“I’m in a real dilemma,” Leanne explained to Josh. “I don’t know what to do. I want to but I have this yucky feeling inside.” Josh asked: “Well, what’s your conscience telling you? Why do you think God gave you a conscience? You should always go by your conscience.”
Believe it or not – Josh’s advice is dead wrong!
Just because Jimmy Cricket sang it in the 1940 Pinocchio Disney musical – doesn’t make it the Gospel truth!
When you get in trouble
and you do not know right from wrong
give a little whistle, give a little whistle …
When you meet temptation
and the urge is very strong
give a little whistle, give a little whistle …
Take the strait and narrow path
and if you start to slide
give a little whistle, give a little whistle
and always let your conscience be your guide …
It sounds good: ‘Let your conscience be your guide.’ It sounds reassuring when I say: “Well, I don’t have a conscience about – whatever.” It sounds good, but is it right?
Centuries ago there was a man who lived for one thing: get rid of every Christian on the planet. Seething with rage and threatening to slaughter them, his biggest adrenalin rush came from handcuffing Christians and hauling them off for execution.
Despite his dark agenda, Saul of Tarsus did not toss and turn at night trying to get to sleep. He slept like a baby – believing he was doing the right thing for God. He had a perfectly clear conscience about what he was doing. It wasn’t until he trusted Christ that the Apostle Paul realized he had actually been fighting against God. (Acts 23:1, John 16:2) So his conscience was out-of-whack with God’s will.
Your conscience is a powerful internal instrument designed by God and implanted in every human being. God’s intention for the instrument is that it be calibrated, aligned and indexed to His Holy Standard. The extent to which my life is not regulated by my Bible is the degree to which my own conscience will not be a reliable guide.
After he was saved, the Apostle Paul said:
Therefore I always exercise and discipline myself mortifying my body, deadening my carnal affections, bodily appetites, and worldly desires, endeavoring in all respects to have a clear, unshaken, blameless conscience, void of offense toward God and toward men. Act 24:16 Amplified
Constantly, every day, Paul did his best to make sure his accountability instrument (his conscience) was clear before God and before others. It’s an amazing instrument to help us live for the Lord, but only when we are daily indexing it to what we read in the Word of God.
Never ignore the alarm signals generated by your conscience. And remember, the instrument needs daily calibration.
Someone has suggested three phases of conscience activity. When is my inner alarm system triggered?
1) BEFORE a contemplated action is begun, your conscience will attempt to tell you whether it is right or wrong. A battle rages within. The battle of the mind. The voice of conscience may be drowned out by all the other influential voices in our lives recently, i.e. our friends and our own impulses. This is where the battle for purity, morality, honesty and Christlikeness must be won.
2) DURING an action, the conscience is at its very weakest point of influence – because of the strength of the desire to do whatever we have chosen to do. Once an act of wrong has begun, stopping it is extremely difficult. There is momentum and intensity in action. Rarely can you put the brakes on or reverse direction once you have headed down a certain path.
3) AFTER the fact – the siren of your conscience is deafeningly loud and shrill. The fun is over. The deed is done. The rage has been exhausted. The mind has been defiled. The noise of fun and bravery has subsided; your friends are gone, and all you can hear now is the scream of your conscience that has judged you to have done wrong.
Unless the wrong is made right, the sin confessed, and communion with the Lord is restored, the conscience will continue to hound you with guilt – even 20 years later, just like Joseph’s brothers. (Genesis 42:21)
Never ignore the alarm signals of your conscience – that’s a given. Take heed to its alarms but then, go to your Bible for direction and guidance. Your Bible is the unchanging standard by which God measures our performance. It is the only safe guide. Let it always have the last word, the final say – not your conscience!
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Most have never sung this old hymn written prior to 1788. Although ‘filial awe’ and ‘quick as the apple of an eye’ may be obscure expressions today, you will still be able to appreciate the thrust of Charles Wesley’s old hymn. You can sing it to the tune of Amazing Grace or Three Crosses Standing Side by Side:
I want a principle within
Of watchful, godly fear,
A sensibility of sin,
A pain to feel it near.
I want the first approach to feel
Of pride or wrong desire,
To catch the wandering of my will,
And quench the kindling fire.
From Thee that I no more may stray,
No more Thy goodness grieve,
Grant me the filial awe, I pray,
The tender conscience give.
Quick as the apple of an eye,
O God, my conscience make;
Awake my soul when sin is nigh,
And keep it still awake.
Walk carefully and closely with the Lord today.
Warmly in Christ,
Peter Ramsay
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