Come Up Here And See

One Sunday early in the morning I woke from a dream about me talking about obedience, the importance of obedience but at the same time of myself not being obedient but working around the system to get the result that I wanted but not following the system given to me by my authorities.

The Lord in His dream to me was that His Conviction is one of His goodness and righteousness and His acts of mercy for me because He loves me.

He was warning me about not hardening my heart. He was showing me that if I did not receive this conviction and repent, I would be hardening not only my heart but also my ears to hear the voice of the Lord.

Hebrews 4: 7 NLT So God set another time for entering His rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted: “Today when you hear His voice, don’t harden your hearts.”

The Holy Spirit was showing me that too many times that I have not followed the rules set by my authorities and that I had a reprobate mind and changed the rules to suit whatever seem good to me.

So, when I say the word “Conviction” what do you think?

The definition that John D. Pierce explains conviction is the way that I think of conviction:

• “Under conviction” described the way the Spirit of God tugs at the heart of someone and urges confession, repentance, and rightful redirection.

When I have been convicted by the Holy Spirit of a sin that I have committed I always quickly have to remember or remind myself that conviction is a gift from the Holy Spirit, that it is His job so that we will draw closer to the Lord.

Many times, or sad to say I must tell myself; Lisa, conviction is not condemnation because the Holy Spirit never condemns, only the enemy condemns. Condemnation feels like being beaten down and then I have thoughts of rejection and that there is no hope for me. I continue to tell myself that the Holy Spirit will convict me so that I can be wooed back to God into righteousness and set free.

2 Corinthians 7:9-10 ESV As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

Jesus explains it the best to the disciples when they are spending intimate time together before Jesus goes to the garden to pray and then He is arrested and crucified for us and our sins. Jesus is promising that the Holy Spirit will come and of the Holy Spirit’s mission which is to convict us of the guilt of sin, and what is wrong with sin and our need for a Saviour which then brings us into right standing with the Lord and of God’s justice system.

John 16:8 ESV And when He (Holy Spirit) comes, He (Holy Spirit) will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.

Merriam Webster defines conviction as:

•  a strong persuasion or belief
• the state of being convinced

Wow, when I saw this definition it shocked me because if you were to ask me, “Lisa are you obedient to your authorities, do you honour them and respect them, I would have said yes, most adamantly yes.” I pray for obedience and that we would be obedient to the Lord. My kids heard about obedience all the time.

So, I may have conviction or a strong belief, being convinced about obedience but my actions were not lining up with my strong belief, and I ended up having a dream about being under conviction by the Holy Spirit because of disobedience.

Thankfully God in His mercy gave me a Conviction dream about my sin of disobedience because sin easily and cleverly entangles us because it started with Lucifer, who the Word of God says is crafty, cunning, deceitful, shrewd, sneaky, fooling others. Sin lies to us, it hurts us, it kills us, and it separates us from God. He encouraged me to strip that sin off and that He will forgive us when we repent and that when we repent, we do have a gift of life from Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 12: 1 AMP Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who by faith have testified to the truth of God’s absolute faithfulness], stripping off every unnecessary weight and the sin which so easily and cleverly entangles us, let us run with endurance and active persistence the race that is set before us,

1 John 1:9 ESV If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Romans 6:23 ESV For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Holy Spirit, I thank you for coming to us as a helpmate and that You convict us of righteousness because of Your love for us. You are constantly wooing us back to the Father so that we can have an intimate relationship with You. I pray that every time You convict us that we would not be offended by your conviction, we would not see it as condemnation that tears us down, but we would listen to You and repent from the sin that is so easily entangling us. I pray that our hearts will not become hard but that they will be softer each time, so we never turn away from You. We thank You for continually showing us Your love, in Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.