How to Avoid Shipwrecking Your Faith

Why Ignoring Your Conscience Can Destroy Your Faith—And How to Stop It

The Dawn of Conscience

Let’s rewind to Adam and Eve, before the Fall ushered in the dawn of conscience—a time revealing God’s original intent for mankind. They walked with God in the cool of the day, unaware of their nakedness, without guilt or shame, knowing that He longed for them as they did for Him—Creator and creation in perfect, beautiful fellowship.

In the day that they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, their conscience awoke. Something had changed.

For the first time, they saw their sin and nakedness. In moments their thoughts shifted from tending the Garden to tending to their conscience. In an attempt to find relief they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness.

It was not enough. Plagued with thoughts of God’s response, they hid from Him in fear.

God came to see them as He always did, greeting the creatures that He had made along the way. Adam and Eve had always come to greet Him with embrace, but not that day. He called out, “where are you?” To which Adam responded, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” God already knew the answer when He asked, “Who told you that you were naked?” They knew that it was the fruit of the forbidden tree. Since that moment, nothing had been the same.

The Familiar Story

Today, God still calls out to us, “where are you?”

Our fig leaves are those of the good works that we’re chasing down to appease our conscience, but they’re never enough.

God follows up with the same question, “who told you that you were naked?” The words have become so piercing that we have long silenced them.

And so we distance ourselves from the Source of Life. He longs to be in fellowship with us, but we refuse. Our conscience has set our gaze upon ourselves and our filthy rags rather than the One who is waiting for us with clean and freshly pressed clothes. He weeps in secret for a flock that is shipwrecking their faith on the rocks of conscience.

The Rocks of Conscience

The rocks of conscience have claimed the faith of countless believers who drifted too close, lured by their deceptive familiarity.

A dear brother in the Lord had purchased a beautiful cabin on the lake for his family to enjoy. He has always been very generous, yet the guilt of spending money on the cabin, which could have been given to charity, weighed on him. These are the warning signs that we're getting too close.

Our conscience can tell us right from wrong, but the dark side is that it can make us feel guilty for just about anything, if we let it.

Those gray areas of uncertainty are the areas of particular danger. Suppose you think eating shrimp is fine but aren’t fully convinced—maybe you’re unsure which Old Testament laws still apply. That doubt lingers, and after you’ve enjoyed your meal, conscience pushes you closer to the rocks.

This isn’t something we can just ignore, hoping it will resolve itself.

Neglecting Conscience

“By rejecting conscience, some have made shipwreck of their trust” (1 Timothy 1:19, CJB).

In Paul’s letter to Timothy, he tells of how some of those in Timothy’s church have shipwrecked their faith because they neglected their conscience. A stern warning for all of us.

The Bible also calls this a defiled or evil conscience. It’s not an exaggeration because this is exactly what happens in the spirit. I believe that one of the reasons we see so little power in the church today is because the faith of so many has been shipwrecked.

When Simon and his friends hauled in the nets bursting with fish after one word from Jesus, he knew this was no ordinary man. This was their Messiah whom they had been waiting for. Instead of the excitement and joy that he had expected, he felt only remorse as the awareness of his sin flooded his soul. Out of the conflict within he exclaims, “away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

In one of the most beautiful moments in Scripture, Jesus fully aware of Simon’s sin, says to him, “follow Me, and I will make you a fisher of men.” Later, Jesus changed his name to Peter, meaning “rock,” because he would be a rock for the church.

In that moment, Jesus saw Simon’s future, while Simon saw only his past. If we don’t pay attention to our conscience it will rob us of the future God has for us.

This kind of response to Jesus is not humility as we might think, but false humility, because to accept it we must deny the redemptive work of the cross.

The Redemption

Jesus died for our sins, but did you know that He also died to purify your conscience?

"…how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:14, NKJV)?

Two-thousand years ago, Jesus suffered the most brutal death at the hands of man. “But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him - our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole” (Isaiah 53:5, Message).

He came to fix things—to deal with sin and conscience. He did it so that we can walk with Him, to restore the fellowship that was lost. He did it for you and for me. He did it with joy because He saw the redemption of man.

He completed His work two thousand years ago. Now, it’s up to you. Will you believe Him? Is the price that He paid good enough?

Let your heart be established by the grace of our Lord Jesus, not with rules and regulations, food and drink. Those things seem to be religious and offer relief, but they will cause you to drift into the rocks.

Living It Out

"Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin" (Romans 14:22-23).

If you’re not sure whether something is right or wrong, don’t do it unless you have faith to do it with a pure conscience. Dig into God’s Word, pray about it, and resolve the issue. Resolve to do everything in faith.

Avoid these gray areas, use them as a signal that you’re too close to the rocks. Don’t buy that cabin or eat shrimp until your heart is at peace.

Did you know that water baptism is our promise to keep a pure conscience before God? “…the water of immersion, which is not the removal of dirt from the body, but one’s pledge to keep a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Yeshua the Messiah” (1 Peter 3:21, CJB).

This isn’t just about us having a pure conscience, and saving our faith. It is also about restoring the relationship with God.

The Best News Of All

"Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:19-22, NKJV).

We don’t need to hide anymore. He has made a way for us to have fellowship with Him. It requires faith, believing in the sacrifice that He paid. It requires a pure conscience. And it requires us to be born again of the Spirit of God.

Choose not to live even one minute with a defiled conscience so that you can walk with Him.