48. The Gift of Conscience.

Your conscience is a spiritual gift from God. We have all been given one. As with many of God’s gifts, He gives us the raw material and expects us us to use and develop it for His glory. However the Conscience is a special gift, it lets us know when we are pleasing God and when we are not. Using it requires serious responsibility because it carries great rewards and severe penalties. As with all God’s gifts our conscience is a very good gift and when used correctly and regularly can benefit us greatly, in fact the more we use our conscience the closer we can get to God, that’s why He gave it to us. It’s one of the many ways God speaks to us. God will never take away our free choice. We are always free to follow Him or not. And our conscience will tell us which way is His way . Now, to maintain and preserve a good conscience God has provided us with a few laws, both Spiritual and physical. eg some of the physical laws are Gravity, if you jump or fall from a great height, you will brake something or worse. Fire, Get too close and you will burn. Water, if you go into deep water and can’t swim you will drown. In like manner Spiritual laws also prevail, God has given us a Decalogue or the ten commandments, which are listed in The book of Deuteronomy Chapter 5.v6-21 These carry the same penalties only worse, because they effect the life and death of the soul. So along with our conscience God has installed an alarm system which will remind us time after time that we have gone or are going off track He says;--“I will speak in their hearts” so we know when we are heading for trouble. God loves us so much that He will not allow us to continually go down the wrong track without reminding us of potential danger. However in the end the choice is still ours. We know when we are doing wrong because the thought always precedes the deed. Satan’s greatest enemy is your conscience, and once he has conquered us in a particular area then it’s all down hill for him, and each time he is the winner, he’s learning which of our buttons to push so he will choose his moment very carefully, he will entice, justify and validate your sin before your very eyes. That’s why we need The Holy spirit constantly with us, to remind us of those Scriptures that will drive Satan away before he gets a hold of our will. eg “Resist the devil and he will flee from you ” use the name of Jesus, especially when you realise you are being attacked. Satan will tell you it’s only a thought, you haven’t done anything, but a wrong thought entertained leads straight to sin. And then comes action and that’s when you get into big trouble. There are some good examples in Scripture I’d like to point out to you;-- In (2. Kings 5.20-27. Naman the Commander in the king of Assyria's army had leprosy and was healed when the prophet Elisha prayed for him. The prophets servant Gehazi was upset because his master the Prophet, didn’t accept money and goods in payment for the healing, so in spite of his conscience and knowledge that it was wrong to do so, he ran after the commander and said his master had visitors and he needed some of the clothes and money for them (a lie) The Prophet hadn’t sent him, Gehazi wanted them for himself. He knew better, his conscience would have told him much earlier not to do such a thing, but he chose to ignore it. And as it always does the truth caught up with him and the result was, he and his entire family suffered for the rest of their lives with Leprosy. For my second example I went to Genesis (42;v1) Jacob was talking to his sons about the famine and told them to go to Egypt to get grain. At the end of that verse He says to his sons,”Why are you looking at each other. (first signs of a guilty conscience) You will remember, some Ishmaelite traders who were on their way to Egypt to sell their goods, and the brothers had sold their younger brother Joseph to them, so they knew he would be there, they didn’t know who he had become, but they didn’t want a chance meeting either, fifteen years later each of their consciences were still alive and well. It’s God’s way of making us face up to our sin which has to be dealt with. It may take a long time, but it never goes away until it’s dealt with. Well we all know the story of how God dealt with these boys,who were to be the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel My third example is from the New Testament about Judas Iscariot and what happens when we don’t listen to our conscience. Judas was one of the chosen twelve, he was there with Jesus at all the miracles and healings, he saw Jesus walking on the water, feeding the five thousand and raising Lazarus from the dead. So he had the faith, and he must have loved Jesus at some stage, so what happened? Tradition tells us he was the keeper of the finances for the group If he occasionally helped himself to the takings and not returned it, and kept ignoring his conscience, thirty pieces of silver would have been quite a deal for him. Of course this is supposition, but I’m using it to make a point which is : ”Ignore your conscience at your peril.” There’s one more thing I’d like to say about one’s conscience. If we ignore it on a regular bases, chances are we will kill it. Our prisons are full of such people. A small lie leads to perjury, steel a pen today, a car tomorrow, a fight today, murder tomorrow. We all reap what we sow. So let’s all listen to the still small voice of the conscience it’s never wrong. Always pointing the way to the will of God. Thank you for reading my thoughts on “The gift of conscience.” Yes, sometimes it’s hard to follow our conscience but ask for the help of The Holy Spirit and it will be given to you. Remember Our God is a Faithful God, and always there for us. Phaline.