In this week’s service, Pastor Luke kicked us off on a new series called Whole. The heart behind the series is to learn and discuss a biblical response to health and wholeness. Jesus is at the center of it! How do we walk with a clear conscience or be people who are spiritually whole? Our conscience is like a moral compass, and we find the origins in scripture, all the way back in Genesis 2:17 with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was introduced. Our conscience is one of the mechanisms that God uses to help us be people who practice what they preach, and our deeds reflect our doctrine (Titus 1:15, 2:11-14). God has a standard, and that standard is purity. When God talks about purity, he’s talking about our hearts. Purity of hearts means our hearts are completely focused on God and his goals. When our hearts are pure, it leads to pure actions. (Proverbs 4:23)

There are two major hindrances when it comes to living pure: How do you understand grace and how do you engage culture? Grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions. It can be easy to justify ungodly actions with the grace we have received, but that makes the grace we have been given cheap. Conviction is the feeling about your sin that God feels about it, which makes it a good thing. When we disregard conviction in the name of "grace," our conscience loses its edge. We also need to be careful how we interact with culture. Part of being a missional people is being a representation of God in our world.

There are two major ways to interact with culture:

Contextualization: When we’re in a culture as missionaries, we take the gospel in its purest form and apply it to their culture in the way they can understand. It reaches people but keeps the distinctives of the gospel.

Syncretism: You take the distinctives of the culture and the gospel, and they become mixed and a little confusing. It becomes a problem because it adopts things that are not the gospel. It tries too hard to relate to the culture and makes it look like the blend of that and Christianity then loses its purity.

Every generation is called to reach their generation. We are called to be in the world but not look like the world. We must keep our prophetic edge and become syncretistic with it.

Our culture has a conscience of its own- it has values of what is right and wrong. Our culture has a low view of sin because no one is allowed to feel guilt. Guilt affects your self esteem, which is highly regarded. Culture has a very high view of self and it’s become the ultimate authority. God calls for us to say "no" to ungodliness and live self-controlled and godly lives (Ephesians 2:1-3, Galatians 5:19-21).

How do we develop a clear conscience? We need to pick up scripture, read it, and apply it. Our conscience reminds us of what God is and is not, but it must be immersed in Scripture. We also need to be in an authentic community to help keep us aligned and acting according to the Lord’s way. Daily confession is also necessary, just like breathing. We must inhale the truth and exhale the pollution through confession.