Teague Bible Church

J.B.Phillips   “Resident Policeman”   Conscience  

                          (from “Your God Is To Small”)

    “To many people conscience is almost all they have by way of knowledge of God. This still small voice which makes them feel guilty and unhappy before, during, and after wrongdoing, is God speaking to them. It is this which, to some extent at least, controls their conduct. It is this which impels them to shoulder the irksome duty and choose the harder path.

    Now no serious advocate of a real adult religion would deny the function of conscience, or deny that its voice may at least give some inkling of the moral order that lies behind the obvious world in which we live. Yet to make “conscience” into “God”  is a dangerous thing to do. For one thing, as we shall see in a moment, conscience is by no means an infallible guide; and for another, it is extremely unlikely that we shall ever be moved to worship, love, and serve a nagging inner voice that at worst spoils our pleasure and at best keeps us rather negatively on the path of virtue.

    Conscience can be so easily perverted or morbidly developed in the sensitive person, and so easily ignored and silenced by the insensitive, that it makes a very unsatisfactory god. For while it is probably true that every normal person has an embryo moral sense by which he can distinguish right from wrong, the development, non-development, or perversion of that sense is largely a question of upbringing, training, and propaganda.

Dear Family,                                                                        ( this is from 2011)

I am really enjoying our study through Luke. It was J.I. Packer who said to, “study all, but live in the Gospels.” Churches that function properly as a family, will like a family, go through seasons of growth; then what appears, (or may be,) stagnant times; then growth again.

I liken it to tree ring growth. The reason you can see tree rings to begin with, is because they grow out quickly in the spring, but then stop their outward growth for a while to get hard and solid the rest of the season. Trees do not grow at a steady pace.

Likewise, we learn something new in the Word and begin applying it to our daily lives. Not much to look at during those times of becoming solid inside, but it leads to whole new growth as we are prepared for the next set of truths from the Word of God, and  its application to daily living.

In the Great Northwest, where I lived 11 years, there was a tree that began its growth in 1292 and was cut down in 1964. An 8 -inch slab was cut and laid sideways for viewing in the Mt. Rainer Park.

It was amazing to count the rings and see the years go by. Marked alone the way were many of the famous events in history marked on the tree at different points. Just a few points listed; 1492-Columbus / 1776- Independence Day /  1915 -WW1 /  1940- WW2 / 1969 moon landing.

You could see the sadness of the years when the tree grew poorly, because of lack of water or essential nutrients. Makes you wonder how large and strong it could have become if properly nourished. Being a tree, it could not move itself to a source of water to help itself stay strong.

However, we as Christians, can move toward the nourishment we need.  The key to spiritual growth is steady intake of the Word of God, prayer, fellowship, and witnessing.

There are big adventures that come to us in our walk with God,  but they come to us if we have made the commitment to stay in the Word, stay in prayer, stay in fellowship, look always for divine appointments to witness, no matter what our moods may be.

My prayer is for us to have renewed growth in our personal walk, which should translate to all other kinds of growth. The best gift you can give to a lost world, and to other struggling Christians, is the benefit of the overflow of your walk with Christ. To use another analogy; you cannot give a drink of water out of an empty bucket.

May God bless your week ,

Jimmy Petty

II Corinthians 5:14-21