Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a word about your conscience.
It’s a precious thing, isn’t it, your conscience? Some people never give it a thought; it’s just there in the back of your mind somewhere taking care of itself until you are about to do something really stupid, then it waves red flags: “This is wrong,” you hear it whisper. And that’s a good thing. And it’s why we should take care of our conscience. Well, not long ago my friend Pastor Bob Bjerkaas shared with me an interesting story from the Old Testament about our conscience, because look, even the best of us are at risk of deadening it or searing it. Just consider David, a man after God’s own heart.
Remember when David was being pursued by King Saul? Saul wanted to kill him, but there was one chance when the tables were turned. Saul was in the cave by Engedi and David’s men said, “There he is, resting alone, right here in our cave! Kill him now! It’s YOUR day, David! Seize it!” Instead, as we read in 1 Samuel chapter 24, David snuck up on King Saul and simply cut off the edge of his robe. But even that relatively minor assault deeply troubled David for we read in verse 5 that “David’s conscience bothered him because he had cut off the edge of Saul’s robe.” Oh, my goodness, this man’s heart was so tender that taking a knife to Saul’s outer garment was not all that far, in his mind, from taking a knife to Saul’s throat.
Okay. Now, fast-forward to several years later (and about 18 chapters later). We moved from that desert cave to the palace in Jerusalem. Saul is history and David is now King. A bathing woman catches his eye during an evening stroll on top of his roof. He sends for her and sleeps with her. He unsuccessfully tries to cover up his sin and the pregnancy that resulted from it, eventually having Bathsheba’s husband killed. Yikes! Where was David’s conscience then?! Before, back in the desert, his conscience was tender, it bothered him when he cut off Saul’s robe. But his conscience did absolutely nothing to keep him from committing adultery and murder several years later.
What a contrast! It’s almost hard to accept that these stories describe the same man. I say “almost,” because the painful truth is, I understand very well how they could describe the same man. I have seen my own conscience protect me from a “small sin” on one day, only to be entirely ineffective in the face of a major failure just a few days later. Yes, I have been that person—but I don’t want to be that person. I want a tender heart at all times. I want to have an edge-of-the-robe kind of conscience. So let’s look at the difference between Cave-David and Palace-David. Back in that cave, David was hungry, he was a fugitive, he was on the run, and very desperate for God's help. He kept close to God and urgently depended on him daily.
But Palace-David was successful, prosperous, respected. He had people to cook for him, fight for him, bring women to him, and respond to his every, every desire. And in a way, I think he lost the sense of desperate dependency upon God’s presence and strength. David (as Pastor Bob Bjerkaas says) was living the pitfall of prosperity and, as a result, he got a weak and ineffective conscience. I want to learn from the two Davids, and I hope you do, too. Together, let’s keep our conscience tender through prayer and the reading of His Word.
© Joni and Friends, 2013
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