Back in the day I was on holiday in Majorca. My daughter Bailey persuaded me to hire a pedalo and sail out to sea, sticking fairly close to the shore.
I am not good on boats.
But, not wanting to let my daughter down, I agreed to sail on one.
Dawn, Bailey and I were about twenty five yards out in about a foot of water when I started to feel a bit sea sick.
So I had to get off and walk back to the beach.
I love to look at the sea, but hate to be on it.
Lately as I've been praying, the sea has been central in my mind, in every scripture I've read the sea has been mentioned.
Especially storms.
And in particular?
Shipwrecks.
Especially 1 Timothy 1: 18-20 (NLT)
"Timothy my son, here are the instructions for you, based on the prophetic words spoken about you earlier, may they help you fight well in the Lord's battles. Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked."
I can relate to that.
When I slip and I definitely do from time to time, what happens is sometimes I have deliberately violated my conscience. In other words I've known something is definitely not right because my conscience has told me so, so I've then gone and done it anyway!
Come on now, anyone with me on this?
What happens every time that happens is this.
My faith hits the rocks.
My faith gets?
Shipwrecked.
It's linked to Spiritual warfare of course because Satan loves shipwrecked faith.
He tends to use one his favorite weapons for that, guilt.
When we violate our consciences how often do we then feel guilty and then find it hard to get back to God?
Yeah?
You with me?
But the thing I need to tell someone tonight, someone who I know needs to hear this blog, is this.
Shipwrecks can be salvaged.
I had a mate once who worked in a salvage team who would actually go out to shipwrecks and salvage what they could. He was so passionate about it and I used to love hearing his lengthy tales of some of the amazing things he recovered from wrecks.
And that's the thing. In every situation in life good or bad, if we stay as close to God as we can, keep trying hard to do it like It says in 1 Timothy, "Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear," then we can take the treasure out of any situation. Taking treasure means salvaging those valuable lessons that we can learn in every situation in life.
And your faith can be salvaged.
Because Jesus is astonishingly merciful.
So you don't need to be shipwrecked and stay that way for ever.
Under water.
With no chance of surfacing.
Because the Spirit of God is prompting me that someone out there is feeling just like that.
Under water.
Shipwrecked.
Well the Forgiveness of Christ is total.
And he will salvage your faith.
Just cling to Christ with everything you have.
No matter what's happened?
He's trying desperately to salvage your faith.
Why don't you let him?
