The Reverend Congen wants to read some Scripture. For this? Okay, 1 Timothy 1. That would help if I turned to 1 Timothy. Here it is.
Okay, chapter 1, verse 18:
This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.
That’s the good fight I want to talk about this morning: the fight for a good conscience. Now, that’s a fight.
Well, what about this thing of conscience? You know, God has given every man a conscience. Look in Romans 2.
Hey, if you don’t have a Bible, this whole front row here is from Bootyville—they don’t have their Bibles. Anybody, you’ve got to look on with somebody who’s got a Bible. You got some Bibles to share here? Pass them up here. We got some real students here; they just don’t have opportunity to study. Okay, anybody else can share a Bible right over here? Need one more. Okay, right there.
Okay, can you all look on? The print’s real big. Romans 2. Paul is talking about how everybody sinned—the Jews and the Gentiles. And if you look at verse 14, you see that Paul talks about the universal gift of God that is a conscience.
Verse 14:
For when Gentiles who do not have the law—that is, not Jews who have the Ten Commandments—do instinctively the things of the law, these Gentiles, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.
Their conscience accuses or defends them. In other words, the conscience says, “This is right; this is wrong.” And Paul is talking about Gentiles who don’t have the Ten Commandments. They have never heard about the Lord God and His Ten Commandments, and yet in their hearts they have a conscience that says, “Yes, no; right, wrong.”
Every man has been given a conscience. You and I, by God, have been given this gift: a conscience. This gift is an early-warning device.
You see, it’s just like the nerve endings you have on your fingers. I was working as an electrician’s assistant helper. That means I held the screwdriver.
But one time we were putting in some electric wires, and then did I hit it—a hot wire. And my little nerve endings on my left hand said, “You just hit the juice.” My hand was—boom! It exploded.
I’ve never seen my hand react so fast. I have quick hands. I’m a magician. See this? You see it? Out, son. Did you see that? But my hand, I have never seen move so fast as when I hit that juice. Man, it was—
You know why? Because my nerve endings said, “Get off that wire before you get fried.” And in one millisecond, it went to my brain, and my reaction was like that.
Now, brothers and sisters, we have a conscience. It’s a nerve ending. It’s a nerve ending to our moral life, and it says, “Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh.” It’s a safety device. God put it in there.
God put it into savages who don’t even know the law. You go out to the bush in Australia, and you’ll find that people have conscience. It’s a God-given gift.
Now, the fight is to keep a good conscience. Aha! Now that’s another story. We have got to keep a good conscience because our consciences can go bad.
Look in 1 Timothy 4, and you’ll see a conscience that has been blown—a fuse has been blown. Chapter 4, verse 1, talking about the last days: 1 Timothy 4:1.
But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.
Now, that’s Christians who will fall away from the faith. Here is the sensitive nerve ending, and then one day, because of their evil acts, it’s like a big iron came on that nerve ending one time. Then they never feel anything again. They can’t tell right or wrong. The conscience has been seared. It’s been scarred. It’s been cut off. It’s a nerve ending—I can’t feel it.
You know, when I was in India, one of the most powerful, dreadful, and interesting things that I’d ever seen was leprosy. I was in a mission hospital where they had cases of leprosy.
You know what the problem is with leprosy? Actually, the problem in the classic cases of leprosy—and there are different kinds—is that you lose the sense of feeling in your fingers and then your toes. And what happens is, you walk down the street, you bang your foot because you have no sensitivity in your foot, and it causes a wound which does not heal. So gradually your foot begins to eat itself away, and your fingers do, but it’s because of nerves that you can’t feel what’s happening.
You’ve lost your nerve ending. Now, it’s the same thing with a conscience. Because we don’t fight to keep a good conscience, there comes a day when it gets branded. You don’t feel anything.
It’s like some of these guys, man, they scare the fool out of me. They get them on television, you know—this guy who just bludgeons his grandmother with a brick and stole twelve cents out of her pocketbook. They’re interviewing this guy, walking along the prison.
“Oh, well, how do you feel about this? You whacked your grandmother with a brick. I mean, how does it feel?” He says, “I don’t know.”
