Conviction

What does it feel like? Pain, mostly. Ignore it and squirm but it is there. Want it gone, but ignoring it the pain festers. Covers it under excuses—lies. It’s like…a mess that you don’t want to clean up. Laziness, whatever it is. Once tidied, the dead things scraped away, and the space alive again—relief. Like someone who learns the stomach ache they’ve had all their lives is gluten intolerance. Figure it out, take away the pain, and freedom.

Conviction is like that.

I read this today, out of David Nasser’s “A Call to Die.”

“If your house leaked in a huge thunderstorm and dripped on your computer, your posters, your clothes, and your bed, you’d notice! You’d probably do something about it—quick! Many of us have spiritual and moral leaks, but we don’t have a sense of urgency to plug those leaks and protect our spiritual treasure. What is that treasure? The life-changing truth of God’s word used by the Spirit of God to transform lives.”

I feel convicted. I do not study and yearn for God's Word like a deer pants for water in a dry land. My heart squirms and I want to stop reading, but it is God’s Word that breaks my intention: “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight” (Hebrews 4:12-13). And so I need to clean, scrape away dead, and relieve the pain I feel every day when I am far from my Lord.

Conviction: the first step in freedom.