A shipwrecked conscience

18 This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, 19 keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. 20 Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme. I Timothy 1:18-20 Conscience: an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior. Although our conscience inwardly monitors and judges our actions, be they right or wrong, it is still in need of redemption and can cause us to, as Paul states to Timothy, “suffer shipwreck” in regard to our faith. Paul understood this well because that very same conscience convinced him that he was doing what was right by condemning and murdering Christians. His conscience was programmed to commit these heinous acts in service to God! We see in our world today many instances where injustices are made and people are harmed because of faulty programming in someone’s conscience. We need the truth of faith and the truth of the Word to shape our conscience, which is the only way we can truly trust it to lead us in the right direction. Allow the Holy Spirit to be the compass of your conscience so that any internal signals you receive will be filtered by the Word of God and not by your feelings or faulty programming.