The unique gift of conscience

Love For Myanmar Ministries Update

Christ Centered, Servant Hearted, Myanmar Focused

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” C.S. Lewis

I have wonderful childhood memories. I belonged to a loving family. How and when God entered my soul is embedded in me as the sweetest moment in my life. There emerged a harmony, a new joy that permeated my days with the power, beauty, and grace of being a believer in Jesus Christ.

As my life unfolded, there were a multitude of readjustments to my Christianity. As conflicts with my desires and Christian principles developed, I found myself amidst perpetual mutations of my Christian beliefs. There was a quieting of being a Christian.

It seemed as if every step of my life became an experiment or more precisely, a miniature rebellion against my Christianity. Sometimes I would catch myself, but not often enough. But God made sure of one thing all along the way; I would have to face the questions I tried to leave behind. We all have questions that haunt our hearts.

Our conscience is a unique gift from God, and one that many of us try to ignore. There is no quieter place than the conscience when we are shaping decisions our way. I think there is a connection between our conscience and our heart. It seems to me the conscience regulates the amount of space in our hearts for compassion, forgiveness, generosity, justice, love, respect, and so much more.

Against the backdrop of all the blessings I have taken away from my life because of self-centered decisions, arises the great reward that God never left my side while allowing me to learn the hardest truths through my own failures. Back and forth I went, shifting my values as I reckoned with the real work of life on my own terms.

Through our conscience, God regularly invites us to rethink our understanding of our choices. The irresistible question becomes why does our curiosity so often take us away from an all-knowing, all-loving God who provides that inner peace where hope is alive, mercy is abundant, and Truth is unbending?

Gary Watkins, LFM Co-founder

Gaza war-705 days, Russia/Ukraine war-1,296 days, Myanmar coup-1,685 days

News items

1. Myanmar’s 80-year-old democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is suffering from a worsening heart condition in a junta prison. The Nobel Peace laureate has been held in solitary confinement since a military coup in February 2021 overturned her elected government. The Nobel laureate is in her fourth detention by successive military regimes since 1989. Most recently, the junta sentenced her to 27 years in prison on trumped-up charges of corruption, and she has since been held incommunicado. Several elected leaders of her political party have been imprisoned, and some have died in junta custody or were released in critical condition just hours before their death.
2. On July 24, the U.S. Treasury Department lifted sanctions on several Myanmar entities and individuals closely tied to the country’s military junta! Two North American firms have played key roles in helping Burma’s most notorious military-linked tycoons get sanctions lifted and re-enter the global economy???
3. Myanmar’s junta has said that long-promised elections will start on December 28, despite a raging civil war that has put much of the country out of its control, and international monitors slating the poll as a charade.