wendesay

Conviction Leads to Spiritual Growth

A person without conviction is at the mercy of circumstances. If you don't determine what's important and how you'll live, other people will determine it for you.

A person without conviction is a weak, jellyfish type of individual who mindlessly follows the crowd. I believe Paul was talking about conviction when he said in Romans 12:2, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your mind from within ." (Phillips)

Conviction helps us be diligent in continuing to grow spiritually. Growth requires time and effort. Without convictions about growth, people become discouraged and give up. No one stays with a difficult task unless he is convinced that there is a good reason for doing it. A church can teach people how to pray, how to study the Bible, and how to witness, but without imparting the corresponding convictions, people will not stick with it.

Knowing what to do (knowledge), why to do it (perspective) and how to do it (skill) is worthless if you don't have the conviction that will motivate you to actually do it!

The people who have made the greatest impact on this world, for good or evil, were the people with the strongest, deepest convictions. They weren't necessarily the smartest, wealthiest, or best educated people, but their convictions moved them to move the world.

Conviction is important to move on in life. Without it, we will continue to be lost and people will start choosing what we do in life. With conviction, we can continue to grow spiritually without having anything to slow us down. We shouldn't be doing things without a reason to do it, or we are just wasting our time. When worshipping the Lord, praying and reading the Bible isn't what we just do. We must have a purpose to worship God, so we can actually get a step closer to him. With conviction, we can move on much more in life than to just do anything without having a single reason to do so.

I think that this is a really big topic when it comes to taking action.
Like Tuesday's devo, this talks about conviction, and how important it is a motivator and to know why you are doing it.

Sometimes I feel really convicted to take action (usually either in small things or missions), because when you really consider why you do anything in this life, it is for God. And then when you realize how great (both in the sense of good and big) God is, and that He, having power and sovereignty over all things, He who rescued you from your inescapable sin through the sacrifice of His own Son, He who loves us and clears the path for us, has commanded you to do these things, it shouldn't be a question of whether or not you do them.
However, a lot of the times we tend to focus on just the knowledge part, or just the action part.

We can just learn about God and retain all the information, ready to regurgitate Sunday School answers to the majority of Christian questions, but as it says in James 2:26 (NIV), "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead."
Or we can just do our part on the outside, doing all of the normal "Christian activities" like attending church regularly, going on mission trips, or even leading praise. But what good is that if we don't truly understand what and who we are doing all of it for?
Isaiah 29:13/Matthew 15:8-9 "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men."

The point i'm trying to get at is that we need to first understand why we do anything. Once we get the big questions and doubts out of the way, action will inevitably follow. If actions don't follow, then we don't truly understand what we need to.

Know what you believe in and be strong about it.

This is a bit embarrassing but I didn't know what exactly "conviction" means so I searche it up on my mobile dictionary:
-a strong persuasion or belief.-

Having a strong belief in your faith helps yourself and others. As it mentioned in the devo, you can tech others and help them strengthen their faith as well. Also, it prevents you from weakening after being spiritually attacked. There will be uncertainty and doubt in us so we need to be firm.
Here's a metaphoric example:
When you are constructing a building, you start with the strong foundation and continue to build upon that. When you have a weak part of the building, that an along with everything built on top will be destroyed and rebuilt.

~Audrey~