PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

In simple words, the conscience comes from God. People who know God should know that before the fall of Adam, man lived before God and had no need of the conscience. For example, when we are in the sunlight during the day, there is no need of a lamp or any other kind of light. Only those who are not facing the sun have the need of a light. The need of the conscience arose as a result of the fall, when man left the face of God....We have to bear in mind that the function of the conscience was activated after man's fall.

The position of the conscience is to represent, or we can say, stand in the place of, God inside of man. Thus, although living according to the conscience is good, it is not the highest condition. The highest condition is that man would live before God directly. Why do we need a lamp? We need a lamp because the sky is dark. Why do we need the conscience? We need the conscience because man is fallen. Since man fell and left the face of God, God was forced to use the conscience as His representative in enlightening man. Human history can be divided into several dispensations. The first dispensation is called the dispensation of innocence; it is the time when man received direct ruling from God. After the fall the second dispensation, the dispensation of conscience, began. At that time man had both sin and a conscience within him. Although man had fallen into the darkness of sin, God still preserved a conscience, a lamp, for man. The conscience of man was still able to enlighten man and manifest its function. This was how the conscience was activated.

DEALING WITH THE CONSCIENCE

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 which allows 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. Then when the sunlight shines through the window, it seems even dirtier than before. 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. When the rain splashes mud or sand onto a dirty window, we can hardly see anything inside the house; however, after the window has been cleaned, when a little bit of sand or mud is splashed onto the window, we will notice it immediately. Many people have done something wrong yet never sense that they are wrong. This proves that they have never dealt with their conscience.

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. God listens only to the prayers of faith, and He will not listen to any prayers which are not out of faith. 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. 

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