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Sermon Illustrations: Conviction

When you're zipping down the freeway at 120, and you're looking in your rear vision mirror to see if there's a police car behind you, what you're experiencing is called guilt. That's the Holy Spirit speaking to you. If you ignore that, then you're ignoring the Holy Spirit. The difference between guilt and what we call condemnation is that the Holy Spirit makes us feel guilty so that we can repent and do something about our sin. But condemnation is a feeling that comes from Satan - it has no purpose but to cripple you in your Christian walk. Condemnation may be just a vague feeling of not measuring up even though you can't seem to work out what it is you've done wrong.

If we sin, the indwelling Spirit immediately goes to work on our conscience to convict us of our transgression. Typically, we squirm for a while. We may rationalise why we did what we did. If this hard-hearted condition persists, we stand in danger of grieving the Spirit. But all the while, he is wooing us and working on us to repent and return to him.¹

1 Wagner, C. Peter Territorial Spirits p66 quoting White, Thomas B. (The Believer's Guide to Spiritual Warfare)