7 Signs You Are Living with Heart Awareness

Published by Mark DeJesus Healing, Healing to the Heart, Heart

Countless times, people have sat in my office or met with me over a call to work through a personal struggle in their life. One of the predominant patterns I have observed is that many are often unaware to how much certain life experiences have impacted them. They are furthermore unable to articulate or even connect to what is happening in the life of their heart.

We are often trained to put our heads down and plow forward like oxen. Yet, we shake our heads in wonder when unwanted symptoms arise, revealing something is “off” in our heart life. It is imperative that we learn to live a more awakened and alive existence. We cannot wait until we are manifesting mental breakdowns, relationship rifts, addictions or certain anger and anxiety symptoms that don’t stop, to then start dealing with our hearts.

Cultivating Heart Awareness

The key to this awakening involves becoming more heart aware, which can lead us into subjects of self-awareness, emotional intelligence and social development. I call it “heart awareness,” because it comes down to seven key agreements for a believer:

1. “I value the life of the heart.”

Those who possess strong heart awareness connect to life from the heart. They don’t simply go through the motions or remain content with surface relationships. Shallow pursuits are not appealing. They long for real and authentic experiences that a relationship with God and others can bring.

2. “I am aware of how life experiences impact my heart.”

Valuing the life of the heart means allowing yourself to connect to what your heart experiences. Heart awareness involves understanding how life events have impacted your thoughts and emotions. In order to become stronger in heart awareness, you need to be keen on how your thoughts and emotions have been influenced.

With this level of heart awareness, you understand how your history can have an impact on your present. This can only be understood in the context of God’s love and grace, for without them, we immediately fall into the pits of guilt, shame and condemnation.

Heart healthy people have tasted of the safety that God’s love brings. At the same time, they are able to process through aspects of their broken history that are infecting their present potential and maturity.

3. “I am aware of my heart’s condition.”

This involves a level of self-awareness, the ability to know what is going on in my heart and emotions, while also knowing how I come across to others.

When you are aware of your heart’s condition, you are able to digest the themes that God is working on in your life. Healing and maturity are much more fruitful, because you have tapped into God’s frequency over your life. You’re aware of what you are battling, as well as connecting to what God is teaching you.

No one is a perfect expert, but those who are heart aware can discern what is going on in the life of their own heart. They can also articulate it with safe people in an effective way.

In working with people over the decades, I have clearly observed that our generations lack training on how to articulate what we are feeling inside. Feelings have been ignored as messy, complicated and hindering. Therefore, many have said, “So why even pay attention to them? What’s the point?”

Many have worried that if they paid attention to their heart, then they would become an unstable, emotional mess. This belief led them into another problematic ditch—becoming disconnected from the life of the heart.

Heart awakening takes intentionality and investment. I have spent months with people working through being able to identify what they are going through emotionally. Some were raised to completely ignore their emotions, so they lived like zombies. Others were told to suppress anger, fear and depression. Therefore, they never knew what to do with them, until one day their emotions exploded.

I think our current culture reveals that proper emotional nurturing has not taken place. I have taken this urgency into my own parenting, where I believe it is at the utmost of importance for my children to understand what they are feeling, so they can work through their emotions and mature their emotional capacity. I’ve met masses of people, who, if they had that opportunity growing up, their life would be dramatically different.

4. “I am allowing God to have full access to my heart.”

In Psalm 139, David is expressing a vast array of emotions to God, when suddenly, he takes a left turn into anger for his enemies. While he knew it was acceptable to express a spectrum of various emotions, David also knew that he could not experience a healthy heart without God’s involvement. So, he says:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalms 139:23-24

Heart aware people seek to connect with God in meaningful ways that are relational. They live in a daily rhythm that unites their heart to God, not just religious routines they can check off a list. They’re looking to grow with God in meaningful ways that manifest an abundant life.

This can only occur when you allow God to have an “all access pass” to your heart. You’ve made a personal decision to allow for Him to lead you into healing and maturity with His love and truth. With this permission given, God can freely move to heal the root issues of your heart that need addressing.

5. “I am seeking for God to heal and mature my heart.”

Heart awareness means that processing healing and maturity in your heart life is important to you. Therefore, you become aware of the themes that God is working on. You give your heart room and time to slow down and tune into the direction of God, through His Word and the whispers of His Spirit.

6. “I seek to fully experience life.”

A heart that is awakened and aware knows the importance of experiencing life with your full heart. This means you are present in the moment, allowing yourself to feel and connect to the relationships in front of you and the experiences you have the opportunity to engage.

Those who are heart aware are always learning, therefore they are always growing. They’ve positioned themselves in a way that they connect from the heart and want to keep growing in what it means to live, fully alive from the heart.

7. “I value the health of my relationships.”

More important than achievement, status and wealth, heart aware people value relationships as the highest priority.

Most people say they value relationships, but their lifestyle does not mirror that. When relationships are an important value, then your pace of life, investment of time and focus will make room for important relationships to flourish. This begins in your home and extends to those God has called you to impact.

When you value relationships, you take the time to consider how you come across to others. You desire to be a safe space for others to heal and grow. You seek to develop and enhance your relationship interactions, so that people can benefit from the growth that God is leading you into.

Spiritual growth is meaningless, unless it shows up in our day to day relationship interactions. That is the greatest fruit of a transformed life. Other people receive the blessing of the change you have experienced.

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