How Is Your Conscience?

How is your conscience? Personally, and unfortunately, due to my fallen sinfulness, I tend to be the second type that Pastor John Piper mentions below, which is by no means biblical (at least not fully) or spiritually comforting. I sincerely hate it with all my heart and it is something that God really needs to change in my life. It is a good read. Check it out (you can also read the entire sermon: Click Here!):

"Satan Can Turn Our Conscience to a Distorted View of God

Yes, Satan can sear a conscience, but there's another way that Satan can destroy our conscience. Scripture calls him in Revelation 12:10 the accuser of the brethren who accuses us day and night before our God. If he can't sear our conscience, he will seek to fine tune our conscience to a perverted view of God. He will paint for us a caricature of God—a God who is impatient and who really is not for us but against us. A God who is just looking for a slip-up so that he can pounce on us. A God who is not slow to anger, not abounding in loving kindness, but rather a perfectionistic taskmaster who will hound us, and ridicule us, and torment us until we do every thing just perfect.

Three Experiences with Conscience Among People

My guess is that there are three types of people represented in this room right now. Some whose conscience have long since been seared or are in the process of being repressed into silence. Then there are some whose consciences are very lively but are attuned to a taskmaster God who is impatient. You labor under a blanket of guilt, that never goes away. You are depressed and broken and defeated. You confess your sins, but never feel like you did it well enough to actually be forgiven; you look at how you love your brothers and sisters and you feel that its never perfect enough to please God. And the third type of people are some of you whose conscience is lively, but attuned to a God who is holy and also compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. When you fail to love as you should, your conscience condemns you, informing you that God is against your sin. But you thank God for your conscience. It is like those nerve endings that mercifully scream out in pain when something is wrong in your body and needs attention. When your conscience condemns you, you turn to God in confession and you trust the promise that God will forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. If the harm you did is something that can be restored through a word or a deed, you will rely on God's help to be reconciled to the person you hurt. And then your conscience will be quieted, and you will be free to love and to pray once again.

Those of you who know that your conscience has been inappropriately quiet for too long, or inappropriately condemning for quite awhile, and you feel stuck, no matter how much you pray or read Scripture; my admonition to you is to seek out help from a trusted friend, or a pastor or a professional Christian counselor. Because God is in the business of reclaiming and rehabilitating our conscience. There is nothing more valuable than a conscience that condemns us when we are wrong, and there is nothing sweeter than a conscience that is at rest once we've repented. God wants us to have free and responsive hearts, "Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God."