The Importance of Faith and a Good Conscience

?The Importance of Faith and a Good Conscience

Zac Poonen |??20?February 2022

?A good conscience and a sincere faith are the two buoys that mark the two sides of the safe channel in which the ship of your life should go.?Those who ignore either of these buoys make shipwreck of their lives (1 Tim.1:19,?20).

“God's almighty power?will prevent any temptation that is too much for us, from ever coming to us"

So be careful to preserve the sensitivity of your conscience, at all times. Whenever your conscience is disturbed, you can be sure that you have left the safe channel and are in dangerous waters. If you keep going that way, ignoring the warning-bells of conscience, you will be in great danger of shipwrecking your life. So be very, very careful in this matter.

Faith is the other buoy that shows the safe channel.?Faith is the total leaning of our personality on God, in absolute confidence in His unchanging love, His almighty power and His perfect wisdom.

God's unchanging love?determines everything that He allows into our lives. Even prayer-requests that are refused, are refused by that same perfect Divine love.

God's almighty power?will prevent any temptation that is too much for us, from ever coming to us (1 Cor.10:13); and it will help us to overcome every temptation that does come to us (Heb.4:16), and it will make everything that comes our way to work for our very best (Rom.8:28).

God's perfect wisdom?will never make a mistake in anything that He allows into our life - and He alone knows what is for our eternal good.

You must never lose your total confidence in these three attributes of God. That is what it means to?live by faith. Unfortunately, the phrase “living by faith” has been changed by full-time workers to refer to God providing money for their needs. But that is a wrong use of the word. The Bible says that all?“the righteous shall live by faith”?(Romans 1:17). We must use Biblical words in the same way that the Bible uses them always.

If we are careless in the matters of faith and a good conscience, we can gradually develop an?evil?heart (a bad conscience) and an?unbelieving?heart (one that has lost faith). These can make us fall away from God. (Hebrews 3:12).

To preserve us from such a falling away, we are told to exhort and encourage one another?every day?(see the next verse,?Heb.3:13). So, it is good for you to listen to some exhortation from Scripture?every day?- by reading and meditating on the Scriptures, or by reading good Christian books, or by listening to messages, both in church-meetings and on cassette-tapes.