God Grant Me a Sensitive Conscience

Here's a newsflash for you: The Christian Life is Hard.

Now while you try to come to grips with this crazy thought, I want to share with you a few resources from John MacArthur on one of the greatest tools God has given us to help us battle sin.

"The conscience is generally seen by the modern world as a defect that robs people of their self-esteem. Far from being a defect or a disorder, however, your ability to sense your own guilt is a tremendous gift from God. He designed the conscience into the very framework of the human soul. It is the automatic warning system that cries, "Pull up! Pull up!" before you crash and burn." | John MacArthur - The Conscience, Revisited

That's right. A "guilty" conscience should not be ignored. Sensitivity to guilt is not primarily about making a person feel bad, but is instead about helping them stay sensitive to their sin. In Jeremiah, we see a passage of scripture that shows how Israel's sin no longer had any effect on them at all. A land where people had ignored their consciences and guilt for so long that their hearts were no longer sensitive to their sin. Their hearts were hard towards their iniquities and they actually forgot how to blush.

Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?
No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. | Jeremiah 6:15

The conscience is a tool which can be used to help us in our Christian walk, but we must work to keep our conscience sensitive. If we are not investing significant time into God's word and working to apply it to our lives, then our conscience will not be trained towards righteousness, but will instead be trained in worldliness. The old cliché, you are what you eat rings true here. What we invest our time into will be what we become. If we desire to be holy, then we must cling to what is holy. We must study God's holy word that our hearts may remain soft and aware of what is good, acceptable and perfect. Paul tells us in Romans 12:2:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We can't discern what the will of God is if we are not investing significant time into studying, meditating on and memorizing his word. God has given us his bible and our consciences as tools for our pursuit of holiness, but these two things must work together. We must fill our hearts (and conscience) with God's truth if we truly desire to have a heart that is passionate for God and his glory.

I'll leave you with this short audio clip from John MacArthur which gives a wonderful analogy of how this all applies to our lives.

For His Glory,

Jason