You say, “What’s the matter with this guy?” His conscience has been bazooked. He’s got nothing. He doesn’t feel right or wrong. He doesn’t know. He just hits people with bricks when it happens to strike his fancy. This guy needs help.
And we need help, too, or else, in a very subtle little way, our consciences start to get seared. The nerve endings start to go.
You know what I love to see? I love to see a kid that can still blush. I’ll tell you why: because it means they’ve still got a conscience.
I mean, it’s like this. If I say to one of my kids, “Hey, who took the two dollars off the dresser?” Well, of course all three of them say, “Well, I didn’t.”
So finally, I ask one of the kids, “Did you do it?” Sweat under the armpits. They drop the spoon because their hands are sweaty. And I say, “Thank God, they still have a conscience.” I’m thankful for that.
I’m going to give you a little test. You need to have a piece of paper. I’m going to give you a conscience test. You ready for this? And I want you to record.
Great. All right, come on, we need some help. We have a thousand pieces of paper here. Some of the folks don’t have paper. All right, Kathy, good. You got to share some pens among yourselves, but it won’t be too hard, I don’t think.
Just take a real small piece. All you need is one about this size right here. I can’t keep score on your fingers.
Okay, how are we doing? Does everybody have a little shred of paper? Okay, so now we’re short pens, huh? I think Rob might be able to rustle up a couple of pens.
It’s a snarled mess, Robert. You handed me supposedly a wire. This is the same thing that happened in Israel. Watch this: throw it down—I’m the snake. It’s not working this morning, right? Not really, Pharaoh. Really, it’ll happen if I do it just one more time. It’s just not working.
Hey, all right, here we go. Who needs a pencil? A pen? All right, look, you four share.
All right, here we go. This is my conscience test. Some of these things might strike you a little strange, but what I’m trying to get is an indication.
On your electronic conscience meter, you’ve got to register a true opinion about something. Now, some of these things I’m going to suggest, maybe you thought of doing but never did. But when I say, “You killed your brother for a piece of bread,” what I’m trying to see is where it registers on your conscience meter.
Your conscience meter runs like this: zero is neutral. “I’ve got no feeling about it.” One to five is, “I feel good about it. I feel better about it. I really feel great. My conscience feels good.” At five, it’s as high as your conscience can feel good. All right, one to five positive.
On the negative side is when you do things wrong. The first makes you feel like your conscience kind of bothers you; then that’s about a minus two. You go down to a minus five. You see, minus five is when you really feel your conscience says, “You have just really blown it.” Okay? Minus one to minus five is bad conscience; one to five positive is good conscience.
And here’s the part. I want you to take an indicator in your life honestly. How would you feel about these things? This is a conscience indicator.
Number one: You are going to a movie. However, you lie. You say that you’re going to see, I don’t know, Bambi, but actually you’re going to see The Devil in Miss Jones, or some R-rated movie.
Your parents say, “Now, you can’t go to an R-rated movie.” Your friends want you to go to this movie. It’s R-rated. You say, “Of course, there’s nothing wrong. I mean, the ten-minute nude scene is nothing, and, you know, the language.” So you rationalize it to yourself.
Now you go to your parents and you tell them, “I am going to see Bambi with my friends,” and you’ve just pulled this lie. Now, what is your conscience? Your personal conscience. Some people feel real bad. Some people don’t feel bad. I want you to register honestly how you feel about a lie like that.
Number two.
All right, now number two: as you’re coming out of the R-rated movie, you see somebody from the fellowship. I mean, you see somebody from the fellowship walking down the street. You come out and they say, “Oh, hi. What are you—?”
“That’s gonna be a witness, right?” I said, “Yeah, you were witnessing to the popcorn lady.” Did that just throw your conscience meter? Pass on the tool of destruction. I got twelve of these, so—
All right, here we go. Third one: you come home and find something wrong. You blame your brother, who gets in trouble, but you did it.
Number two is when you come out of the bad movie and you meet somebody who’s in the fellowship or who knows you are a Christian. And number three is, you blame your brother or your sister for something, and they get in trouble, and you don’t. You say, “I didn’t do it. I don’t know.” And, of course, that leaves your poor brother or sister, who gets punished or penalized.
