Jim Van Gelderen: This is Jim Van Gelderen and I am podcasting from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Well, it hasn’t really turned a winter up here yet.

I don’t know where you are, but we’ve had some wonderful days. I think yesterday was hit in the fifties.

You have to understand that’s like a summer day here in Wisconsin. So it was great.

Uh, but we understand the storms coming in this weekend. By the time you get the podcast, uh, you may be in that storm if you’re a Midwesterner, but I don’t know where you are and how your holiday, uh, time is coming, but I trust you’re getting ready for a wonderful holiday.

Christmas is a great time because it not only has just a certain amount of enjoyment from the human side, there’s a tremendous spiritual message that the Lord Jesus came not only to save us from the penalty of sin, but the power of sin. And that’s often what Thee Generation is all about.

And one of the things that is so important in our Christian life is faith. And faith is, is something that Satan attacks.

And from time to time we deal with the fact that Satan attacks your faith, but you can attack your faith. I know you don’t do it on purpose, but there are things you can say and do.

And for the next few podcasts, I may be doing a series on things you can do that. Hinder your own faith.

And sometimes you don’t even realize what you’re doing and realize the significance of it. And really, in a certain sense, this podcast, I hope you’ll keep listening because my burden is that there’d be a certain amount of conviction.

If this is an area of your life that you’re seeing some seeing yourself in the mirror of God’s Word on. But there’s a passage of Scripture in first Timothy chapter number one, it says, this charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which was before on thee, that thou by them mightest war, a good warfare.

Now war is going to be the main verb here, that it goes to the next verse, holding faith in a good conscience, which some having put away concerning faith, have made shipwreck. You say, what does that all say?

Well, obviously you know that the Christian life is often framed up in warfare terms. And one of the aspects God is simply saying in warfare that you really need to do is you need to hold faith in a good conscience.

Now, it seems kind of maybe on the surface, strange that conscience would be tied to faith and vice versa. But it is now.

So understand, here’s what it’s saying. Saying this, you obviously need a good conscience.

But what some people have done is they’ve pushed away a conscience. They’ve thrust away a good conscience or a clean conscience or a clear conscience.

How do you want to put it? They pushed it away, and in doing so, they have shipwrecked your faith.

In other words, how you deal with your conscience is directly tied to your faith. And, um, I could certainly tell a lot of stories of people who have faith has been severely damaged.

Uh, years ago, there was a well-known evangelist by the name of Jack Schuler, and it was in the heyday of evangelism. Mass evangelism was just getting kind of restarted after the World war in the late nineteen forties.

And, uh, this young man was at the time is called Jack. His name was Jack Schuler at the time.

He was young and, uh, he was having a great campaign in Los Angeles right across town from Billy Graham, who was having a campaign. They were both on the same level of, um, of popularity, could we say or people knowing them.

And yet Jack Shuler, just a few years later, died a premature death in his mid-forties. Uh, he had a song director by the name of Jack as well, Jack Holcomb, who introduced him to alcohol.

And he began to drink after his meetings, to unwind, so to speak, and it led to other things in his life. He divorced his wife, remarried, had a couple of children by that second wife, and he told his younger brother, who was a well-known Baptist evangelist, he said, I’m going to be because of the choices I’ve made.

I’ll be dead in a few years. And he died of an old man’s disease.

Nobody’s ever died of the disease he died of at the age he died of. He died prematurely of a disease nobody dies of at that age.

And all we can say is, I don’t know all the ins and outs of it. It’s a tragic story, really is.

His father was a well-known preacher in Los Angeles at the time. Uh, like I said, his younger brother lived a full life, died just a few years ago, probably in his eighties, serving the Lord for decades.

So what happened to that young man? Well, his faith got hurt.

Somewhere along the line. He shipwrecked his faith.

And I. I guarantee you that he began to push off his constant.

Certainly he certainly didn’t drink. He preached against drink and now he’s doing it.

I’m sure there are other areas of compromise in his life. Things that he was doing that nobody knew about, and he was pushing off his conscience.

I’m sure his conscience was bothering him, because the Bible says in John chapter eight that the that the conscience is convicted often by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit uses the conscience. Now not every conviction is from the Holy Spirit in the conscience.

You can have a mistaught conscience. First Corinthians chapter number eight talks about that when it talks about eating meat that’s offered to idols, basically offering the argument that an idol is nothing.

In other words, meat offered an idol wasn’t demon possessed. There’s nothing could we say wrong with the meat?

In a sense, there was nothing that was going to cause you, you know, problems physically or even spiritually. But then the Bible says, but howbeit in every man there’s not that knowledge.

Some being weak, eat the meat. And.

And their conscience being weak is defiled, is what that verse says there. And I may be paraphrasing it some not looking at it at the moment, but their conscience being weak, is defiled.

Why? Not that it was wrong to necessarily do it.

The issue was more association. It wasn’t that there was anything intrinsically wrong with the meat.

It was an association issue, not intrinsic issue. I don’t have time to go into that.

Maybe one podcast I will. But the point was, his conscience was telling him, you shouldn’t do this for the wrong reason.

In other words, uh, he should he probably he shouldn’t eat meat offered to idols for the reasons associated with it, but he was thinking it was a different reason and he was actually wrong about it. And so the Bible is basically saying, uh, not everybody has the right knowledge on the deal.

And so they eat the meat and their conscience being weak is defiled. Now, all I’m simply saying is sometimes you can have a mis taught conscience.

