When your instincts stink, let your conscience fumigate your heart.
View all responsesSometimes instincts stink. That’s when it’s important to let your conscience fumigate your heart.
I’ve never been able to trust my instincts (my innate desires and behavior patterns) to lead me to joy, inner peace, and general wellbeing. When I abandon logic to follow my own feelings and desires, they tend to produce varying degrees of misery, anxiety, and trouble for me.
However, there is something within me that I have discovered that I can trust. That’s my conscience. When I obey its quiet inner voice (even when I prefer to do something else), it steers me clear of the pitfalls of my destructive desires, feelings, and thoughts and guides me to guilt free living.
I believe that Jesus, who rose from the dead and continues to interact with human beings today, speaks through my conscience (and yours). If that true, nothing on earth is more important than to listen to and obey Him. That’s called discipleship.
When Christianity abandoned discipleship, it jumped ship and sank into routine religion. Discipleship avoids the person who is causing most of your problems (that person is you) by continually surrendering yourself to the risen Jesus. Then, by His Spirit, He will lead and direct you infinitely more effectively that you are able to run your own life.
I sincerely believe that God’s good news involves pointing people to His spiritual glue that connects the body of Christ heart-to-heart — the living, resurrected Jesus, and encouraging people to go beyond church as usual and to surrender directly to and daily obey Jesus with no intermediary. Martin Luther called that “the priesthood of the believer” and most Protestants (including preachers) celebrate Luther’s bold stand.
Regularly
Sitting through a sermon
Until the sermon’s through
Is not God’s spiritual glue
That connects people
Heart-to-heart.
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