Clear Conscience

Transcript:

Good morning & Greetings in Jesus name, welcome to this beautiful new day. The Lord wants to work on our hearts. Our hearts are very precious to the Lord. He wants to make sure that our hearts are moldable, that they never become hard like stone. One of the promises of the New Testament, of the New Covenant Church towards the New Covenant Christians is that God said, “I’m going to take away your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh.”

What does a heart of flesh mean? It means that it is going to be susceptible to bleeding. It is going to wound at times, it is going to beat faster at times, and it is going to slow down when necessary. This is a heart that can be moldable. If our hearts are becoming hardened, that’s definitely a bad sign. And let me give you a key to make sure that your heart remains moldable. This is from Acts 24 16. Apostle Paul is speaking this in front of the judge in front of his accusers and in front of a massive audience. He says, Because of this, I always try to maintain a clear conscience before God and before all people everywhere. This was his testimony. He was saying that this is how I live my life. I try to maintain a clear conscience. I need to make sure that my heart is clean before God and that it is clean even before people.

Why would Apostle Paul try so hard to keep his heart clean and light-weighted? Because he knows that if I would allow my conscience to be numbed out, if I would allow all those failures and sins and struggles that surround me to now take over my heart, to take over my conscience, to reach a point where I don’t care what my conscience feels or says, then eventually I will become a stone-hearted person like the Old Covenant, the Old Testament believers were. But God had promised that the New Testament Church and the New Testament believers, shouldn’t be having stonehearted behaviour again. To make it even more specific, he says, my clear conscience. It is not just about how I feel about it, how I see myself. No, I’m going to make sure that I have a clear conscience before God and also before people.

Paul is not addressing Christians here. Paul is addressing unbelievers – people that hate the way of God, that hate Christianity, that hate Salvation through Jesus. And Paul says I have been doing everything possible to try and maintain a clear conscience before God and even before these people that hate me and hate what I do. And the reason that Paul says is this. He says, because of this, there is something that went ahead of him saying, I will maintain a clear conscience. He said, because of this let’s read, what is that? Verse 15. He says I have the same hope in God that these men are talking about the Jewish people that were accusing him.

And he says, I have the same hope in God that these men have that God will raise both the righteous and the unrighteous. And when God does raise the righteous and the unrighteous, there is a judgment that will follow. And in their judgment, we will all have to give account for every word we speak, every thought we acted on, every lifestyle that we didn’t change, everything in our life that did not produce fruit, that did not produce results in God’s standard, all of that will be called into account. And Paul says because of that, because of this revelation that one day God is going to raise both the righteous and the unrighteous and because there is going to be a judgment and accountability after the resurrection, he says, I will always I have always done this before and I will always continue to do this. I will always try to maintain a clear conscience before God and before all people everywhere.

You will need to be able to give an account to God as to where you spend your money, how you spend your money. What was the motive behind spending the money in this particular place? What was the heart with which you gave the money to so and so person? Each and every detail – You will need to give an account to God one day.

And that is why we will have to try and keep our conscience clear here on the Earth when we still have time, when we still have an opportunity, keep our consciences clear, maintain a clear conscience before God and before all people everywhere. My prayer is that you will take this seriously and you will live the rest of your day, live the rest of your season in such a way that you know that you have to stand before God one day and give an account to him. Thank you for tuning in today. Have a blessed and beautiful day ahead.