Guarding our Consciences

Our consciences weigh up our thoughts, words, motives and actions in accordance with the law that this conscience has been supplied with. The Christian has the Holy Spirit who causes the conscience to compare our lives with the Law of God. The truth is that we all fall short of the glory of God and the only thing that can cleanse the conscience of the sinner is the sacrificial blood of Jesus. But then as cleansed sinners we still have a conscience - a kind of "independent watch-dog" that goes on scrutinising us! So how can we guard our consciences? How can we keep them tender and seek to obey God's law? And how can we do this without getting bound up in the tyranny of thinking that we could possibly maintain a cleansed conscience?