In Leviticus 11:44-45, God spoke to Moses and Aron saying, “For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” In Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus instructs His disciples, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads
to life, and those who find it are few.”
The pursuit of holiness to which our God calls us is not only the Christian’s narrow “yellow brick” road of our very own eternal adventure, but also is the spiritual warfare that is waged simultaneously on the battlefield of our lives and consciences that results in each and every choice we ultimately make in our ordinary everyday lives. From “What is Spiritual Warfare?” by Stanley D Gale, he states, ͞"We are holy in the Lord; therefore, we are to be holy. We enjoy a positional holiness as saints of God by virtue of our union with Christ. We practice progressive holiness at the command of our God and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.”
T. M. Moore in “Referee of the Soul, Purifying the Conscience 1,” states, “Everyone experiences the reality of the conscience. We’ve all felt shame, self-justification, or guilt for some failure or wrongdoing, or satisfaction over a job well done. The secular thinker may only have a vague sense of the poor state of their conscience or simply ascribe such feelings only to chemicals and reactions in the brain, or mistakenly simply label their conscience as “the gut” but the Christian knows and doesn’t suffer from this disillusionment, as we recognize the conscience brings heart and mind into harmony or discord, according to the situation, in the workings of the soul. (Romans 2:14-15)
The mind receives and processes information, while the heart stores and deploys affections. In the soul, these overlap and interact, but they require the conscience to help them process ideas and feelings into actions. As these three components of the soul work together, they determine our conduct in the world. Thus, for the proper care and feeding of our souls, it’s important that we understand each of these spiritual components, so that we might make sure they are operating as God intends in our own lives.
The conscience is the referee of the soul, maintaining vigilance over our thoughts and affections, and helping the mind and the heart to work together with maximum benefit for the progress of Christ’s Kingdom in our lives. Understand the conscience, and care for it accordingly, and you will discover more of the power of faith working by love in your life.
As Paul explains, in 1 Timothy 4:1-2, the conscience can go off course in Christians who refuse to take seriously their responsibility to nurture and guard their conscience as they should, causing them to depart from the faith, if not intentionally then certainly practically and really. Which makes it all the more important that we understand the proper workings of this referee of the soul, and nurture and maintain our consciences in the best working order.
The conscience is like the set of a saw: once that cutting angle has begun to be compromised, the soul
will never be able to cut a straight path to goodness, beauty, and truth, apart from divine intervention. Left to themselves, without God’s truth and the reinforcement and accountability of a loving spiritual community, people today will experience their consciences going off course, taking them in directions not always to their liking, and leading them to cherish and choose things which, at other times, they may have regarded with less pleasure or importance.”
We all have firsthand knowledge and don’t need to be taught that this spiritual battle is not only real but also an ever present constant of our lives until we ultimately exchange our mortality for immortality and come to give an account of our lives to our Creator. This is perhaps one reason why God inspired Paul to pen Romans 7:14-25 and remind us in multiple places in Scripture to take off the old man and put on Christ.
As T. M. Moore in Referee of the Soul, Purifying the Conscience 1,͟ adeptly asserts, ͞God wants us to have a good conscience, one free of any adverse effects of sin or selfishness. But this doesn’t just happen. We must look to Christ in
faith, seek the counsel of His Word, and draw on the power of God’s indwelling Spirit until, in His time, He begins to
shape our consciences for good, and to make them pleasing to Him in all things. And this, in turn, will see us glorifying
God more consistently in our everyday lives, and will make our witness for Christ more credible and effective.͟
Now reconsidering the Wizard of Oz, I think that the answer to the question, ͞Could Dorothy have experienced a
successfully completion of this adventure with just her little dog Toto and no-one else?͟ will remain a matter of debate.
However, I think that we all would agree a movie like that would put Dorothy under additional stresses and pressures,
not to mention, be much less entertaining to watch. Therefore we should make a point to not cheat ourselves out of the
blessings and joy available, by unwittingly or mistakenly working in the Lord’s Workplace Ministry at Vanguard, walking
upon the ͞Narrow Road͟ and fighting our own spiritual battles alone. Rather, let us intentionally be disciples like those
in Acts 2:42 who devoted themselves to the God’s Word and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and of prayer.
CORAM DEO.
Galatians 6:2
