Struck by Remorse

Conscience stricken

Have you ever had a real crisis of conscience? How about a mild or serious case of a stricken-conscience? There is only one cure.

What is a conscience? Well, the conscience is part of what makes us different from animals. When animals do something wrong, they don’t feel bad for it. Sure, you can make a dog feel bad by hollering at it, but then you have replaced the conscience it didn’t have with your own voice.

Not to mention the fact that the dog only feels sorry because you are yelling at it, not necessarily because it feels bad for having done the deed.

The conscience has been programmed by God and it can be dulled by constantly ignoring it. Your conscience is your own and your response to it is also your own.

Sometimes when you do something wrong your conscience only gives you a slight twinge. Let me rephrase that. When your conscience hollers at you, your response is-

“Ohhh… I guess I shouldn’t have said that to so-and-so.” Momentary pause.

“I suppose I had better go apologize so I can get it off my mind.”

*Audible sigh*

You must agree that there was basically very little remorse here.

But sometimes, when you do something for someone, and they get mad, maybe they were in the wrong, but you get unnecessarily annoyed and then snap at them- “Well excuse me for breathing” or something like, and they end up crying because there really was no reason for saying something so mean. (And really, there’s no reason to think that I know anything about this from experience)

Then you know what it means to really be sorry. You realize just how hurtful sin can be, even relatively little ones. It’s kind of like if you had heard someone else make them cry and you want to help them and make that mean person pay- only, you realize, the mean person was you!

You get rather shocked, at your own self, for having done it.

What then? As I said there is only one cure.

Remember I said that sin is very hurtful, even relatively small sins? That’s the thing, there is no such thing as a little sin. All sin has separated us from God and Jesus died to cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness. The first step to curing this common disease of stricken-conscience, whether brought on by a ‘big’ sin or a ‘little’ sin, is to-

1. SWALLOW YOUR PRIDE. Pride gets you absolutely NOWHERE, except down, as in, falling WAY, way down.
2. ASK GOD FOR FORGIVENESS. You must maintain an open line of communication with God; he cannot accept offerings from someone who is still harboring unconfessed sins. Matthew 5:23-24 – Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
   This brings us to 3-
3. ASK THE PERSON FOR FORGIVENESS. This is the hard part. Even if you didn’t skip number 2, it can be very difficult to be humble. Thankfully though, with God all things are possible.
   

Of course everybody’s heard all this before, but sometimes articles like this are brought on by an impulse- which is triggered by a crisis of conscience.

Sometimes you just need to explain to yourself why you should always ask forgiveness when you wrong someone else.