I remember the first time I felt the twinge.
When I was probably about 5 or 6 years old, I found my sister’s Strawberry Shortcake wallet. She had left it open in our basement with dollar bills scattered over the floor. Again, I was barely out of diapers, so had no real need or use for money. Still, the temptation to double my savings account was more than I could resist. I quickly gathered my sister’s lost treasure and took it to my room where I could count my plunder.
My parents had taught me stealing was wrong, so I should have felt a twinge of guilt the moment I took the money. However, the joy of counting my new windfall seemed to dull this sensation. Later that afternoon, my sister returned to our basement to discover her money was “missing”. She frantically told my parents as I silently listened to the commotion. A knot began to form in my stomach, as I prepared to be found out.
However, the strangest thing happened. As my parents helped my sister look for the missing money, their anger turned towards her. They became upset at my sister’s carelessness and irresponsibility. Somehow, the missing money became her fault. And I, miraculously, was not discovered. For a moment, I thought I had pulled off the crime of the century.
But then I felt it: Guilt. Conviction. Conscience. The innate knowing I had done something wrong. The twinge.
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I want to talk about the twinge.
Because I think a lot of people have felt the twinge, but do not know what to do about it. Some let it grow. Others suppress it. But few see it as a gift.
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A lot of us feel a twinge of guilt when we make a mistake. But sometimes this twinge makes a home inside of us. And we end up living with it for a long time. And when this happens, it grows. And the twinge becomes something bigger. Like shame. Or inadequacy. Or self-hatred.
On the other hand, a lot of us have felt this twinge and suppress it. We did not like the feeling, so we attempted to desensitize ourselves to it. We make ourselves believe taking the $26 is not that big of a deal. And maybe it was our sister’s fault for being so careless with her money. So we reason the twinge just needs to be suppressed and ignored until it goes away.
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But both of these reactions miss the point.
The twinge is conviction. And it is a gift. And it is for our good.
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Conviction is the way God whispers to our spirit when we do something wrong. It is uncomfortable, but the discomfort is for our good. We should feel uncomfortable in doing wrong. So the twinge serves both as a warning sign and a catalyst for change. Without it, we are likely to continue down a road we should not be walking. It is a gift.
The problem is we usually misinterpret CONVICTION for CONDEMNATION.
Conviction is NOT condemnation. Conviction is a good thing. Condemnation is not. God convicts us, but he does not condemn us.
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Today, a lot of people misinterpret the twinge. We wrongly assume the twinge means God is condemning us. And so we fight it. We suppress the twinge and avoid its wisdom.
This is dangerous because we need to know what it feels like to be convicted, and to learn from it. To let the twinge teach us and guide our actions. To understand that it is a gift for our good.
We need the twinge.
