Daily Devotional Details

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To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. Titus 1:15 (NIV)

Picture a teenage boy out with his friends. He has never taken drugs before but his friends encourage him to try them.
He knows that drugs are addictive and destructive, and his conscience tells him that taking them is wrong. But there are other pressures. He wants his friends to like him. He is curious. He thinks it can’t hurt this once. So he overrides his conscience.

In that moment, the boy’s pulse races, his heart pounds, and his hands become sweaty. He experiences a rush of adrenalin produced by the excitement of overruling his conscience.

What he doesn’t see is that in overruling his conscience, he diminishes its power. His conscience is weakened. It is less sensitive, and therefore less effective. Next time, the decision to take the drug will be much easier. If this boy repeats his choice and takes the drug again, after a while it will become a pattern in his life.

Since it is being overruled repeatedly, his conscience stops objecting. The boy’s conscience conforms to the new reality and begins to approve of the drug. After a while he will feel that there is nothing wrong with what he is doing. His “re-educated” conscience now agrees with his decision. The boy’s conscience has been corrupted.

Acting against your conscience will bring a change in your inner life. It will change how your conscience functions. A corrupt conscience approves the wrong things, and the conscience is corrupted whenever a person acts against it over time.

Have you ever overruled your own conscience?