CONSCIENCE ~ A Gift From God

This morning in my devotional time I read from the ‘Life Recovery Devotional’ the ‘Day 20, Step 10’ reading. Which was headed ‘A Sensitive Conscience’  As I read it a thought occurred to me, which became the title of today’s ‘Thought For Today.’ 

None of us got up one day and thought to ourselves “It’s a nice day outside I think I will leave everything I know and enter a life of continued spiritual recovery.” We had all reached that place in recovery called ‘Rock Bottom’ and were prompted by what we now know is the Holy Spirit that if we carried on living the way we were living and doing the things we were doing we weren’t going to survive much longer. Today’s reading in the ‘Life Recovery Devotional’ says The word ‘conscience’ describes the act of perceiving our will and God’s will simultaneously and when we make a conscious decision to live God’s way our conscience becomes clear.

The Bible says in John 8:7-9 of the word conscience.

They [teachers of religious laws and Pharissess] kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, “The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone.” Bending down again, He wrote some more in the dirt. Hearing that, they walked away, one after another, beginning with the oldest. The woman was left alone.

I am sure we can all understand the shame of or own guilt when confronted by God with the realities of our own lives.

Today’s Scripture is:

1 Corinthians 8:12 says “It is a sin against Christ to sin against your brother by encouraging him to do something he thinks is wrong.” Again I am sure we can all relate to this verse and identify times in our lives when we have taken others along for the ride in our poor decisions and bad habits. In the scripture above Paul encourages Timothy to put God first always and “fight well in the Lord’s battles.”  to ‘Cling to his faith in Christ’ because that is the way to clear our consciences and keep them clear. Paul goes on further to warn Timothy of people who have ‘deliberately violated their consciences and lost their way.’

This post is headed ‘CONSCIENCE ~ a gift from God’

1 Timothy 6:20  says to “guard the treasure you were given! Guard it with your life. Avoid the talk-show religion and the practiced confusion of the so-called experts.”
1 Timothy 4:4 says “Everything God created is good, and to be received with thanks. Nothing is to be sneered at and thrown out.” Through our consciences, the Holy Spirit led us to recovery, whether we see that yet, or acknowledge it. Through our consciences, God is giving us the way and the means to replace our wrong ways of living with His ways of living. It is up to us to accept ‘The Gift’ 

2 Corinthians 10:3-6 says “The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way–never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.”  Now is the time for ‘clearing the ground and building lives of obedience.’ using the gift of conscience that God has given us.