Follow God's Searchlight: Your Conscience - Part 3

Personal freedom depends on having courage to follow the conscience, which isn’t easy to do. Threat of personal embarrassment, peer pressure, or the need for acceptance may result in failure to heed the voice of conscience. When the voice of conscience makes you aware of wrongdoing or sin and you obey, you feel stronger and more self-assured.

Failure to follow your conscience eventually culminates in the loss of personal freedom. A man confided that when he was an adolescent he became indebted to a store owner in his small community. Time elapsed and he failed to pay the debt. Shame stole away a chunk of his integrity. The store owner died and the debt remained unpaid.

Our conscience pushes for right to be done, for amends to be made, apologies to be spoken, and forgiveness to be sought after and given. Courage is the avenue to a clear conscience. Listen to 1 John 3:21. “If our conscience does not condemn us, we have courage before God and will receive from him whatever we ask.” What a wonderful promise! 

Follow God's Searchlight: Your Conscience - Part 2

Hermann Goering, commandant of the German Air Force in World War II, proclaimed: “I have no conscience. My conscience is Adolph Hitler.” Goering committed suicide after being found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg. Goering’s testimony demonstrates the danger of invalidating the conscience and sinking into depravity.

While it’s important to have a mentor or leader whom we can respect and who serves as a point of light, no human being should be allowed to become your conscience. Blindly trusting another person to have all the right answers and always to have your complete respect eventually disappoints, for no person is perfect enough to substitute for your conscience.

A person who obeys his or her conscience will be blessed and rewarded by God himself, as David experienced in 1 Samuel 24. Here David listened to and obeyed his conscience. David knew God’s will and purpose and that choosing to follow God’s plan would result in receiving God’s blessings and a clear conscience. This can be your choice.  

Follow God's Searchlight: Your Conscience - Part 1

God desires for each person to recognize him as supreme Creator, who graciously sent Jesus to be our Savior and Lord. He intends for us to repent of our sins and accept Jesus as Lord of our lives. God also desires for each person to live up to his or her potential for making the world a better place to live.

There are barriers that prevent us from realizing our potential and enjoying the rewards God desires to give us. Our conscience puts up roadblocks where there is unresolved guilt indicative of attitudes and choices unbecoming of a believer in God’s grace and mercy. Failure to live up to our potential indicates poverty of mind and spirit.

A relationship exists between realizing your potential and the confidence your conscience sanctions. Real confidence comes from allowing Christ Jesus to have a prominent place in your life. Then by God’s grace and mercy your conscience is free of guilt and shame, and you can live a life pleasing to God. 

Allow Your Conscience to Accuse or Excuse - Part 1

If everyone has a consciousness of God, what drives people to resist his presence? Romans 2:15 reminds us that God’s laws are written within everyone, and so the conscience accuses or excuses them. What does it take to bring an awareness of God into submission with his kindness and love? For some it takes a crisis that creates hardship and pain.

The consciousness of God should produce basic moral convictions. Remember, our choices determine what has priority, and underlying our choices exist powerful motives. Proverbs 20:27 from the Living Bible makes an interesting observation. “A man’s conscience is the Lord’s searchlight for exposing hidden motives.”

God’s wants us to understand that secret motives give energy to unacceptable thoughts and actions. When God’s searchlight zooms in on areas of your life that are out of compliance with his will, permit his light to direct you back to his purpose for your life. God will find you if you are willing to be found.