Until we can get the truth to sink deep, everything within us is screaming against the truth; opposing every speck of spiritual progress. Until then, we have a bad conscience – not merely in the sense of a nagging conscience but in the sense of it being completely unreliable by accusing us when the divine Judge pronounces us innocent. Being lumbered with a malfunctioning conscience reduces an eternally fulfilling life into a draining, dispiriting struggle, like trying to keep pedaling a bicycle, pushing uphill against strong winds. As the truth trickles slowly into the deepest recesses of our being, however, our consciences gradually adjust. Eventually, it is as if the road flattens and the wind subsides, until finally we find ourselves coasting downhill with a tail wind, with only the occasional harder stretch.

For life to become this easy, our hearts must be reprogrammed by the Word of God. The limitation of the computer analogy, however, is that it suggests a process much quicker than it takes to correct one’s feelings. The human heart is more complex than a machine. It is more like a pet dog trained to bark at strangers. Then its owner moves from a farm to high density housing where not only is there no need to bark at strangers, such behavior is unacceptable to neighbors. The difficult retraining process that this would require is a better picture of the frustration and effort involved in retraining one’s conscience. For your heart and feelings to reach their current state probably took very many years and much repetition of negative messages going around and around in your head. So to retrain them will likewise take much time and repetition of messages.

Taken from How to be Free From Spiritual Deception

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