Number four: your mother finds a magazine, or a questionable book, under your bed and brings it to you. You know what I’m saying.
Number five. We’ve got to go by your initial impression. How would that bother you? Be honest. This isn’t a consensus conscience. This isn’t group conscience. This is you.
Number five: You’re with your friends, you’re in a store, and you shoplift something small. You shoplift something in the store—five to ten dollars, I don’t know, a baseball, a deck of cards, whatever. You’re just with your friends, shoplifting.
I’m keeping it small because obviously if you stole a car, you’d probably feel bad. But it’s still stealing, man.
Number six: you do something wrong, and you know when your parents come home your kid sister is going to tell on you.
You’ve done something wrong, and you know your sister, your brother, somebody, the neighbor, is going to tell on you. Where does your conscience meter register?
No, minus five is that you did something wrong, and you know you’re going to be told on when your parents get home, or whatever. Well, I don’t mean something good—I mean something wrong.
Number seven: you hear your parents brag on you, and you know you lead a double life.
They’re with company, and they say, “This is my kid, one of the brightest kids in school, a fine Christian boy.” And you just came in—you know—that you’re leading a double life. In other words, you’re not really what they think you are.
You just came in from the movie with the magazine that you put under your bed, and your parents say, “What a wonderful girl this is. Come here, Aunt Matilda, and meet a wonderful Christian girl.”
Number eight: you use something in the house you’re not supposed to use. I mean, something that belongs to your parents or whatever. You do something in the house without permission, and you break it, so you put it back.
When your dad turns on the TV and the knob falls off, the screen comes falling out on his chest—you say—
When you use something in the house without permission, you know you shouldn’t. You break it, you put it back, and hope nobody uses that radio for the next two years. You hope nobody goes for the Led Zeppelin album for the next year because it’s got a big hole down in the middle.
Number nine: you do something good around the house on your own initiative. Your parents actually didn’t nag you. You just decide to fix something, or do something, or help out in some way without being told.
You can see, I’m hoping for some positive rating. I mean—okay.
Number ten: the school is sending home a report, although your parents don’t know it. A report for skipping, poor grades, or bad attitude—you know, one of those reports.
They’re sending it home. The principal just brought you in and said, “We’ve sent home a letter. Your parents should be getting it any day.” You’ve already missed the mailman when he came.
Number eleven: you are in a Christian meeting, and you share something or you pray in the meeting. You actually share something in a Christian family.
No, not somebody asked you to do it. You just shared something—either said a song you’d like to sing, had a prayer, or whatever, or shared something.
Number twelve: you make some lame excuse for staying home from the fellowship meeting. “Oh, not that headache again.” Whatever. You make some lame excuse. You know you’re getting out of it. You’re sandbagging your parents. You can’t go to the meeting this morning. It’s just, you know, nothing’s washed. Besides, yeah, I got a pain in this guy.
All right, I want you to add up your score. You can add it up in your head. Add up your score. I’ve got a couple of things to tell you about your conscience meter.
All right, you add it up. Here we go. Here’s some scores. All right, go ahead. I’ll give you another minute, sorry.
You add up your negative numbers and you subtract your positive numbers, and you ought to have a negative score if you have a conscience.
Okay, let me tell you something about your score. If you got around minus forty, that is, you got a perfect ten.
If you have a score in the thirties, let’s say, your conscience is working. If you got a score in the twenties, then you’re probably over fifteen, and your conscience is getting a little hard.
If you got a score between zero and minus twenty, if you did this thing seriously, you have a seared conscience. No, that would do that—zero up to negative twenty. You know what I’m saying. I mean, that’s a relative thing. This isn’t a law. But if you took that seriously and you really registered a minus ten or a minus eleven, or something like that, you’ve got a seared conscience, if you answered those things realistically.
Let me tell you just a couple other things. The older you get, the lower your score would tend to be, because the older you get, the less your conscience bothers you, because you teach your conscience not to bother.
Another thing: if you notice that your scores were particularly high on numbers two, four, six, and ten, then your problem isn’t that you have a good conscience. Your problem is you hate to get caught.
