Listen to this article:

“How To Clean Your Filthy Conscience” MP3 File – right click and select “save as”, “save link as”, or “save target as” to save it to your computer.

If you’re the average Christian, your conscience is filthy. You have compromised with what you knew to be true on so many occasions that it has become “seared with a hot iron”. And that corrupted conscience, and that alone, is what is keeping God from working with you!

You CAN fix that, but only IF YOU WANT TO… and I mean REALLY want to! More than you want ANYTHING – more than you want your friends, your family, your habits, your money, your music, MORE THAN YOU LOVE YOUR OWN LIFE!

Do you even know what your conscience was designed to do? Why God invented it in the first place? It is designed to interpret the law of God! YOUR CONSCIENCE was supposed to tell you whether or not it was wrong to steal…. that is, once it had been given the right information.

When you were born, you knew nothing. Your conscience was blank, so to speak. But as you grew, you adapted your conscience to your society’s standards. Your conscience learned, for example, that murder is wrong. It didn’t always know this.

The only problem was, your conscience wasn’t based on truth – it was based on the collective consciences of your family and friends. Because of this, it was of little real value…

Romans 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

Because in order for your conscience to be of any value, it must be based on the LAW of GOD. When you take that same carnal conscience, and educate it with the ten commandments, it can learn to apply those to individual circumstances. For example; Yes, stealing is wrong. But is it wrong to eat my neighbour’s cow if he wanders onto my property?

Your conscience should be able to tell you, based on the information you have available, that yes, it is wrong. And most of the time, in circumstances like this, your conscience does whisper “Yes, it is wrong”.

HOWEVER – then YOU say “Oh, it’s not really that bad, after all, he’d steal from me… and anyway, I need it more than he does…” etc.

Then your conscience says “Come now, you know better”… then you respond “Oh, it’s not that big of a deal – I think it’s OK.”. If you’ll think about what I’ve just said, I’m sure you’ll be able to think of a time, not too long ago, when this happened to you. This scripture describes this process perfectly.

Romans 2:13-15 (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)

Your thoughts are constantly accusing or else excusing one another. The one says “You shouldn’t eat your neighbour’s cow”. This thought accuses you. The next thought says “Well, it’s not so bad! And after all, he hates me so it’s ok!” This thought excuses you. And the process goes on, until you reach a decision. AND IT IS HOW HONESTLY YOU MANAGE THIS PROCESS THAT DETERMINES WHETHER OR NOT GOD HEARS YOUR PRAYERS!

This process goes on in the mind of every man on earth. But only those who OBEY their conscience, and not their carnal reasonings, will have faith. Because the only thing – the ONLY thing – that can prevent you from HAVING POWERFUL FAITH is a DEFILED CONSCIENCE!

1 Timothy 1:18-19 This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare; Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having PUT AWAY concerning faith have made shipwreck:

Some – that is, practically everyone on earth – have lost the connection between FAITH, and a TRULY PURE conscience. By doing that, and disobeying their conscience, their faith is destroyed. Because faith consists of THREE things, as I’ve said often in other articles…

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

You must believe ALL THREE of these things:

A. Believe that God exists… like practically everyone on earth does…

B. You must believe that God is good to those who do good… again, like practically everyone on earth already believes…

100. You must believe that YOU are doing good! And that is where your conscience comes in! And that is where the utter LACK of faith on earth today is EXPLAINED! NOONE BELIEVES THAT, because NOONE IS DOING IT!

Proverbs 20:27 The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

Your conscience is your “candle” that God uses to see if you are obeying him! He checks your conscience, examines it, and if you are doing what you KNOW you should be doing, then your conscience is clean. But on the other hand, when your conscience says “Don’t do that – don’t go there – don’t eat that…” and the dozens of other things that it tells you daily, IF YOU IGNORE IT, shut it down, override it and silence it, God knows that YOU AREN’T DOING WHAT YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD DO! AND YOU KNOW IT TOO!

1 Timothy 4:1-2 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;

When you do that often, you get CALLOUSED to disobeying God. You get HARDENED to the voice in your head. And that is your conscience being SEARED with a hot IRON, and that means you CANNOT HAVE FAITH! You have “PUT AWAY” your conscience, as 1 Timothy 1:19 says, and your faith, and your SALVATION, has been SHIPWRECKED!

Romans 10:6-8 But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

The purpose of your conscience is to interpret the law of God. To tell you right and wrong in every circumstance. The purpose of this life you are living now, is to TEACH it to interpret the law of God CORRECTLY.

Again, your conscience, by itself, doesn’t know up from down. It can only work on the set of parameters that it has picked up from friends, family, and it’s own experiences and desires. But to LEARN THE TRUE MEANING OF RIGHT AND WRONG, to teach your conscience, you need a PATTERN.

