Tuesday, May 3, 2011
How to Clear Your Conscience
Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked. —1 Timothy 1:19
Imagine for a moment there is a bad smell in your house. As you wander around trying to find the source of it, it gets stronger and stronger. Then you open your closet door, and there it is: a dead rat you have caught in a trap. What should you do to get rid of the smell? You get rid of the rat. It’s that simple. When the rat is gone, the smell will go with it.
So as we are walking through life and our conscience is troubling us and guilt is overwhelming us, how do we get rid of it? We don’t disable the guilt or simply try and ignore it. We get to the source of it. What is your conscience saying? What is the guilt pointing to? It is pointing to a sin. And the way to get rid of guilt is to get rid of what produced it, which is sin. So you confess your sin. Hebrews 10:22 says, “Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.”
We might come up with new terms for our sin, like “a mistake” or “a little shortcoming,” but God still calls it sin. So why don’t we call it the same thing? We are reminded in 1 John 1:9, “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.”
Only Jesus Christ can forgive sin and resensitize the conscience. He died on Calvary’s cross, and He shed His blood for you. So call your sin what it is, and stop making excuses for it.
Copyright © 2011 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
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