What is True Conviction?

When I was a baby Christian, guilt meant I was doing something wrong. Peace meant God was accepting me. But then I learned we can’t gauge our standing with God based off our feelings. What does the Old Testament tell us about the heart - the producer of all emotions?

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick - who can know it?

So how do you know whether you are in good standing with God? Which feelings can you trust? We are often told to just have faith about our standing with Him, but what if we are feeling utter conflict in our heart?

Here’s another Old Testament verse:

Psalm 139:23–24 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Another verse:

2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith; prove your own selves.

This shows a pairing of God and ourselves to search out the truth. We are taught today that the Holy Spirit alone is our guide - that we just trust Him to tell us right from wrong. While the Holy Spirit can use our emotions strongly to convict us, He actually is following guidelines that were laid out a very long time ago. God gave His people a way to examine themselves according to His nature and not personal feelings. This is because our hearts are not to be trusted, and because anyone can say it is the Holy Spirit who is telling them this is right or wrong. That’s why so many are living life however they please while claiming to be in the faith.

The Holy Spirit is called a “Helper” because He helps us follow those guidelines God set out. Without the guidelines, the Spirit has nowhere to guide us. Unfortunately, modern Christianity has tossed out the guidelines, using personal conviction without any set boundaries.

When I learned that everything Jesus taught was actually based off Moses’ law - God’s guidelines - then it became so easy for me to evaluate my emotions.

John 5:45-47 “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

So, when I am feeling guilty or unsettled in my heart, I go to the instructions of God, search them out, and see if I have stepped outside the boundaries of any of them. If I have, then I repent, change, and put my faith in Yeshua’s atonement. If I haven’t? Then I go to the trigger of that guilt. It has almost always been something someone else told me, something childhood engrained in me, or something society looks down on that gave that troubled feeling. There are so many man-made and legalistic laws to wade through, that “conviction” these days comes at us out of nowhere and all the time. But we need to be ever so watchful for this kind of conviction and test it to the Law of God - the Law that gives great blessing and joy to those who love it.

Proverbs 6:23 For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.

Once I learned to judge my actions using God’s standard with the help of the Holy Spirit - something most churches no longer teach their members to do - I learned what perfect peace was. Not the kind of peace you feel from accepting yourself or from feeling the acceptance of others, but the peace you feel from the acceptance of God.

1 John 3:19-24 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps His commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.

Psalms 119:165 Great peace have they who love Your Torah, and nothing causes them to stumble.

Isaiah 48:18 O that you would have hearkened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been as a river, and your righteousness as the waves of the sea:

Isaiah 32:17 And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.

Isaiah 26:3 You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you: because he trusts in you.

Psalm 25:10 All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.

Proverbs 3:5–6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.

Deuteronomy 10:12–13 And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command you this day for your good.