Been working a few months on this. May it minister.
Do you ever say - “well, I don’t agree with that.”
When you feel or say that, what is the part of you that is determining that? Your flesh and personal life or the Spirit of Jesus living in you? Think about that.
Now in 30 years of being Saved what God has shown me is that conviction is the dialysis machine for your blood. It is a tool of God to separate like a surgical knife your flesh & sin, from His Spirit in you.
We look at Gods scriptures or His words spoken through His messenger, and the front line battle defense is our flesh being angry at showing us something that may in fact help Crucify our rotten flesh. So the flesh says “that’s not true”, “that doesn’t apply to me”, “doesn’t He know my Title & years at my church!”
The Spirit of Jesus in you, is trying to gain more freedom in your life, but the flesh must be defeated. So conviction brings a battle.
On one side (maybe even now) are the soldiers of anger, defiance, rejection, pride, ego, selfishness and worldliness.
On the other side is Jesus Christ with His Sword (Bible) and His soldiers of messengers that He sends out. But nobody can kill God. So they kill His messengers. All of His Prophets in the Bible, were rejected.
Jesus even told the Story of a messenger being sent out and the people decided to kill that messenger.
The word “Convict” is a translation of the Greek word elencho, which means “to convince someone of the truth; to reprove; to accuse, refute, or cross-examine a witness.” The Holy Spirit acts as a prosecuting attorney who exposes sin, reproves, and corrects people.
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” 2nd Tim 3:16
Proverbs 15:10 says: “Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he that hateth reproof shall die”
When the most perfect man on earth at that time, Isaiah, when he stood in the presence of God, he was convicted by his own sinfulness: “Woe to me! . . . I am ruined! In the Greek it means he exploded into pieces of shame. He was destroyed. He was immediately convicted by his own sinfulness: He didn’t send a nasty Facebook comment but instead properly said “Woe to me! . . . I am ruined! His conviction led to his repenting.
AW Tozer said that people refuse conviction and that it in truth shows that they hate the Son of God. They refuse to carry a cross because they never are willing to get off their own throne “and in hell I suppose they are still fighting and saying they are right.”
But we have ammunition to defeat the conviction. We say “but my pastor said”, “my friends say”, “I’m a good christian.”
But inside you still burn in anger. If you don’t repent you may soon be burning in another place.
Tozer goes on to say “perhaps those who fight against conviction have never been converted.” Maybe they have rejected conviction so much that now their blood is not human but entirely of pride.
The easiest & oldest way to fight conviction is to kill, injure, slander & reject the messenger. We see that daily on the largest source of open communication today. It’s called Facebook & the “comments” section.
Conviction can be your spiritual friend or human foe.
We say “but I’m a pastor, I go to church, I play guitar in the band…” We think as a Christian or a leader that we are okee dokee. We think that the Scripture or Devotional does not apply to us personally. But then Nathan said to King David “You are the man! This is what the LORD says..” (2 Sam 12:7).
It was to David from a messenger. David, nor any of us, should refuse a message of God, because we do not “like” the messenger. Many people judged & didn’t like John the Baptist with his name calling & crazy clothes. Nor did they like Elijah when he also called people names. Or Jesus or Paul when they called people names and were convictingly strong in their wordings.
We say, we think our churches are fine. But Jesus says “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Rev 3
And then this: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven….. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not (do this or that Christians thing?) Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Get Away from me…” Mt 7
Nahhhh - Jesus didn’t mean those words. He just had a bad day.
* Let’s put this on a Billboard facing your home: “if you refuse conviction - then you were never converted”
The famous Charles Spurgeon said he was never sorry - because his sermons or devotionals upset anyone. You can hate or dislike the messenger, but the Word of God cannot be softened because it hurts your feelings.
People today only know about 10-25% of the Lord. Awful. That is because 75-90% of the Bible are warnings & words that convict. The score? It’s Jesus 0 & the flesh 100.
Peter was not a zero but a person who went against the Lord & lied, BUT then was convicted & THEN he repented.
Today we fry to rationalize our convicted heart by saying: “that person is not loving”. “They are not showing me grace”. - Yet the Godly perfect Biblical truth is that conviction IS love & Grace! It is God sending words to you, so you can repent and be filled with the Spirit of Jesus.
Do you (seriously) understand & identify the part of you that rejects conviction? Its your worst enemy; it’s called pride.
But the truth is, there can be nothing more loving & filled with grace - then to quote Gods Word, or write about it, even if it is convicting. Conviction leads to Repentance which leads to Relationship.
Next time you get convicted do what the Disciples did at the last supper when they felt convicted and say “is it i Lord?“
Servant
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