And, uh, but even if you have a mis thought conscience and you do things you think are wrong, you hurt your faith because it’s like this. If you can’t believe God when it comes to right and wrong, if you can’t believe that God’s way is best, if you can’t believe that what you think is right, what the Bible teaches is right.

Again, you could have a missed thought conscience, but if you are doing something you believe the Bible teaches is wrong, would you do it anyway? You’re not.

Believe in God, you’re not. Believe in God’s way is best.

You’re not believing God can enable you to do the right thing. You’re having major unbelief in your life, and what you’re actually doing is shipwrecking your faith.

You’re shipwrecking your faith. So if your conscience is compromised, like you’re watching things your parents don’t want you to, or you’re watching things that your conscience bothers you about, you say, well, it’s not that bad.

Or I got friends at school that watch it. But if your conscience is bothering you, you’re hurting your faith.

Literally shipwrecking your faith. And it starts with those little compromises that go to bigger compromises.

And that’s why people like that evangelist Schuller ended up, uh, first of all, being out of the ministry. He’s out of the ministry.

And then he died. And, and it was a tragic thing.

He had great gifts and could have well been used of the Lord for decades. And it’s, it’s really kind of a tragedy on many different levels.

And his brother would tell you he was a greatly gifted preacher and had great usefulness in those short years that he was used of the Lord. But what began was compromises of conscience.

That conscience bothered him, pushed it away. So the first takeaway is make sure we biblically educate our conscience.

And then secondly, with that biblically educated conscience, when it bothers us, don’t push it away. Don’t push off the conscience because you’re going to shipwreck your faith.

It’s like this if you can’t believe God when he says something’s right or something’s wrong, you can’t believe God and you push your conscience off in those areas. How are you going to believe God when he says, ask and you shall receive?

How are you going to believe God when he offers other great promises? Calling to me, and I will answer thee.

How are you going to believe God on the big things? Or, um, if you’re, uh, pushing God off, uh, when, uh, your conscience is bothering you.

Now, there’s another passage of scripture that plays into this Romans chapter number thirteen, which talks about obeying governmental authority. And there certainly is a reference to other authority.

Verse number five says, wherefore ye must needs be subject not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. Hey, if you go to a Christian school or Christian college where they have demerits.

You know, I could say God saying you need to be subject to the rule book of your Christian school or Christian college, not because you’re going to get demerits, but for conscience sake. There’s something far more at stake than demerits.

In other words, for those of you in a home, you don’t obey your parents because you’re going to get a spanking. I’m talking to younger kids, or there’s going to be other.

You’re going to get grounded or there’s going to be some. That’s not the main reason why you should obey your parents.

There’s something far more at stake, and that is your conscience. The reason you should obey the laws around you traffic laws, speed limits, and other things that we are asked to obey by our governmental authorities is not because you’re going to get a speeding ticket.

It’s not because you’re going to get a policeman coming, bearing down on you, slapping handcuffs on you. Not for wrath sake.

The Bible says there’s something far more at stake, and that’s conscience. So the Bible indicates that the conscience is a big deal.

It affects your faith. And so understand really ought to obey authorities in your life.

Not because if you disobey them, there’s going to be consequences. That certainly is a motivation, but that shouldn’t be the motivation.

There’s something far more precious that’s taken. That is your conscience and your faith, which is tied to a clear conscience.

So I gotta ask you, do you have a conscience void of offense toward God of man, God in man, like Paul said he did in the book of acts? Do you have that kind of conscience void of offense?

If you don’t, it can be void of offense. Maybe you need to go to your parents, confess things you’re doing that you know they don’t want you to do.

Maybe you should get right with your Christian school or your Christian college about things you’re doing that you know they don’t want you to do, but you just pushed them off, said, well, you know, if I get the demerits, no big deal. I’m willing to get the demerits.

Uh, doesn’t matter if you’re willing to get to demerits. God says you need to obey, not because of demerits, but because there’s something far more at stake.

Your conscience at stake. I’m talking to Christian college students that look at your demerits.

If you got maybe expulsions, one hundred and fifty demerits, you look at like, like collateral. I got one hundred and fifty demerits to spend.

No you don’t. God says there’s something far more at stake.

And some of you guys that rack up the demerits. And I’m not talking about inadvertently.

You know, you forgot about something and got demerits because you forgot. That’s something different.

I mean, you know, there’s a rule. You break it anyway, you know, because I’m willing to take the demerits.

There’s something far more at stake. Your conscience is at stake, and you just spend your demerits like they’re collateral.

You got a problem because your conscience is important. And more important is your faith, which is tied to a good conscience, a clear conscience, a conscience void of offense toward God and man.

So both levels are extremely important. And there’s the power of a clean conscience.

Hey you preacher boys, you want to preach with power and authority in the pulpit, have your conscience void of offense. I mean, get things clear.

If you got to unload the truck and talk about things you’re struggling with behind everybody’s back, do it. The proper authorities get clear and you’re going to find a power coming to your life because you get a conscience that’s void of offense.

So shipwrecking your faith, where does it come from? Pushing aside your conscience.

That’s how you shipwreck your faith, pushing your conscience aside. And so let me urge you, number one, have a biblically taught conscience.

But after that, then you need to never push it off. And if you do push it off, get it right, get to the proper people, get it confessed, get it, get it right, confess it to God, get it all cleared up because there’s a power to a clean conscience.

And why is that important? Well, obviously you can’t be surrendered to God with an unclean conscience, and you can’t be depending on him because your faith’s going to get hurt.

Your dependence is going to get hurt. So remember it.

Total surrender to the will of God and a total dependence on the grace of God to do God’s will. God bless.