Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

I’ve been thinking about what guides our actions as individuals and communities going forward.

On a personal, individual level folklore advises, "Let your conscience be your guide." This has serious limitations since our conscience can be wrongly programmed by our experiences and the values of the people around us.  We need to renew our conscience so that it becomes a trustworthy mirror of the wisdom of God’s Word within us.

I do my level best to keep a clear conscience before God and my neighbors in everything I do.

Acts 24:16

With Christ as my witness, I speak with utter truthfulness. My conscience and the Holy Spirit confirm it. 

Romans 9:1

Sometimes people are incorrectly guided by false guilt which does not come from doing wrong but is a psychological guilt typically developed in early childhood.  In the middle of efforts to escape abuse or violence, these persons’ consciences became seared by fear, self-hatred, and ugly words.  Their actions reflect what they have come to believe.  

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

2 Timothy 1:7,

My conscience is clear, but that doesn’t prove I’m right.

Acts 24:16

It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide.

1 Corinthians 4:4

God wants to release us from the fear that has clouded our view of reality and damaged our

conscience.  Only God is wise enough to help us discern right from wrong and support us as we renew our minds with truth. 

Heavenly Father, Thank You for Your Holy Spirit who lives in us to guide us every day in every situation to know what is right and good. 

You have created us to be moral beings.  You have given us a conscience that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is intended to help us recognize when our behaviour is morally right or wrong.  Help us to reprogram our conscience and recognize truth in all our ways.

We live in a world that has been infected and broken by sin, with all kinds of false messages and ways of living that are contrary to Your way.  We know how easily our conscience can gradually become corrupted and become an unreliable guide for direction for good in our daily lives. 

Work in us today, Loving God, to restore our conscience to proper function according to Your truth.  Help us to do our part in the process by feeding our minds with Your word and choosing for Your way each time our thinking and Your word differ.  Amen