Manna Christian Fellowship

God intends His truth to change us.  See how He works in you to do that.  Read 1 Timothy 1 and 2 Timothy 2 and think about this:

Timothy, my son,  I give you this istruction...so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience.

 • 1 Timothy 1:18-19 (NIV) •

 

Have you ever known someone to suffer from manorexia?  Orthorexia?  Diabulimia?  Binge Eating Disorder?  All are dangerous variations on the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia. These have become buzzwords, popping up on Web sites and blogs, television shows and in newspaper articles.  As celebrity magazines chronicle the glamorous and the suffering, a growing number of researchers are trying to treat and understand the conditions.  The latest disorder to be added to the lexicon of food-related ills is DRUNKOREXIA: a potent cocktail of liquor and starvation is increasingly popular among women who offset calories in alcohol by eating little or nothing before hitting the town has found a name, drunkorexia.  Jonathan Keats coined the neologism in Wired magazine earlier this year.  

Each of these food-related sins are cause to seek help. (Ask my wife about her struggle with anorexia in college!) If you are struggling with anorexia or bulemia in any way, please talk to the Manna staff. We know the depths of sin in our own hearts and would love to listen and pray with you about these important issues, helping you by the power that God provides. 

In 1 Timothy 1, the Apostle Paul tells his apprentice, young Timothy, that there is another danger that we should be vigilant to guard against: the lack of believing the Good News of the Gospel (1Tim 1:18-20).  Paul calls it ‘making shipwreck of the faith’ (v. 19).  Today, it might be called ‘Gospelrexia.’  It’s deadly, and its infecting many at Princeton.  

At the end of the passage you read this morning Paul tells us that two men made a shipwreck of their faith, namely, Hymenaeus and Alexander.  These men probably heard the word of truth (Paul says that he ‘handed them over to  Satan,’ which is to suggest that they were put out of the Christian assembly having once been a part of the covenant community, cf. 1 Cor 5), but began to teach false doctrines (cf. 2 Tim 2:17). We don’t know much about these two men, hardly anything about Alexander.  Hymenaeus crops up again in 2 Tim 2:17, where Paul tells us that he and another man are teaching that the ‘resurrection already happened,’ in other words, that Christians are ‘fully raised from the dead’ in all senses that matter, and have probably presumably passed beyond the need to obey the normal moral codes.  

In this context Paul tells young Timothy ‘to hold onto faith and a good conscience’ (v. 19).  Paul’s charge to Timothy, of course, is that he shouldn’y go the way of Hymenaeus and Alexander, but that he should hold tight to two things: faith and a good conscience.  

“Faith,” according to New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, “reaches out and grasps the God who made you and is remaking in and through Jesus and the [S]pirit.”  Faith is the mechanism of how you understand who you are, where you are, what’s wrong with the world, and how it gets fixed?  

Your conscience is your moral compass in life.  Everyone, of course, has one.  Paul may even have had this compass image in mind when he used the analogy of a shipwreck (v. 19).  Someone has written, “A good conscience, educated by God’s Spirit according to the power and teaching of Jesus, steers you through the choppy and dangerous waters of life.”

Like Timothy, you, too, are called to obey this simple charge.  Hold onto faith and a good conscience!   At Princeton it is not the angry, “No!” to God’s face or the vehement denial of the Gospel because of some intellectual argument or emotional assertion.  Instead, it is the spiritual version of eating lots of spiritual food at retreats or Large Group meetings, and then throwing it all up on Monday by shrugging your shoulders at the Word of truth.  The slow and gradual extremes of college life take us farther off course. We are to keep holding (present progressive in Greek) onto faith and a good conscience.  

Here are three simple ways (in no particular order) to be consistently Gospel-centered, to hold onto faith and a good conscience at Princeton and mitigate the the waves of spiritual highs and lows.

Personal:  Recognize that you are more messed up than you think, and more loved than you know.  Frequently experiencing the “death” of sin through repentance in the daily work-a-day world is one of the marks of spiritual maturity.  By reading God’s Word and hearing it preached, the Spirit pricks your conscience and convicts you of sin.  This is a good thing and you should repent when this happens.  Don’t waste an opportunity to take off all the masks and get to know yourself in the routine.  He who knows not himself is the least educated of all. 

Devotional: Devote yourself to learning more about the Gospel by reading God’s Word and praying to God. This can be done in Manna Small Groups throughout the year.  Get into the Word of God. Memorize it so that God’s thoughts become the default object of your contemplation. 

Social: Get involved in a Gospel-centered community.  Go to a local church (find recommended local churches on Manna’ website). Get involved in Manna and or another Gospel-proclaiming group on campus.  By faith in Jesus Christ, experience the grace of God redeeming you from sin and equipping you collectively to fight the injustices of the world.

Ask God to equip you in these ways to fight the good fight of faith in college.  We don’t want to grow thin on the most important stuff. 

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