Can You Trust Your Conscience?
1 TIMOTHY 1:5-7 

Let your conscience be your guide. This bit of folk wisdom seems to make sense since our conscience is designed to help us discern right from wrong. However, people cannot always trust their internal radar to steer them correctly; this is the case particularly with unbelievers, who don’t have the Holy Spirit to reveal truth and offer guidance for wise decisions. And while Christians do have God’s indwelling Spirit, they should be careful not to harbor sin in their lives, as that can interfere with the way their morality sensor functions.

A trustworthy conscience is programmed with scriptural teaching. Believers build a stable and sensitive spiritual radar system by applying God’s truth to their lives. They are committed to thinking and acting in ways that honor and please the Lord. Then, when sinful thoughts or choices come across that radar, it will deliver a sharp warning.

A person with a reliable conscience will have a strong desire to obey God. He won’t settle for what feels right or looks good, but instead prayerfully seeks the Lord’s will. In other words, he does not rely solely on his conscience but incorporates all of the Holy Spirit’s tools into his daily life: Scripture, prayer, etc. Moreover, when his spiritual radar sounds the alarm, he is quick to draw back and reject unwise choices.

A conscience isn’t designed to be our guide; it is a tool of the Guide. The Holy Spirit not only convicts us of sin, but He also brings to mind godly principles and leads us on a righteous path. He uses a variety of tools to conform us to the likeness of Christ (Rom. 8:29)

Guilty of Brutishness    –    I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.

Psalms 73:22

Remember, this is the confession of the man of God; and in telling us his inner life, he writes, “I was brutish and ignorant.” The word “brutish” conveys the extent of his wayward folly. In an earlier verse of the Psalm, the psalmist writes, “I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked,” which shows that his ignorant reaction was sinful. He puts himself down as being “brutish,” and in doing so conveys the intensity of his feelings. His attitude and reaction was sinful. He could not excuse it but deserved to be condemned because of its perverseness and willful ignorance. He had been envious of the immediate prosperity of the ungodly, forgetting the ultimate, dreadful end that they faced.

Are we any better than him that we should call ourselves wise? Do we profess that we have attained perfection or have been so disciplined that our stubbornness has been removed? This would be pride indeed! If the psalmist was foolish, how foolish are we when we fail to see ourselves!

Look back, believer: Think of when you doubted God when He was so faithful to you; think of your foolish outcry of “Not so, my Father” when He crossed His hands in affliction to give you the greater blessing; think of the many times when you have read His providences in the dark, misinterpreted His dealings, and groaned, “All these things are against me” when they are in fact working together for your good! Think how often you have chosen sin because of its pleasure, when indeed that pleasure was a root of bitterness to you!

Surely if we know our own heart we must plead guilty to the indictment of a sinful folly; and conscious of this “brutishness,” we must learn to say with the psalmist, “You guide me with Your counsel.”

The family reading plan for July 28, 2011

Judges 11:12-40 | Acts 15