No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. – Psalm 84:11, AMP

God may withold something from us for a number of reasons. Perhaps what we desire is not good for us, and we are just not mature enough in The Lord to realize it. Perhaps what we long for is something we are lusting after, but God will never grant us something we desire with a sinful heart. Or, perhaps what we long for is pure, is holy, and is right for us, but God doesn’t grant it to us because we are not walking uprightly in obedience to Him.

We ought to examine our behaviors regularly, even multiple times per day. When we do, it is quite easy to spot when we’ve been disobedient to specific commands of God, such as The Ten Commandments or The Great Commission. What is not as easy to discern – and what we all need to learn how to discern – is whether or not we’ve been obedient to the dictates of God’s conscience in us.

As Romans 14:23 (AMP) states:

But the man who has doubts (misgivings, an uneasy conscience) about eating, and then eats [perhaps because of you], stands condemned [before God], because he is not true to his convictions and he does not act from faith. For whatever does not originate and proceed from faith is sin [whatever is done without a conviction of its approval by God is sinful].

When we are unsure whether or not God would approve our taking a certain action, the biblical instruction regarding that action is not to engage in it. Our tendency, however, is to go ahead and pursue the action, even though we have an uneasy conscience about it. We use the lack of biblical clarity as a justification to engage in the action rather than use the lack of clarity for what God intended: a reason to abstain from the action. As usual, we’re backwards, taking God’s intended way of thinking and twisting it to feed our lusts rather than to grow our holiness.

The next time your “gut” tells you not to do something (for example, not to watch a certain movie/TV program, not to listen to a certain song, not to buy a certain outfit, or not to pursue a particular business relationship), listen to your pricked conscience. God is trying to inform you that what you are about to do is wrong for you. The action you are about to take may not be clearly identified as sin in the Scripture, but it will become sin for you when you pursue it against the warnings God is giving you through the conscience He created within you.

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