Shouldn’t we confess as soon as we do something wrong?

Whenever your hands are dirty, you wash them. After you confess in the morning, you do not need to confess again until something sinful arises. Then you immediately confess.

Some of the saints are applying the Lord’s blood in a wrong way. They say, “We apply the blood to our situation,” without making any confession. The Bible says if we confess, then the blood cleanses. In other words, our confession is a condition to the Lord’s cleansing. Without our confessing the Lord does not have a way to cleanse us.

Once we confess, we get cleansed. As soon as we get dirty again, we again confess and again are cleansed. In this way all day long we keep our conscience clean and pure. Then we can contact the Lord at any time.

Andrew Murray spoke of having a time to be quiet so the Lord may speak to us. I find it hard to be that quiet.

This is a matter of terminology and understanding. Of course, I do not know what Andrew Murray meant by a quiet time. No one can be quiet to the extent of stopping his thinking, unless he dies! Even in your sleep you are thinking; that is why you have dreams. Activities you can stop; thinking, never. Probably what Andrew Murray meant is that you need to set aside a time when you are free from taking care of your affairs. Then in this time the best way to keep yourself quiet is to pray, not for your concerns, but however the Lord leads. Just pray, “Lord, I just love You. I want to walk with You. I want to be one with You.” Do not pray about your sister in Washington who is sick; that is praying according to your thought. It may be that the Lord will sometimes burden you to pray this way, but to have a quiet time before the Lord you need to be kept from any kind of care.

The best way to arrest your thinking is to pray something from within according to the instant leading. Also, read the Bible; spontaneously your reading will become prayer. In such a quiet time, the Lord many times will speak to you and reveal something to you.

How does the enemy know what is on our conscience, and how do we know that he has put something into our mind?

You must go according to the fact. An offense is an actual offense on my conscience. If I offend you, that is an offense on my conscience which I need to confess. We confess according to our sin, not according to a thought that comes to us. Suppose you have not committed any sin nor offended anyone. A thought crosses your mind that you need to confess. This is of Satan. There is no sin, no offense, yet you have a thought charging you to confess. Do not confess in this case; it is not a fact, but something of Satan to bother you.

What is the relationship between the conscience, the anointing, and the law of life?

In The Knowledge of Life (pp. 142-172) there is a chapter called “The Inward Knowledge” which deals with this. In the Old Testament the law of commandments regulated the daily life of God’s people, telling them to honor their parents, for example, and not to steal. There were also the prophets directing the people what to do, where to go, and what to say. To be right with God under the Old Testament, one had to take care of both the law of commandments and the prophets.

In the New Testament the law of life (Rom. 8:2) replaces the law of commandments, and the anointing (1 John 2:27) replaces the prophets. You have been born again, and within you have a new nature. In that new nature is the law of life.

The law of life gives you a taste. A three-month-old baby does not have the knowledge of what is sweet and what is bitter. But he will take anything sweet that you put into his mouth and spit out anything bitter. A Christian who goes to a movie has this same rejecting sense. The inner law does not approve of his going there, and he will not be able to pray until he senses and confesses this disobedience to the Lord and to the law of life. This confession is according to the conscience, which is operating according to the law of life, just as in ancient times it operated according to the law of commandments. After the sin is confessed, it is forgiven and the blood cleanses him.

The anointing corresponds, not to the law, but to the prophets. While the law was concerned with morality, the prophets had to do with the comings and goings, the daily manner of life, the speaking, of God’s people. It is the anointing that tells you where you should go and what you should do. While I am speaking, I trust in the anointing for what I should say. If I disobey the anointing, my conscience troubles me. Then I must confess, “Lord, forgive me. I did not obey the anointing.” The anointing is just the moving of the Lord Himself within us.
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