Clear Conscience, Joyful Living | Joyce Meyer
Clear Conscience, Joyful Living | Joyce Meyer
Join Joyce Meyer in this powerful message on spiritual maturity. She passionately addresses the need to resist compromise in our lives, urging us to say no to things that may lead us away from God’s plan. Learn how maintaining a clear conscience and making decisions based on God’s standards can bring true freedom and joy. Discover the importance of avoiding the gradual erosion of our spiritual lives through persistent compromise.
Joyce Meyer, one of the world’s leading practical Bible teachers and New York Times best-selling author, shares encouragement and advice to help us enjoy our daily lives.
With a heart to share Christ and love people, Joyce’s messages help people in all walks of life to grow in their faith, learn to study the Bible, find healing from the wounds of life, get answers to life’s questions and encounter the love of God in a powerful way.
You cannot have spiritual maturity.
We I cannot, and you cannot, we cannot become what god wants us to be and do what everybody else in the world does.
Now I don’t know how comfortable or uncomfortable this is gonna be for some people today, but I’ll tell you, we need to hear more about not living in sin, saying no to stuff, not compromising because the enemy is using it to bring deception into people’s lives is just a little bit.
Just a little bit. Everybody else does it. It doesn’t make that much difference. I am pleading with you today.
And, you know, the apostle Paul said, I beg of you.
I think sometimes when you’re trying to do the kind of stuff that we’re trying to do, and you see what god wants to do in people’s lives, and you you see them continue to compromise.
It’s like there’s just like a a please start doing what you really believe that god wants you to do and not just what all your friends want you to do.
Amen? Okay. Can I have my slingers come out? Come on.
You got slingers in your
life, slingers that Kim cue to compromise. Let’s let’s swing a little compromise out there and see what happens.
Okay. That’s
good. Alright.
Now here’s the thing that I wanna bring to your attention, and I knew this would happen.
So I already had it planned in my message. You guys can go back now. So I need you again.
Listen. When they swung the stones of compromise out there, you were all trying to catch it.
Come on.
I could say amen and we’d go to lunch and you got you got the message.
You were all trying to trying to catch it.
And what everybody should have been doing was doing everything that you could to avoid it.
You know, the apostle Paul had the flow of god in his life. There’s no doubt about that.
And, uh, but we’re gonna look at a couple of scriptures and see why.
Acts 2031, Then Paul Gazing earnestly at the Council of San Hedran said, brethren.
I have lived before god doing my duty with a perfectly good conscience until this very day as a citizen and a true loyal you.
Let me just say again.
God has given us our conscience, and when your conscience has been enlightened by the Holy Spirit, Now there is a false guilt that people can carry around.
I had a problem with that for a long time.
I had to learn enough of the word to know what was truly right and what was truly wrong.
Because to be honest, if if you don’t know that, anything you try to do in life to enjoy yourself, the debt was gonna make you feel guilty about.
So we need to know what is real conviction from the Holy Ghost compared to what is condemnation from the devil.
Amen? The thing that Paul said, which I love this, he said, I’m free to do anything.
There’s nothing that’s illegal for me In other words, to be honest, you can compromise and probably still go to heaven.
A lot of these other things I’m gonna talk about, you you could probably still do some of those things.
And go to heaven, but it’s not the best thing for you. It’s not the best example to the world.
You know, the world is just looking at us looking for excuses to judge and criticize us and yell that we’re phony.
So you put a bumper sticker on your car, and they’re gonna watch your behavior. And
I
actually, I believe that many times people will test us, they’ll try to to get us to do something that they know is wrong.
Just so, if we do it, then our presence doesn’t convict them anymore of their sin, because now we’re doing the same thing that they’re doing.
But then they judge us and criticize us for it.
We have to understand that if we behave like everybody else, all we’re doing is giving them fuel to say that we’re just phonies and then what we is really not real, our behavior and our lifestyles need to bring a godly conviction on people not like a judgmental spirit, but people need to be a little bit convicted about their behavior in your presence.
