Obey Your Conscience

This morning I finished the current edit of “Walk by the Spirit in Your Homeschool Decisions” by Marilyn Howshall.  My mind is full of the message of the 5 new chapters being added:  OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE! It’s the only way to begin walking by the Spirit.

I remember when I first began to hear Marilyn speak about obeying my conscience. I knew what my conscience was. I think almost everyone does.  I’d never heard anyone suggest that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me through my conscience. What a blessing!—both hearing what Marilyn was saying, and being able to hear the Holy Spirit speaking to me so personally, and so regularly. The more I paid attention, the more I heard!

I shared the idea with my children who were 13, 12, 9, 8, and 6 at the time. I was so amazed at how easy it was for them to understand and begin to listen to their consciences right away. They began to be motivated toward many small things that they had overlooked before. I told them that their conscience will not only tell them when they’re doing wrong, but it will also prompt them to do right things if they pay attention. They began coming to me, “Mommy, I stepped over my socks I had left on the floor, and my conscience told me to pick them up, so I did!” It was so encouraging to see how easily they understood. They also began to tell me of things they’d long hidden in their hearts. “Mommy, about 5 months ago I was playing in your room and I swung my toy up and broke one of the glass things of your light.  I’m sorry I broke it, and that I never told you.” How precious it was to see so clearly for the first time their desire to have clean consciences.

Listening to my conscience was somewhat of an experiment for the first while, as I thought I heard this or that interesting thing, not sure if it was my conscience or my imagination, until Marilyn showed me that obeying my conscience was all about LOVE. My conscience would show me how to LOVE the people in my life—my children, and my husband, and for me, my mom who lived with us. Once Marilyn pointed out a few of my unloving attitudes and motivations, my conscience REALLY came to life! I was repenting and so I became aware of thought processes that were about my own comfort and desire to protect myself, and not about what my family truly needed. From that point on, I had NO DOUBT when I was hearing my conscience!

Our conscience informs us of what is loving and what is not as we interact with the people in our lives. Any self-focused attitude, intention or motivation is unloving. Any thought process and behavior that deprives our family of what they truly need is unloving.

When we’ve ignored our conscience for most of our lives, we carry around a load of guilt.  We’ve carried around the guilt for so long, we don’t even know it’s guilt that makes us feel insecure or depressed or condemned or resistant to being alone and quiet – constantly pressing us on toward busyness or socialization or blame and accusation or some other form of escape.

What’s happening with your conscience? Are you listening?  The Holy Spirit wants to move you toward loving attitudes, intentions and motivations that express themselves as loving behavior.  Are you listening?

1 Timothy 1:5 “Whereas the object and purpose of our instruction and charge is love, which springs from a pure heart and a good (clear) conscience and sincere (unfeigned) faith.”