YOUR CONSCIENCE AND THE VOICE OF GOD
What is Conscience?
We want to start this Daily Devotional with a look at one of the secrets of hearing from God. It is a tragedy for a person to be born again and he cannot discern the voice of the Lord. It means such a person will just be saying the prayer, without any hope of hearing an answer from the Lord.
A lot of people are stagnated in their spiritual journey because they cannot hear from God. They know the Lord through the Word, but they find it difficult to discern His voice or hear Him clearly. The question is: How far can a person go with God when he cannot discern the voice of the Lord?
So, this is an important study in the spiritual growth of a child of God. The conscience is the voice of God within a person. It is God's monitoring Spirit living inside a person that warns him/her about what is good and evil. The conscience cannot command obedience, but it will surely warn of the dangers of evil and wicked behaviours. It is possible for the person to ignore the conscience, but the conscience will surely return to rebuke the person after the evil is done.
The conscience is the custodian of the Word of God in a person. Before you became born again, the conscience is the Inner voice that speaks to you and give you good and godly counsel. Sometimes, you would have committed a sin before the conscience will come to warn you. This is because you are carried away by your lust and did not even meditate on the issue before you did it. Immediately after, the Conscience will rebuke you for doing evil.
Once, I went to see someone in a Church. But as soon as I left the church to go home, I heard a voice asking "How come you did not ask from Me before coming"?. I knew I had made a mistake going to that place, though the place is a church. The conscience will surely play his role in your life.
When we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, the blood of Jesus washes our conscience of every dead work, for us to serve the Lord. The moment we are so washed, our conscience is cleansed and taken over by the Holy Ghost.
The conscience of a born again Christian comes under the control of the Holy Ghost and becomes the voice of God inside of him or her. He takes abode in your heart and continues to guide and speak to you at different times.
Whenever you have a decision to take, as a child of God, the voice that comes to tell you: Don't do that, it is evil, don't travel tomorrow as you intended, don't marry that lady, hold-on, look around for such and such a girl is the voice of God speaking through your conscience.
It is the voice that comes to warn you not to do something you are hiding to do. It is the voice that comes to warn you that the money you want to spend is not your own. The conscience will surely come to warn you about it. The warning from the conscience will continue until the person repents and abandon the evil, or he becomes vile. When the person's conscience is seared, it means that the person has gotten to the point where the light of God inside of him becomes darkness - Luke 11:35
When you become a Believer, the voice takes a stronger and authoritative position. There are places a child of God should not go or places you should not enter. When you are led by the devil into such a place, the conscience will shout at you not to enter that place. I have experienced it more than once.
The truth of the matter is that once the conscience warns you not to do something and you ignore the warning, you are on your own. That voice is a witness against you that you were warned and the counsel is recorded against you in heaven.
I heard that a minister of God was travelling out of his station for a program, and the enemy sent a charming girl to join him in the bus and seduce him. The lady entered the bus at some point along the way, and soon they began to discuss. Beloved, it is a tragedy to give audience to a woman sent to destroy you, may you never experience such in Jesus name.
The lady convinced him to drop with her, and before you know what was happening, the man fell to her antics. After the encounter, he fell sick and when he cried to the Lord, the Lord told him, that he was warned not to drop with the lady or do anything with her, but he did not heed the voice of the Lord. The Pastor died in the sickness.
Seared Conscience
The life of virtue and love promotes a healthy conscience, whereas a lifestyle of vice poisons it. If a person lives or works in a wrong place where evil is done every day, soon, that person will no longer see the evil as evil, rather as a way of life. This is because he sees such every day. His conscience is seared about it. When a person continues to sin, day after day, it could get to a point when the conscience will stop warning him, when the person becomes addicted to the sin.
Clear Conscience
The Apostle Paul refers to the conscience when he looked intently at the council and said, “Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day” (Acts 23:1). He had nothing to be ashamed of or his conscience would’ve been troubled.
Summary
The following truth about the conscience is real:
1. Everyone has a conscience. That means nobody has any excuse before God.
2. The Word of God is written in everyone's heart, his or her conscience, which means that even the unsaved know that what they’re doing is wrong -Rom 2:15-16.
3. The Holy Spirit helps to us grow in holiness, in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and having our minds renewed by the Spirit of God (Romans 12:1-2). Jesus speaking of the Holy Spirit says “when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8).
4. Listen to your conscience. Especially when you are saved and washed in the blood of Jesus. The conscience becomes the voice of God speaking to you.
Conclusion
God speaks to us through His Spirit, which inhabits our conscience, and so we should know that the promptings, counsels are written down as a warning to us.
The counsel from the conscience is for our good, and so to ignore it is to reject good and accept evil.
PRAYERS:
1. O' Lord, give me a humble spirit that will obey your voice in Jesus name
2. O' Lord, create in me a new heart and take not your Holy Spirit from me
3. O' Lord, ignite my Calling with your fire in Jesus name
4. O' Lord, open my spiritual eyes and make the invisible things visible to me in Jesus name.
5. Every root of disobedience in my life, dry up by the fire of God, in Jesus name.
FIRE...
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