You see, there’s a difference between a conscience and getting caught. Two, four, six, and ten are the times where you get caught, or your sister tells on you, and this kind of stuff. That doesn’t count. Anybody feels bad when they know they’re going to be caught. Some of you have minus five for every one of those: two, four, six, and ten.
Now, let me share a couple of things with you. Now listen. First of all, your conscience is not only a warning system to you, but it is very important in your Christian life besides just being warned. Do you know why?
Number one: look up the Scripture right here, 2 Timothy 1:3. Your conscience condition—that is, having a good conscience or an evil conscience—affects your service of God.
Notice chapter 1, verse 3 says:
I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience.
Paul says, “I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience.” Now, you have a hard time serving God with a bad conscience. Have you ever been asked to do something like sing a song, play your guitar, share a testimony, and you’ve got some conscience problems? It is not an easy thing to do.
But Paul says, “I can serve God with boldness, with confidence, because I have a clear conscience.” I didn’t go down to the newsstand and get a bad magazine, just read it, then come and preach the gospel. Paul is saying, “I’ve got a clear conscience.”
That’s why it’s good to fight for a good conscience—the good fight. It’s a hard fight. It’s a hard fight to keep our conscience clean, but if our conscience is clean, we can serve God. We’re not always feeling ashamed: “Oh, God, please don’t tell everybody where I’ve been, where I’m going, how I feel.”
It’s more than just a warning system. It involves our service of God.
Notice in 1 Timothy 3, our conscience directly affects our faith in God. This is talking about being a deacon. It says if you want to be a deacon, it’s good. Verse 8:
Deacons likewise must be men of dignity, not double-tongued, or addicted to much wine, or fond of sordid gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.
Do you know that you have to have a clear conscience to hold the faith—to believe? I’ll tell you what happens. “I believe in God. He can move mountains. He can heal. He can do anything. Lord Jesus, I pray that You would save my friend Ralph, that You’d save him from his sin.”
You pray with belief and with faith, but when your conscience bothers you, “Gee, I don’t know if God can do that. Gee, I don’t know if God is real. Gee, I don’t know if God is—I’m just not sure anymore.”
Sometimes it’s a problem of conscience that makes you have a question of faith. You have to hold the faith with a clear conscience.
When your conscience is clear, it says in 1 John, you can come in before God and ask whatever you want because your heart doesn’t condemn you. That’s talking about your conscience. That’s pretty important stuff. That’s got to do directly with your ministry.
And also turn to 2 Corinthians 4, just another part of our service. I tell you, Paul was either nuts or he was bold when he said things like this.
Chapter 4, verse 1:
Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart.
But we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
You know what he’s saying? He is saying that when you lead a holy life, when your conscience is clear, and when you don’t adulterate things or act in a wrong way, then when you serve God and witness to other people, you know what they say? Their conscience says, “That guy’s right.” It bears witness to their conscience.
Now, every man in this world has a conscience. They may be seared, but they have a conscience. If I were an unbeliever and I saw your holy life and I saw the love of God in your life, it affects my conscience. I say, “Oh, I’m a sinner. Look at that person.”
You see how important the conscience is, and how important it is to keep a good conscience? All right, huh?
I just want to share a couple of areas where we need to fight a good fight to keep a good conscience. How do we keep a good conscience? We’ve got to fight the good fight.
One thing is, in order to keep a clear conscience, we have got to submit. Notice what Paul said now. In Romans 13, Paul is dealing with obeying governmental authorities, but this also applies to obeying government laws, obeying our parents, obeying our schoolteachers—whatever authority is over us.
Notice what he says in Romans 13:5:
Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake.
Now, what does that mean? It says we need to be in subjection. Why? Not just because of wrath. That is, not just because if we don’t listen to our parents, we’re going to get in trouble.
Some people will obey their parents because they say, “Well, if I don’t obey them, they won’t let me go out. They won’t let me do that.” But it’s not just for that reason we obey our parents. And we don’t just obey our parents because they pull this, too. But we obey our parents for conscience’ sake.
You know what I mean, don’t you? If your parents tell you something to do and you go do it, your conscience feels good. But if your parents say something, and you say, “Oh, I’ll do it. Forget it,” your conscience is bad. You have just lost a clear conscience.
