PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

THE SALVATION OF GOD

...Every saved one has to deal with his conscience. If he does not deal with his conscience, he will not have peace within. If he does not deal with his conscience, he will not be able to pray properly. If he does not deal with his conscience, his Bible reading will be tasteless and his gospel preaching will be powerless. If he does not deal with his conscience, he will not be able to walk the pathway ahead of him. All the saved ones have to pass through this stage of dealing with their conscience if they want to go further on the way. Our conscience is like a window and our being is like a room; the light that the room (our being) receives must pass through the window (our conscience). Originally, there is no light inside of us but only darkness, but our conscience is like a window [allowing] the light to come in.

Before we are saved, our conscience is like an extremely dirty window smudged with putty through which no light can penetrate. This results in a state of complete darkness in our being. However, once we are saved, the Holy Spirit enters into us to enlighten us, causing our inner being to be full of light. At this time, we immediately feel that we are wrong. Then we should repent and confess our sins before God, and we should deal with our sins before man. Every time we confess or deal with a sin; we wipe the putty-covered window once. The wonderful thing is that before we wipe the window, we do not know how dirty it is; so the more we wipe it, the dirtier it seems to become. Once we wipe the window even slightly, all the greasy dirt is stirred up.... However, in the end, the window will be clean.

It is the same with our conscience. When we were first saved, we may have thought that we had committed only a few small mistakes before God, but after we began to confess these mistakes, we immediately saw many greater sins. Eventually, the more we deal with our sins, the fewer sins we have. This is like wiping a window: The more we wipe it, the less greasy dirt it has. As a result of this process, we have peace within, and spontaneously we can easily pray to God....

CONSCIENCE AND FAITH PROCEEDING TOGETHER

One who desires to proceed on the path of God's life must deal with his conscience, because conscience and faith go together. When we pray, we need to have faith. Prayer without faith equals not praying at all.... However, once we have a problem with our conscience, faith is gone, and once there is a hole in our conscience, faith leaks away. We can still pray and plead, yet if we do not have faith and our conscience does not have any feeling, we will be like a tire with a hole in it-the more air we pump into it, the more air it leaks out and the flatter it becomes. First Timothy 1:19 says, "Holding faith and a good conscience, concerning which some, thrusting these away, have become shipwrecked regarding the faith." The trend of society toward corruption is not something that was there in the beginning. It was not this way in the past. Today even the academic circles are full of lies. Teachers cheat their students, and students deceive their parents. Every place is full of lies. This is the case among the young people in particular. Even young people who are Christians tell lies both at home and in school. They think that it is very difficult not to tell lies. This is the reason why they have no progress in the faith....

If we have a feeling when we tell a lie for the first time, we should carefully deal with it and not allow it to pass away. If we tell a lie to someone and do not have peace in our conscience, we have to go to that person and deal with it immediately, saying, "I am sorry. The thing that I just said to you is a lie; it is not true." In this way our inner being will be full of light.... If we do not, then after three or four experiences like this, the feeling in our conscience gradually will be lost. Once the feeling of our conscience is lost, not only will we tell more lies, but we will also do worse things and become shipwrecked regarding the faith.

Witness Lee, The Pure in Heart, pp. 59-70

APPLICATION

1. What is the origin, position, and function of the conscience?

2. Describing the nature of fallen humanity, Witness Lee writes, "a person who is always supervised by his parents will do improper things once his parents are not supervising him." How might we train our children to avoid this behavior?

3. Describe how one might develop and care for the feeling in his conscience until his inner being becomes full of light.