forgot to pray before we left.” That’s a superstitious connection based on performance. And if we follow that thinking, we end up believing bad things happen any time we fail to do the right ritual.

7. You live in constant hypervigilance, waiting for the hammer to fall

You’re scanning life for the next bad thing that could happen. Social media fuels this — it thrives on triggering anxiousness and foreboding. You carry dread about your life and your future, convinced God is authoring some kind of harm toward you. Some people see calamity in the world and immediately interpret it as God’s judgment, as though they know the exact reason behind every hardship.

This can even show up as: something good happens, and you brace yourself, because “something bad is coming next.” That’s the fear of the hammer falling.

8. You lack confidence and boldness in approaching God

God says, “Approach me boldly, come before the throne, talk to me.” But when we’re filled with shame and condemnation, we lose our confidence. John wrote that if our heart doesn’t condemn us, we have confidence toward God. Condemnation strips that confidence and makes our standing before Him feel based on our performance instead of on what Christ has already done.

The writer of Hebrews says to come boldly to the throne of grace to find mercy in our time of need — but punishment-based thinking blocks us from that boldness. We hold back from sharing raw emotions, from being honest about our struggles, out of fear of punishment.

9. You operate from a reward-punishment view of God

This is the performance standard applied to outcomes: if I’m good, follow the rules, do the right things, then good things should follow. But here’s the strange thing — even when good things arrive, punishment-based people struggle to receive them. You spend more energy trying to prevent bad things from happening than resting in God’s care. And when hardship does come, you assume you caused it or deserved it.

This can also breed resentment — watching someone else “get away with” a messy life and still seem blessed, while you’re doing everything right and still struggling. It’s a scorecard mentality applied to your relationship with God.

10. You see any correction as disconnection

This is a widespread issue. Any corrective feedback feels terrible. If someone in authority — or even a friend — says, “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute about something?” it brings up terror, because your template says this means something is wrong, and it’s not going to go well. Most of us haven’t had good examples of correction that actually brings freedom — a burden lifted, pressure released, rather than added.

In over 30 years of ministry, I’ve found that most Christians are obsessive about certain things in their life and assume God is just as obsessed about those same things. But as we walk through it together with compassion and grace, the truth sets them free — God wasn’t obsessing over that thing at all. He was working somewhere else entirely, somewhere they couldn’t see yet.

11. You believe God only uses you when you’re “just right”

This shows up often in ministry, preaching, serving, teaching, and leadership — the belief that you have to have just the right thoughts, just the right spiritual state, in order for God to use you or bless others through you. To be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t pursue righteous living. What I’m pointing out is that we base our worth, value, and effectiveness on being in a “just right” spiritual condition — which is a faulty foundation. It suggests you have to earn your way into a state worthy of blessing others, rather than resting in what Christ has already made you.

12. You have a deep challenge receiving good things

Good news, good gifts, grace toward you — it all feels too good to be true. When teachings on grace come your way, something inside starts fussing: “But what about this? What about that?”

I see this show up in comment sections all the time. We’re uncomfortable with the beauty of love and grace being extended to us. Yes, there are countless things wrong with us that we don’t even know about yet — and God sees all of it. But in Christ Jesus, He sees His own nature at work within us and that’s the grace we get to live in.

This resistance shows up as discomfort with gifts, compliments, hugs, encouragement, even simple optimism — “No matter what happens, God is with me, and I’ll face it with Him.” It’s difficult to land in that truth when you’re living in a hypervigilant, trauma-reaction posture toward God, flinching and waiting for something bad to happen. Good is hard to receive.

This tends to show up in one of two ways. Either you’re compassionate and gracious toward others but punishment-based toward yourself. Or you’re punishment-based toward both yourself and others. The second pattern is the one that spreads — often justified with Scripture, used as a manipulative force to get people to fear, to do more, to give more, to participate more, and to control outcomes. That pattern can send people on a lifetime of guilt trips.

Where Do You See It?

So where are you seeing a punishment-based relationship with God showing up in you? I’ll be doing a series on this topic — more videos ahead, digging into how this affects your mental health and what it looks like to walk toward freedom.

For now, I want to leave you with a few passages to meditate on.

1 John 4:18 — “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment” (or punishment, as we saw in the NIV). “But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” The antidote is learning to live in the Father’s love for you.

2 Timothy 1:7 — “For God has not given us a spirit of fear.” Punishment-based believers often attribute the fear they feel to God Himself — as if He’s the one striking or threatening them. He’s not. He’s given us love, power, and a sound mind.

Romans 8:15 — “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear.” Bondage produces fear and slavery. But the Spirit God has given us in salvation is a spirit of adoption. We belong. We’re not slaves standing outside the family — we’re in the family now, crying out “Abba, Father.” That word “Abba” is an intimate, vulnerable, precious way of saying “Dad.” That’s the kind of connection available to you.

Hebrews 4:16 — “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace.” I come boldly not because of anything I’ve done, but because of what He’s done for me — and for that, I’m thankful. In my vulnerability and weakness, God brings mercy. That’s what breaks the punishment cycle — when you stop performing and feeding the fear, and you let mercy become part of your journey. Today is a day of mercy and grace coming to you. Let’s treasure it.

So let me ask you: where are you seeing a punishment-based relationship with God infecting your mental health, your emotional health, and your walk with Him — weighing you down with things you were never meant to carry?

Empowering You to Live Healed and Free