Which is where the spirit of God comes in. When God begins to work with you, and places His spirit with you, He has placed HIS CONSCIENCE in your mind. A perfect pattern for your conscience to follow!

1 Corinthians 2:10-12 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

Verse 16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But WE have the MIND of Christ.

THAT is why God gave you the holy spirit – to TEACH your conscience right and wrong! Because your conscience – or your spirit, if you prefer – KNOWS what you think, and what you would do in any given situation. Even so, GOD’S CONSCIENCE, OR HIS SPIRIT, knows what HE would do in any given situation!

And so when you have these two Spirits, or consciences, living together in your mind, you have a TRUE PATTERN to follow. When YOUR conscience says “I want to steal that!”, God’s conscience says “No, that is wrong!”. In this way, your conscience LEARNS TO DO RIGHT, by constantly comparing it to the MIND OF CHRIST!

This is that process of Romans 2:15, of your thoughts accusing or else excusing one another. YOU MUST DECIDE whether to OBEY the promptings of that spirit, and adapt your own spirit to do that which is good and right, or to REJECT that prompting and follow your own way.

1 Thessalonians 5:19 Quench not the Spirit.

And when your conscience – (or God’s conscience) – says “That is wrong!”, and you argue it down and ignore it, that is QUENCHING the spirit, and that DESTROYS your faith, and that ultimately will lead to God LEAVING YOU FOREVER!

1 Corinthians 2:14-16 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Your carnal spirit will NEVER know the true set of rules, without the spirit of God teaching it! And if you have the spirit of God, YOU HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST! And you know WHAT HE WOULD DO IN ANY SITUATION IMAGINABLE!

And if you OBEY that spirit, YOUR CONSCIENCE WILL BE CLEAN! Because again, you will KNOW that YOU are DILIGENTLY SEEKING GOD! The MISSING PIECE of your FAITH!

And when you OBEY the spirit always, and when you KNOW that you are diligently seeking God, your sins of ignorance will overlooked by Him, because YOU ARE DOING EVERYTHING YOU KNOW, and ARDENTLY SEEKING TO DO MORE!

Galatians 5:16-18 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: [Here is that battle again!] and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

If the spirit WINS that battle – If you are obeying everything you know – REALLY obeying, not just convincing yourself, and arguing the spirit into submission, and QUENCHING it, until one day your heart is so calloused you don’t KNOW what it is saying anymore – If you are obeying God with a PURE conscience, then you are not “under the law”.

No, I don’t mean that the law is done away. I mean that anything else you might be doing wrong, God will show you in time – if you continue searching. Meanwhile, He considers you as perfectly clean, because YOUR HEART is perfectly clean!

Romans 8:1-2, 6-9 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. [That is, those people who obey the CONSCIENCE OF GOD WALK AFTER THE SPIRIT] For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death….

For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

At last! Some of the most confusing scriptures in the Bible make sense! Being “Spiritually minded” isn’t a fancy, confusing, hard-to-understand goal – it is simply obeying the conscience, that is, the SPIRIT of God that is in YOU! If you are “Spiritually minded”, and OBEY that spirit always, there will be no condemnation for you, because you don’t walk after the flesh, but after the spirit!

I’m going to stop at this point and explain, in simple terms, what exactly happens in your head when you walk after the spirit, as opposed walking after the flesh. Before the spirit of God was working with you, you could watch a certain TV show – Charmed, for instance – and it didn’t bother you at all. Your conscience had no problem with it, because according to the list of parameters you had grown up with, this wasn’t wrong.

Then one day, God begins working with you. Then for no apparent reason, when you sit down to watch Charmed one evening as you always do, you have a twinge of guilt in the back of your mind. At first, this makes no sense to you – haven’t you watched this hundreds of times before? And after all, it’s not such a bad show. The good witches always win, right?

But the nagging sense of guilt remains. Now, to be carnally minded means to argue it to silence, quench that spirit, and force yourself to think about something else. But your conscience would then be defiled, because you KNEW the right choice, and you disobeyed it.

The other alternative of course, was to simply say to yourself “Hmm. If I feel guilty for watching this, I just won’t watch it” and change the channel. If you do THIS, then you are walking after the spirit. If you act that way in everything you do, every time you feel that twinge of guilt, you will have ENORMOUS faith, because you will be CERTAIN, beyond ANY DOUBT, that God is pleased with you – because you haven’t done anything to disappoint Him!

And by this process of accusing, and excusing your thoughts in your mind, and comparing your mind to the mind of Christ that is in you, His own conscience living in your mind, you will learn the TRUE right and wrong, as God and His law defines it.

Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye TRANSFORMED by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

This will TRANSFORM, and RENEW your mind so that you can prove WHAT IS THAT GOOD, ACCEPTABLE, and PERFECT WILL OF GOD! Now you KNOW the mystery of FAITH! HOLD ON TO IT!

1Timothy 3:9 Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience.