People avoid conviction because they like to live a lie. Our world has been a “Hollywood” world for many years now. The entertainment industry was originally a place for providing entertainment. Today, it has successfully assumed the role of the standard by which people today pattern their lives. They have been so successful that the Bible has been removed from its place of truth, and they have placed themselves in its place. With the influence of T V, “Tele-preachers” have become the standard for Biblical Christianity in many people’s opinion. I have seen this myself when I have been corrected by Christians with the solemn statement, “Jimmy Swagger doesn’t say that.” Or, “Pastor, you really need to listen to Joyce Meyer or Benny Hinn.” The person that says such things, has replaced their standard; the Bible has been removed and the Hollywood preachers have taken its place. The truth has been replace for a lie. Conviction has been successfully avoided. To fix this, you need to turn off the T V and open up your Bible and read it.
Avoiding conviction allows you to live independent of God. Since the beginning of time, man has been striving for independence. This has created a rebellious heart in man. Holly Wood even portrays the rebel as being the “cool” guy and the Bible believing Christian as the establishment. I find this amusing because the number of Christians in the world as compared to the unsaved, (whether they proclaim they are Christian or not), is tremendously lopsided. The rebels far outnumber the godly. The unsaved far outnumber the saved. This promotion of the rebels even influences the saved to give up on their walk with God, and many are doing so to their own destruction. This is even more prevalent in the USA, (the home of Hollywood), because our nature for independence is stronger than in many countries of the world. Face it, the drive for most immigrants who came here was to get independence from the situations they were in. The first war we were in, we were called, “the rebels.” The civil war began as a rebellion of states from the union. The hippy movement was a social rebellion, and today, we are still protesting for our “rights” by rebelling with sit-in’s, marches, pickets and protests. But worst of all are the direct efforts of atheists to remove the final pillars which hold up the Bible as our standard. If you remove conviction, then Christians will even begin to tolerate the worldly way, just to get along and have a peaceful life with the world.
If we don’t continue to receive conviction for the things that we premeditate to do, we will hopelessly be slaves to them. We must continue to try, in order to navigate life happily. I know that some things we feel like we will never get victory over. Each week we commit the same sin. Each Sunday we hear preaching about it, go to the altar and confess it to God, and then during the next week repeat the pattern. We feel like it is hopeless. Friend, it is only hopeless if you give up. There is only hope in coming back to God, and there is more hope if you ask Him to “step on your toes.” The phrase, “step on my toes” means to “convict me Lord.” When you ask the Lord for conviction, and the deeper the conviction, the better chance you have to forever remove that sin from your life. I had tried to quit smoking many times, all to end in defeat and return to the tempting smoke. I had asked the Lord many times to take it away from me and give me victory over it, but I always returned to the cancer stick. The preaching stepped on my toes so much so that I eventually avoided going to church. I told my wife, “I’m tired of being told how bad of a person I am.” I was such a good person that I didn’t go to church anymore. When I was home, I used to smoke outside out of respect for my wife. When I was finished, I would flip my butt into the yard. One day, I happen to glance out and see my son picking up one of the larger butts and pretend he was smoking. He was telling his friends, “See, I’m just like daddy. I’m smoking too.” The conviction that the Lord put on my heart right then was tremendous. It was heart crushing. I knew that if I didn’t want my kids to smoke, then I had better be a good example. If I wanted them to serve God, then I better serve God. That day, I threw the smokes away and have never smoked another since. I also started going back to church, and eventually preaching and witnessing. The results of that conviction were manifold. That is what conviction did for me, and I am sure there are many other stories from many other people, but the most important thing is that conviction brings us to God for salvation.
Without conviction, we never come to God in the first place. Conviction forces us to come to the truth.
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