Daily Encounter: A Week-day Devotional by a staff of ACTS International.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

"Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place."¹

Some years ago I recall visiting the Moody Institute of Science and putting on a special pair of eye lenses which turned everything upside down. It was a weird feeling. Dr. Moon, the director of the institute, in an experiment wore these special lenses for something like 2-3 weeks (if I remember correctly) without opening his eyes without these funny looking lenses. He wore black eye patches when he went to bed to sleep.

When he stopped using these special lenses, an amazing thing had happened, his brain had made a radical switch, and now everything he saw was upside down. It took 2-3 weeks for his vision to come back to normal.

In a broader sense, life is like that: if I consistently do wrong when I know better, and don't live the life I believe to be right, my mind will in time (be it ever so slowly) do a radical switch and I will end up unhappily believing the life I am living to be right. I will cut off my feelings, justify my behavior, and end up with what the Bible calls a dead conscienceâ€"a dangerous path to follow.

One could rightfully call this spiritual leprosy of the soul. It is commonly thought that leprosy causes a stricken individual to lose body parts. What happens is that leprosy causes the loss of physical sensitivity and feeling. Lepers lose fingers, toes and feet because they no longer feel pain to protect their wounded limbs and eventually body tissues are damaged beyond repair.

When we deny our true feelings and deaden our conscience, we no longer feel the pain of guilt or godly sorrow. In so doing we distance ourselves from God and are no longer aware of our need for His forgiveness or our need for His gift of eternal life. Deadening our conscience is a deadly way to liveâ€"and extremely deadly for eternity.

The only way back is the path of truth. That is, to admit to ourselves what we have done regardless of how we feel or no longer feel, confess our sinfulness to God, ask for His forgiveness, believe that God gave His Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for all our sins, and accept Jesus as our Savior.

For further help, be sure to read the article, “How to Be Sure You’re a Real Christian� at: www.actsweb.org/articles.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please confront me with the truth about me. Help me to see any and every area in my life where I have denied the truth and hidden any sins and faults so that I can come to You, confess my sins, and ask for and receive Your forgiveness and the gift of eternal life. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus's name, amen."

1. Psalm 51:6 (NIV).

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