“Timothy, I thank God for you.  He is the God I serve with a clear conscience, just as my ancestors did.”

In this New Year there will be many predictions for what will happen; what will go up, and what will go down. I predict with a great deal of certainty that in this year we will read, view or hear of a business event where the root cause of a calamity or scandal will be that someone broke a rule or broke a law.  Afterwards we will wonder, “How could anyone have done such a thing?”.  It is a good question because those who are driven and guided by their conscience wouldn’t do what that person decided to do.  Imagine a workplace where every word, every action and every decision was first filtered by whether or not this can be done with a clear conscience?  I know for sure that this workplace would be a better place to work than other places and the risk of a major mess up would be lower.  Screening for clear conscience guided decision-making is hard, but we’d all be better off if we worked harder at identifying and confirming this trait in all that work for us.

Paul told Timothy that he served God with a clear conscience.  He was giving us a life example to follow where every move made starts with assuring that what we are doing, saying and thinking will be done with a clear conscience before the eyes of God.  If we start our day this way and then stay committed throughout the day to ending the day with this type of clear conscience we will have conscientiously bettered ourselves and also those around us.

Reference:  2 Timothy 1:3 (New Living Translation)