Daily Journal: 10 July

Conscience and Freedom

During a staff training session we were asked what was one thing we loved most about our culture. The first thing that came to my mind, was freedom. Not all cultures are free to believe what they like. Not all have freedom of speech. Not all are free to live the way they choose. In fact, all cultures have areas where freedom is restricted, even mine.

Freedom isn’t about a lack of restraint or there would be no order. That would indeed take away from freedoms.

Freedom involves a certain power or privilege to act according to my own conscience.

The bible instructs me to live according to my personal conscience; however, it cautions my personal conscience to be instructed by God’s wisdom, not my own. My own wisdom is just my own opinions and they aren’t necessarily based on truth. God’s wisdom is God’s truth. The construct of freedom, essentially, needs to be based on truth.

Romans 14:22 (GNT)

Happy are those who do not feel guilty when they do something they judge is right! 

I know if I keep my conscience in line with God’s, what I judge to be right will also be sincere.

Romans 2:13, 15-16 (GWT)

People who merely listen to the laws in Moses’ Teachings don’t have God’s approval. Rather, people who do what those laws demand will have God’s approval. They show that some requirements found in Moses’ Teachings are written in their hearts. Their consciences speak to them. Their thoughts accuse them on one occasion and defend them on another. This happens as they face the day when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge people’s secret thoughts. He will use the Good News that I am spreading to make that judgment.

As I follow God’s precepts for living, I can be assured and at peace with the way I live. I must never be influenced by others against what I know to be true.

Romans 14:23

(GNT) But anyone who believes that something he wants to do is wrong shouldn’t do it. He sins if he does, for he thinks it is wrong, and so for him it is wrong. Anything that is done apart from what he feels is right is sin.

(NLV) But if he has doubts about the food he eats, God says he is guilty when he eats it. It is because he is eating without faith. Anything that is not done in faith is sin.

Food is an example here. This is about morality and conscience. Peace comes when we don’t reason against the righteous precepts of God so that we can create our own moral constructs. The Spirit of the Lord brings freedom, not the things that please ourselves.

2 Corinthians 3:17 (NLV)

The heart is free where the Spirit of the Lord is. The Lord is the Spirit.

Psalm 119:45 (GWT)

I will walk around freely because I sought out your guiding principles.

I pray that in following God’s guiding principles we will acknowledge that His boundaries bring peace and freedom.