And it isn’t always a matter of right or wrong. You see, most people say, “I’ll obey my parents if they’re right.” Unfortunately, after you’re twelve years old, you’re always right. So when you’re a teenager, you’re always in conflict with your parents.
They say, “Take out the garbage.” Immediately, they’re wrong; you’re right. Any fool knows if you can take the garbage out two hours from now, it won’t make any difference because the garbage man isn’t coming till the next morning.
“Come on, come on, we’re here watching my favorite show, Bambi—The Flintstones, my favorite show.” It’s amazing, the shows have suddenly become our favorite shows.
But anyway, you see, we run into conflict, and we say, “I’ll obey my parents if they’re right, but if they’re wrong, I’m not going to.” But the Bible doesn’t say you subject yourself to them because they’re right. It says you do it for conscience’ sake.
If we’re going to fight that good fight to keep a clear conscience, then it means we’ve got to learn to submit and obey.
Okay, what’s another fight? Another fight, if we’re going to fight the good fight, is this: we have got to beware of excessive peer pressure and run from it.
Do you know what substitutes for our conscience? See, my conscience is a still, small voice right in here. It says, “Dana, uh-uh, uh-uh.” That’s my voice inside. My conscience says, “Uh-uh, Dana. Uh-uh.”
But there’s a louder voice that sometimes I think is my conscience, and it’s made up of ten friends who say, “Go on. Go on.”
Now hear this little voice say, “Uh-uh, uh-uh.” Now hear, “Go on, go on.” And sometimes peer pressure sucks me in, and I do things I know I shouldn’t do. If I ever listen inside, there’s still a small voice. That’s all right. But I listen to the big voice: “Come on, we dare you. We’ll give you five bucks. Come on, just do it. We’ll have a great time,” you know?
And peer pressure—we’ve got to learn to avoid it if we want to keep a clear conscience. I’m not saying you’re always going to have to face peer pressure, but what I’m saying is, you remember that the little voice inside you might be more right than the big voice outside. That takes a big person to admit that.
And then look in 2 Timothy 2, because here’s another way that even sort of applies in the area of peer pressure. In chapter 2, verse 22, if we want to fight for a good conscience, here’s one thing we’ve got to do.
Now flee from youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.
Now notice it: flee youthful lusts. Now, I mean, we can’t even hear the word lust anymore without thinking of sex. But of course, that’s one of the things that Paul was telling Timothy.
“Now look, Timothy, I know that your urges are strong, your sex drive is strong, but you’ve got to flee. If you want to keep a good conscience, then you keep yourself out of situations that are more than you can handle.”
Now, flee youthful lusts. Listen, if you want a good conscience to serve God and to enjoy your life, you’ve got to flee youthful lusts. And that includes sexual temptation in a hothouse, in a situation that you shouldn’t be in.
Now let me ask you another question. Paul didn’t only mean sex when he said, “Flee youthful lusts.” What are some other youthful lusts besides just sex? I mean, yeah—wanting money.
Matter of fact, look at this verse for a second in 1 Timothy 6. He says the same thing: flee. Look at verse 10 of 1 Timothy 6:
For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many a pang.
But flee from these things. Flee from what things? The love of money, the longing for it.
But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.
And there’s nothing wrong with money. Every one of us needs it if we’re going to go to King’s Dominion this week. But the love of money is going to snare you up.
The amazing thing to me is, I know adults, of course, who’ve got this lust for money that won’t let them go. But I know teenagers who are into materialism unbelievably.
Man, they’ve got to have whatever is latest. You know, I guess they would just go junky—five-dollar Levi’s? Because you can’t get them for five dollars. Fifteen-dollar Levi’s? No way. It doesn’t say [brand name]. You’ve got to have some special brand name, you know, those famous fanny ads they’ve got on television. Thirty-five bucks. “Ma, I gotta have them. I don’t want jeans; I want jeans.”
And you know, materialism just takes us right down the river, and we get snobbish, and all kinds of desires and things take over. And that’s part of our youthful lusts, so we’ve got to flee.
Of course, everybody wants to look nice. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that unless you overdo it. And some folks, pursuing this youthful lust of looks, I say they get narcissistic—totally self-conscious, into themselves. “How do I look? Me, me, me, look at me.”
