The conscience is the soul’s warning system that actively watches for what is right and what is wrong in our thoughts, feelings, words, and behavior.
We become what we think about, what we feel strongly about, what we talk about, which all determine our behavior, which in turn becomes our eternal character and destiny.
The conscience warns us when we are thinking wrong thoughts, when we are feeling wrong feelings, when we are speaking wrong words, and when we are behaving wrongly.
Everyone has a conscience. Unfortunately many today have a conscience that has become insensitive to what is right before God. Instead of seeking the guidance of our conscience, we are drowning its voice by all the distractions which modern life offers us. When the conscience is ignored over and over, it becomes very quiet. When the conscience is violated again and again it becomes scarred, without feeling, toward what normally should bring us guilt, shame, and embarrassment. (I Timothy 4:2)
God doesn’t give up on us even when we choose self-destructive lifestyles that silence His voice in our conscience. He sends his Holy Spirit to constantly pursue us, trying to reawaken the conscience within us.
Suffering to the soul is what pain is to the body. When our body feels pain, we start to look for the cause and eliminate it. When we suffer in our souls, we tend to ignore what is causing it by drowning the pain with self-destructive choices.
Larry Crabb says it well in his book, Shattered Dreams:
“People who find some way to deaden their pain never discover their desire for God in all its fullness. They rather live for relief and become addicts to whatever provides it. Inconsolable pain, the kind that drives away every vestige of happiness and renders us incapable of fully enjoying any pleasure, can be healed by discovering a capacity for a different kind of joy. That is the function of pain, to carry us into the inner recesses of our being that wants God. We need to let our soul-pain do its work by experiencing it fully…..alternatively if we do not, we become servants to whatever makes us feel better.”
Instead of hiding from the pain, we need to face the pain and see what is causing it, and be willing to listen to God’s voice in our conscience to make the necessary changes in our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to empower us as we seek and lean upon Him moment by moment each day.
Three Ways God Revives Our Conscience
When we ignore God, he will send things into our lives to try to get our attention off of this world and back onto him. God used three things to get the attention of Joseph’s brothers; barrenness, pain, and testing.
David said, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your Word.” (Psalm 119:67)
The brothers of Joseph presented their outer self to their Father, but presented a completely other self to their brother, Joseph. God allowed circumstances to bring to light the hidden self, so they could be repent and change into the children pleasing to their Heavenly Father.
Barrenness
There came a time when there was a famine in the land. The cupboards are becoming bare, and Jacob sends Joseph’s brothers to Egypt to buy grain. Fortunately for the brothers of Joseph, God had positioned Joseph in Egypt where he could provide food for his family.
God used famine, barrenness, lack, need, to stir the conscience in the brothers of Joseph. God deprived them of the very thing they needed for survival. The comfort of food and home was removed. Now they must make a journey to find the solution. Where does God send them? The very place where they had sold their brother Joseph was where they now had to go. In fact, when Jacob mentioned Egypt, the brothers looked at one another, causing Jacob to ask; “Why do you look at one another?” This question was used by God to bring the hidden sin to the minds of Joseph’s brothers. A physical need sometimes brings awareness of a spiritual need.
Sometimes God dries up the satisfaction that we are deriving from that which we are using to numb the pain of the soul, in order to get us to look at the cause of the pain, and ask Him for His empowerment to change into His character.
Pain
When they arrive in Egypt they find themselves bowing down to the ground before Joseph who has been made ruler of the land and overseer of the food supply, just as in the dream of Joseph which he shared with his brothers and parents. They did not recognize Joseph, but they recognized the words which Joseph chose to speak. “You are spies!” These are the words they used with Joseph when he came to check on them at this request of Jacob. Joseph then orders them thrown in prison (think pit-as in Joseph) for three days.
God is using Joseph to bring to the memories of his brothers the well and the words they spoke harshly against their brother Joseph. These words plus the prison experience must have really hurt and frightened them greatly. Pain is being dished out in the same manner that they had dished it out to their brother 22 years ago.
Read what the brothers said to one another:
Then they said to one another, ‘In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us.’ And Reuben answered them, ‘Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.’”
God uses the pain of discipline to correct our ways. “Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the ones He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives”…For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:5, 11)
Testing
Israel was led through the wilderness for 40 long years to show them their hearts:
“And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.” (Deuteronomy 8:2)
Joseph releases his brothers from prison, gives them food and sends them home to bring Benjamin the youngest brother back with them. This really upsets them, because they know that they have already caused their father, Jacob much pain by selling Joseph into slavery. Now they must deprive him of another beloved son. They plead with Joseph to reconsider, but he insists on seeing Benjamin.
They return to Jacob with sorrow in their hearts telling him how harshly they have been treated by the lord of the land, and how he is demanding to see Benjamin. Jacob adamantly says no Benjamin is going to Egypt.
The famine worsens. The food runs out again. Jacob has to reconsider and finally surrenders to sending Benjamin with the boys back to Egypt for more food, saying they were bringing down his gray head to the grave.
When Joseph sees Benjamin, he orders a banquet for all of his brothers, bringing more fear into their hearts. They make apologies for the money and give him more money, but Joseph assures them that he has their money already. They are confused and fearful and then marvel when the meal is served to them according to their age. How can this man know these things?
Joseph sends them away one more time with food for Jacob, only they are stopped by an Egyptian soldier who finds Joseph’s silver cup in Benjamin’s bag of grain. They return to Joseph bowing down and repenting asking for mercy, explaining about their elderly father and tell all about how the loss of Joseph and now Benjamin will be the death of their father. (Judah who had been the most self-centered and cruel, was the one who confessed to Joseph their sins-he even offers himself as a slave instead of Joseph retaining Benjamin)
Joseph then reveals himself to his brothers explaining to them how God had sent him to prepare the way for his family to survive the famine in Egypt under his leadership.
God gave Joseph dreams and He fulfilled them. God saw the hardened conscience of Joseph’s brothers and He sent barrenness, pain, and a time of extended testing to soften their hearts toward their God, bringing reconciliation to the brothers.
It took 22 years to bring the brothers of Joseph back to a tender conscience before their God and reconciliation with their brother, and restoration of Joseph to his father, Jacob.
A day is as a watch in the night or as a thousand years. No wonder God taught us to pray persistently over and over and over again until the answer arrives.
Click here to read Voice of Conscience-Part One