Don’t Make Shipwreck of Your Faith

(1 Timothy 1:18-20 – Don’t make shipwreck of your faith)

How does a shipwreck happen? Usually it is when the pilot of the ship strays from the correct course and steers into unknown or dangerous waters. And they may not even know how dangerous they are if they don’t have the full knowledge of what lies beneath the waters.

It’s the same with Christians. Don’t make shipwreck of your faith by veering off course and into dangerous places.

This scripture today talks about this issue and it gives us a clue as to how this shipwreck might occur. So let us consider these words carefully so that we can stay the course without veering to the left or right.

How can you be sure you don’t make shipwreck of your faith?

This is what the scripture today says.

18 This charge I commit to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophetic utterances which pointed to you, that inspired by them you may wage the good warfare, 19 holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith, 20 among them Hymenae’us and Alexander, whom I have delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. (1 Timothy 1:18-20)

The clue to not making shipwreck of your faith is your conscience. What does your conscience tell you about the things you are doing or believing?

It is important to listen to your conscience so that you don’t make shipwreck of your faith. But in order for your conscience to be the rudder that guides you accurately, you need to train your conscience.

How do you train your conscience so you don’t make shipwreck of your faith?

This is really quite simple. You need to know the difference between right and wrong. When you understand this distinction, then your conscience will prick you every time you begin to veer off the straight and narrow course that leads to salvation, and into the murky, dangerous waters of sinfulness.

To train your conscience you must learn the difference between right and wrong. You must be filled with the insights of the Lord so that it is His wisdom and knowledge that is guiding you.

There are many things that this world calls “right” or “good” but they are not. Let me give an example.

There was a movie some time ago (Wall Street in 1987), that had a line that became quite famous. The leading character, Gordon Gecko, created the catch cry that “Greed is good.”

But is greed good? Greed excludes people. It takes away what is or could rightfully belong to others. Greed is a form of evil and it is definitely not good.

Sharing with others is good, and that is the opposite of being greedy. Greed is selfish, but sharing is selfless. Sharing epitomises the truth of the scripture that says to love you neighbour as yourself.

So, if you train your conscience to recognise that greed is not good, your conscience will prick you any time you try to be greedy.

And there are many other things that are called “good” in this world that are not.

What about the church?

Sadly, there are many doctrines that have come into the church under the guise of being good, but are not. They are manipulative and are not based in the scripture.

These too need to be understood from the perspective of the truth of the gospel and the words of Jesus Christ. They need to be correctly weighed so that you don’t make shipwreck of your faith.

Making shipwreck of your faith is all about what you are believing. Faith is about belief. So if you are believing false doctrines, then your faith is in dangerous waters and may run aground on the shoals of lies and false doctrine.

The challenge is in trying to sift the truth from error. Which doctrines of the church are true and which doctrines are false? It is important to know the difference and to train your conscience so that you don’t make shipwreck of your faith.

This issue of true versus false doctrine in the church is one that has caused me to seek to understand it better for myself. I know that as I read the Bible I see things that the Bible tells me are truth, but the broad church often teaches otherwise.

The True Church of God

To uncover some of those errors, and by no means is the list complete, I have put the modern church under the spotlight of the scripture to scrutinise this issue.

I have a free eBook titled ”The True Church of God,” that looks directly at this matter. It looks at what the True Church of God should look like, based upon the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it uncovers a number of the false doctrines of the modern church that are accepted as truth.

Don’t make shipwreck of your faith as so many have done and continue to do by following false teachings. Grab a copy of the eBook and see for yourself what the scripture says the true church of God should be like, rather than what much of it is today.

I am aware that some people will find it hard to accept some of the things written in that eBook. That is why I encourage you to compare the scripture to your own Bible, pray about the matters raised, and seek to find the truth for yourself. Don’t accept what anyone else says to be the gospel truth, including me. Go to the source, the Bible, and the writer of that source, Jesus Christ, so that you have the full truth in yourself.

Then your conscience will be trained by God to know right from wrong and truth from error so that you don’t make shipwreck of your faith.

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