Morning Devotional
December  6, 2005
"Upside Down"         
    by Don Emmitte

But you desire honesty from the heart, so you can teach me to be wise in my inmost being. (Psalm 51:6 NLT).

 

Some years ago I recall visiting the Ft. Worth Museum of Science and putting on a special pair of eye lenses which turned everything upside down. It was a weird feeling. There is a story that the director of the institute, in an experiment wore these special lenses for something like 2-3 weeks if I remember correctly, without opening his eyes without these funny looking lenses. He wore black eye patches when he went to bed to sleep. When he stopped using the special lenses, an amazing thing had happened, his brain had made a radical switch, and now everything he saw was upside down. It took 2-3 weeks for his vision to come back to normal.

 

In a broader sense, life is like that. If I consistently do wrong when I know better, and don't live the life I believe to be right, my mind will in time (be it ever so slowly) do a radical switch and I will end up unhappily believing the life I am living to be right. I will cut off my feelings, justify my behavior, and end up with what the Bible calls a dead conscience—a dangerous path to follow.

 

One could rightfully call this spiritual leprosy or leprosy of the soul. It is commonly thought that leprosy causes a stricken individual to lose body parts. What happens is that leprosy causes the loss of physical sensitivity and feeling. Lepers lose fingers, toes and feet because they no longer feel pain to protect their wounded limbs and eventually body tissues are damaged beyond repair.

 

When we deny our true feelings and deaden our conscience, we no longer feel the pain of guilt or godly sorrow. In so doing we distance ourselves from God and are no longer aware of our need for his forgiveness or our need for his gift of eternal life. Deadening our conscience is a deadly way to live.

 

The only way back is the path of truth. That is, to admit to ourselves what we have done regardless of how we feel or no longer feel, confess our sinfulness to God, ask for his forgiveness, believe that God gave his Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for all our sins, and accept Jesus as our Savior. If you need more information how you may make that crucial decision, please let me know. I will send you the key Scriptures to guide you in your decision. Don’t live your life upside down!