And the only way that’s ever gonna happen is if you hold a standard, not not being judgmental toward them, not being critical toward them, not trying to make them feel guilty, but you have to make decisions for yourself.
My husband, when he worked in the engineering field before he came to work, at the ministry many, many, many years ago.
Dave was always a godly man.
He had standards in his life, and you know, the guys would sit around, and they knew Dave was a Christian.
And he’s told me about times when they would be telling really dirty jokes He told me some story about one guy who was trying to came up to his area where he worked and started to tell him a dirty joke, and he and he looked at him, and he said, no, why are you trying to tell me that?
You already know that that I’m a believer in god, and I don’t like that kind of stuff.
Well, it, you know, it’s it could be a little bit hard to do that because all of a sudden now, you separate yourself from the rest of the pack But you know what the other side of it was?
When this guy got in trouble later on with his marriage and his wife was leaving him, who do you think he came to to get some help
and some counsel? But the thing
that I always really liked about the way Dave handled himself at work was he would confront people, but not in a critical or a judgmental way He would be just as friendly with that guy the next time he saw him is if that would have never happened.
And the place where we get in trouble is where we get an attitude Well, I’m better than you, and that’s what people can’t stand.
You don’t need to have that attitude, but you don’t need to compromise with everybody else in the world for them to be willing to accept you.
Amen? So we want to keep our conscience clear before god because it compromises like a stone thrown into your well, and it’s gonna mess up the flow in your life.
There’s nothing worse than having a guilty conscience about something that you did that you knew god did not want you to do.
But see, here’s the thing. We get so used to compromising and doing things below godly standard.
If if nobody ever confronts it, Then we just keep doing it a little bit, little bit, little bit until all of a sudden our lives are ruined, and we don’t even know what happened.
Have you ever seen a believer that was once really strong with god start getting off track?
And it’s a little bit little bit little bit.
And then all of a sudden, somebody said, I have no idea what happened to them.
Well, you know what? It didn’t just happen overnight. It happened a little here, little there.
The devil is patient. The one, he takes his time.
He will work in our lives a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and that little bit lie is one of the lies that you have to really watch for.
Now I know sometimes this gets a little bit uncomfortable because we, you know, We wanna have our fun.
We wanna be part of the group. We wanna do all these different things.
But the thing is is I’m not standing here telling you today, giving you a list of things you can’t do what I’m telling you is that if you do what god wants you to do, then you’re gonna have a freedom and a joy that’s gonna be worth a whole lot more than anything you think you had to walk away from, to get it.
Romans 91. I’m speaking the truth in Christ.
I’m not lying. My conscience enlightened and prompted by the Holy Spirit bears witness within me.
So Paul was saying, look.
I I don’t I don’t I don’t have known sin in my life.
Doesn’t mean he didn’t that he did everything right, but he said, I’ve got a clear conscience.
I’m good with god. Now there’s two ways to keep from having a guilty conscience.
One of them is when you sin to be quick to repent and willing to turn away from what you’ve done wrong.
That’s good. That’s a good plan.
That door is always open, but if it continues to be the same thing over and over and over and over, then maybe that’s an indication that that’s something that we need to just stop repenting for and just decide that needs to go out of our lives.
You know, it’s one thing when we do something wrong, and we don’t have any knowledge that we’re doing it wrong.
But the more knowledge we have, the more responsible we become to do what god wants us to do without going through the route of sinning, feeling guilty, having god deal with repenting, finally receiving mercy, getting back to square 1 again, and then doing the same thing all over and over again.
So, yes, we can repent. Thank god that his mercy is new every day.
I don’t think that we can ever out sin god’s forgiveness.
But I do believe that there’s a better way to live, and that is to decide today.
It’s time for me to come up to a new level of spiritual maturity and instead of just repenting all the time for the same stuff, I wanna start doing what god leads me to do the first time he leads me to do it so I don’t have to go down that road again.
