keeping good conscince

In our Bible 'our will' refers to the things that have been instilled in our consciousness; it allows our soul to distinguish between what is morally good and bad, prompting us to do the good and shun the bad, commending one, condemning the other.

There are a number of scriptures which talk about the conscience, have a read of them:

Rom 9:1 bearing witness in the Holy Spirit
1 Cor 8:7 their conscience being weak

2 Cor 1:12 it speaks… can be holy or fleshly

1 Tim 1:19 keep faith and a good conscience

1 Tim 3:9 pure and clear
1 Tim 4:2 some having their consciences seared
1 Pet 2:21 there are answers for keeping a good conscience
A good conscience will help us to stand in these end times.

Conscience

In Greek the word is 'Suneidesi'.
Our conscience always tends to lean towards the greater ideal in our life, but is influenced by our childhood training and culture. We all tend to say 'This is what I believe and this is what I stand on, this has worked for me.'

Whatever becomes the greater ideal or focus of the soul or mind the conscience will be biased in that direction.

Mind

What do you put your mind to?

Whatever our mind thinks on will manifest through our words and actions.
If it is towards your desire rather than the Lord, it will lean towards decisions for fulfilment of this.
It will be drawn to the deepest desire in your life, and in that give signals to the soul and the mind. Feelings will be released in accordance to this.
The conscience can give a feel good factor, as it sits nicely with your own desire.

If the major focus in your life is your family then the conscience will lean towards it.

Take a radical believer of another faith brought up in his holy books, and his conscience will tend to lean towards His major focus, regardless of what are right morals to others.
His conscience has been trained to respond to what has become the ideal or focus of his upbringing and culture.
His conscience, like ours, can be seared by his ideal or wrong morals.

To a Christian, Jesus has to be the ideal. Not the church, not the book, not the lost, but Christ Jesus as their Lord. Nothing else can be above Him and all that He is.

A selfish person who has ideals of grandeur for self will make decisions promoting self and feel it is OK because of the greater strength of that desire, even in working with God.

What is your ideal in life? This is where your conscience will trigger your greatest morals. They will be promoted by the soul, and lead the body to obey.

We therefore cannot trust in just the leading of the conscience. Conscience is not the voice of God in us. The conviction of the Holy Spirit is.

If we choose to put the light of the truth into our lives by listening and responding to the Holy Spirit in the Word, it is more than likely that the conscience will be swayed to go God’s way rather than the world’s way. And the more the conscience leans towards the truth, the more it will trigger the correct action.

From this we learn to live from the conviction of the Spirit in our conscience rather than it acting upon its' past programming. It is being renewed in the Spirit of your mind.

The Holy Spirit will squeeze that old conscience until it conforms to the word of God and revelation of the Spirit. Until, like a squeezed sponge, good flows out of it.

When my will sees the value of a good conscience it is more than likely to follow the prompting of the Spirit rather than my own ideal.

Conscience knows the highest ideal in our lives and seeks to follow that level of programming.
We have to allow the Holy Spirit to set the mind and the will to programme the conscience or it will be led astray by our own self motivation.

The conscience speaks and the mind should receive the necessary instructions,
but there is a middle voice between the two.

Reckoning (Logizomai) log-id-zom-ahee
It is called “reckoning” or “weighing up” before it gets to the mind. (Logizomai)
To impute or to take into account, To consider. To judge or to decide, to choose a purpose.

It has an interesting root word (tupto) meaning to smite, beat, to strike with a whip or fist; of mourners to smite their breasts; disquiet of one’s conscience.

Again as we look back further we find that word has another connecting root of (tugchano) of one discharging a javelin or arrow.
To reach, attain to. Obtain. Get…become master of.

We have to look at the target, the goal or the vision that is important to us, our ideal.
As we fight for what is the truth, so we beat our soul into submission. It is an inner fight as we allow our conscience the freedom to be used by the Holy Spirit.

From ideal … to conscience:

Our ideal, or should we say the highest level of priority, vision or standard of morals in our lives
is the major influence upon our conscience. The conscience tends to evaluate its decisions on the conviction of the strongest voice within. If the ideal in life is more powerful in ones life than the Word of God it will tend to be swayed by that ideal.

Morals

In listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit within us as He promotes of the Word of God, the morals that are formed in our conscience are born of His ways and not the worlds ways. If the conscience listens to the voice of any other “ideal” it will form morals attached to that ideal, hence the statement of:

'His will, in my conscience
His will, in my reckoning
His will, in my mind
His will over my will'

Listen to the conviction of the Holy Spirit within your conscience, weigh it up and apply it to the decisions you have to make. Here is where we gain the inner strength for self control, the fruit of relationship with the Holy Spirit. It starts right here in the conscience. Having a good conscience is so important to each of us. Do not switch it off, but listen to it and be encouraged that the Lord will use it to help us to stand.

Pray for a release of our conscience to more openness of the Spirit, that anything that raises itself up against the will of the Lord will have to come down. I pray you will be strengthened in your inner fight for holiness.

DT 03.07