Nathan Muhonen | 2018 April-May Shepherd's Voice --
Dear God, Can You See into My Heart?
We often wonder, what is God like? Is He big or small? Does He look like us, or can He even be seen at all? Can He see me and everyone else at the same time? What does God think about me when I’m naughty? All kinds of questions like these can go through our mind. One way we can learn more about God is by reading His Word, the Holy Bible, and going to services and camps. The most important thing in our life is to be a child of God, keeping faith and a good conscience.
The Bible teaches us that we can’t see God with our natural eyes, but we can see Him with our eyes of faith. In order to know God, we must have faith in Him, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. You might ask, “What is faith?”
Faith is believing God and trusting in Him, even though we can’t see Him. God’s Son Jesus is our Savior who came into this world to save us from all of our sins. The Holy Spirit lives in each child of God. It teaches and comforts us, like a mother does with her child.
How Do We Keep Our Conscience Clean?
God also gave us a conscience. He asks us to keep our conscience clean. How do we do that? Let’s visit about how we do that in our everyday life.
When you were a little baby, your parents had you baptized. The minister poured water on your head, and said, “I baptize thee, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Baptism is an agreement with God to keep faith and a good conscience. One continues in this agreement by putting away sin as it attaches. We have been given the grace gift of confession in which we can speak of our sins, but most importantly, we can be comforted with the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name and blood. God promises to be with His own until the end of the world.
God knows that we are sinful, and when we sin our conscience becomes wounded and we feel bad. We would like to forget about it, but we just can’t. God teaches you and me to humble ourselves and tell mom or dad or another believer what we did and ask to have our sins forgiven. They gladly preach the forgiveness of sins. When we believe this, our conscience becomes clean and we are once again happy and have the peace of God in our hearts.
When I was a boy, we lived close to a candy store. I wasn’t old enough to have a steady income, so I had to earn money to buy candy. One time I ran out of money, but I still wanted candy. The devil told me that mom has lots of money in her purse and I only need a little. The voice in my conscience told me, “Don’t do it, that’s stealing! Stealing is sin!” I didn’t listen to my conscience and instead took 25 cents and ran to the store.
God Hears Our Prayers
After eating the candy, my conscience told me, “You have listened to the enemy of your soul, and now you feel the pain of sin.” Then I prayed to God to help me. I thought about what I had done against my mother. The enemy quickly told me, “Don’t worry, your mom doesn’t even know about it, and if she does, you might get in big trouble.” I prayed that I could humble my sinful heart.
God heard my prayer and gave me strength to go to my mom and beg for forgiveness for what I had done. She forgave me the sin of stealing and all of my sins in Jesus’ name and blood. She promised me that God also forgave me from heaven. Right away God gave peace to my heart. Dear children, you know that God is in your heart when your sins are forgiven and you have peace of conscience.
Nathan Muhonen
Things to Visit About:
1. What does it mean to be humble?
2. Faith is a gift, from who?
3. How do we keep this gift of faith?
4. How could we lose our faith?
5. How do we know that God hears our prayers?
6. What is the best thing for us to do when sin is bothering us?