You can’t live a normal life if it’s a “look at me” mentality. That’s the problem with some of the best-looking people I know: they’re in love with themselves. And you know somebody who’s in love with themselves can’t love other people.
Have you seen somebody in love with themselves love somebody else? Even people like Marilyn Monroe, and tragedies like that that we know—people who took their own lives—these beautiful goddesses, as we say. They were so incredibly wrapped around themselves that they couldn’t love anybody else, even Joe DiMaggio, who, for all his faults, really loved Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn just couldn’t get out beyond herself to love. Well, she was into herself.
Keeping a good conscience means fleeing youthful lusts. Anything else you can think of as a youthful lust? Cars. All right, some guys are into cars so bad—and some girls—it takes their whole life away. No more time for anything else.
Anything else? Drugs? Obviously. All kinds of conformity. Status. Wanting to be popular is one of the youthful lusts of the day.
The Bible says that you lose your conscience in the process. If you want to be popular, I guarantee you, you’re going to have to do some things that aren’t right. Your conscience is going to affect you. It’s going to get seared in the process.
And Paul is saying, “Well, be honest with your voice that’s inside. There’s a God-given conscience being given to you. Don’t just pass it off and say it’s no good anymore. That conscience is trying to speak to you. God’s trying to protect you. He’s got that system in there just exactly for you.”
So let’s look at one last Scripture in 2 Timothy 2: fighting the good fight for a good conscience.
Let’s just start in verse 3. Second Timothy 2:3:
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
But you’ve got to suffer hardship sometimes. Notice in verse 4:
No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.
Now, no soldier who’s going to fight the good fight can entangle himself in all of these things—youthful lusts, whatever those things are, disobedience, rebellion against your parents, all this stuff.
You know what happens to a person? “Hey, I am a Christian. I want to serve God.” But I can get my feet so entangled up in the world, and so entangled up in getting money, and so entangled up in being popular, and so entangled up in youthful lusts, and so entangled up in disobedience, then I can’t serve God.
I can’t serve Him with a clear conscience. I can’t take one step forward without falling back into it. My feet are entangled in life. And Paul is saying, if you want to be a good soldier, then amen, now watch out. Don’t get entangled. And your conscience is the first thing.
I pray that God will give you all a good conscience. It’s a wonderful gift.
Some of you even here at this conference this week, you love the Lord, but your conscience is over some issues that are unresolved in your life. I just want to make an appeal to you in all honesty: there is no issue, no issue, that is worth a bad conscience.
There is nothing. There’s no argument with your parents. There’s no relationship with a boy or a girl. There’s no youthful lust for popularity, looks, attention, status, drugs. There is no lust that is worth the searing of your conscience.
Because once your conscience is seared, you’re one step away from the devil destroying you.
There are some Christians at this very moment whose lives, whose very lives, are in danger of extinction because their consciences have been seared. They can’t tell right and wrong, and they get themselves into things they should never, ever get into.
May you never be one of those people. I thank God that you’re still fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. You still got some conscience. Thank God. And don’t let it slip away.
It’s like letting your nervous system be destroyed by drugs. Once your nervous system goes, you go around like a zombie the rest of your life. Same way with a conscience. If you let your conscience go, you may never get it back.
Don’t take it lightly in this matter. Live with a clear conscience.
God, I just pray that everybody here could get a positive mental attitude in this way of fighting a good fight. I know we’re all fighting, expending inner energy, and inner conflict and turmoil with our family, and this and that. But, Lord, I pray You get us off the fighting of bad fights and help us fight the good fight.
God, help us to fight for a good conscience, even to climb over things which cause us to suffer, even to confess things that we know have been wrong. Lord, don’t let us suffer under this bad conscience. Please help us.
I know I need help with a clear conscience. I want to keep my conscience level at forty. I want to be sensitive, Lord, when Your conscience is ticking inside of me, telling me to watch out.
And Lord, I confess in certain areas I’ve rationalized away the power of my conscience, but I want to have a clear conscience. Help me, Lord, to walk in Your sunshine, and help every brother and sister here to do the same thing. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.