Y’all, I love good steak. Let me be sure and make that distinction, I said “good steak.” And yes, I know that depending on which school of nutrition and good health you follow, steak ranges from being “okay” for my health, to being a heart attack on a plate. Whatever. I still love good steak. With a baked potato and a salad, and a big ol’ glass of sweet tea…but I digress.
And any genuine steak connoisseur like myself (that’s code for “I like to eat”) knows that it’s ALL about how the steak is cooked. I like mine seared. To make myself a good steak at home, after I have prepared the meat, I throw my trusty iron skillet on the stove and heat it up. I heat it up without ANYTHING in it. And I get it HOT! Really hot! I know it’s hot enough when I throw a few drops of water in there and they roll around like mercury (some of you are not old enough to understand that…but trust me, it’s hot). Then I lay my steak in the skillet and sear it. When one side is seared, I flip it over and get the other side, turn down the heat and let it finish cooking. Searing it makes for a juicier, more flavorful steak, and it gives it that little bit of crunch on the outside. I’m making myself hungry, y’all.
Did you know that your conscience can be seared? 1 Timothy 4:2 speaks about the conscience being seared. Cauterized. If any of you have watched old westerns, or shows that are set “way back when” you have probably seen somebody get a wound (usually from a sword, or knife, or bullet, or arrow) and have it treated by heating up an iron (or knife or whatever they had handy) and actually burning the flesh. It would stop the bleeding, cause scar tissue, and essentially close that part of the body off to try and minimize the damage. Similar things are still done today in medicine, but we have advanced somewhat past the hot irons.
So what does it mean to have a seared conscience? If you are a Christian and you have been feeling convicted about something, and yet you ignore that still small voice, that niggling in your spirit, you risk your conscience becoming seared. You risk it being closed off with scar tissue and becoming insensitive to the things of God. That eventually leads us to a place where we realize that God isn’t speaking to us anymore, or at least we can’t hear it.
So here is the picture: You are doing something in your life and you know you shouldn’t be. You know it’s wrong. You can feel the uneasiness in your spirit. You know it’s not pleasing to God. And you know he is speaking to you about it.
But, you rationalize, it’s a small thing. Everybody does it. Nobody knows about it. You REALLY enjoy it….blah, blah, blah. You can insert here any of the myriad of lies the enemy has whispered in your ear. Bottom line is, you talk yourself out of it and you ignore it. We ignore our conscience, our spirit, because we don’t want to hear what it has to say. 
So the result is, the next time God speaks to you, it gets a little harder to hear and a little easier to ignore. More so the next time, and so on, and so on. You have essentially bypassed one of the methods God uses to speak to us. Now your conscience is seared.
This is something we as Christians need to guard against. We need to ask the Lord to make us sensitive to Him and to His Word and His plan for us. Nobody wants to be in the place where we are so hardened, so scarred, that we can no longer hear from God. It is a blessing to be able to hear from Him in this way. These small “disciplines” from Him can help us to correct things in our lives before they lead into big nasty consequences of our actions, or even big disciplines from the Father. In Hebrews 12:5-6, we are told: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” So we should rejoice if our spirit man reminds us to do what is right. It means we are loved sons and daughters! It means He is working in us! It means we are still able to hear from Him. And THAT is worth rejoicing over!
Anybody want to celebrate with a steak?
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