Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron. — 1 TIMOTHY 4:2

Keep a tender conscience — don’t violate it — because it is your conscience, the voice of your spirit, that relates to your mind what the spirit of God is saying to you down inside. If you don’t keep a tender conscience, spiritual things will not be clear to you.

During the mid-’30s, I pastored a country church and usually spent Sunday nights in the home of a dear old gentleman who was about eighty-nine years old. He and I didn’t get up as early as the rest of his family on this farm, so we had breakfast together about 8 o’clock.

He’d have one of those old-fashioned coffee pots sitting on the woodstove with the coffee just boiling in it. I’ve seen him pour that boiling coffee into a mug, hold it up to his mouth, and drink the whole cup of boiling coffee in one gulp. The first time I saw him do it, I felt like I was burning all the way down!

How could he do that? I certainly couldn’t do it. My mouth and throat are so tender, one teaspoon of boiling coffee would have burned me. He couldn’t do it either, to begin with. But through the years, drinking boiling coffee had seared this man’s lips, mouth, and throat, until it was easy for him to drink the whole cup of boiling coffee in one gulp.

The same thing can happen spiritually. Keep a tender conscience. Stop the minute you miss it and your conscience condemns you. Say, “Lord, forgive me. I missed it.” Or if you need to, tell someone you have wronged, “I did wrong. Please forgive me.”

Confession: I keep my conscience tender.