Faith as the Business of Our Lives

"The proverbs of Solomon... for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair."

Proverbs 1:1, 3 (NIV)

The great eighteenth-century American preacher Jonathan Edwards wrote something about the Puritans that has stayed with me: the practice of religion, he said, was not only their business at certain seasons, but the business of their lives.

The business of their lives. Not a department of their lives. Not one category alongside career, family, leisure, and health. The whole shape and purpose of life is organised around knowing and serving God.

I am not suggesting we should all become monks or that there is something wrong with having a career, enjoying recreation, or investing in ordinary human relationships. The Puritans themselves were thoroughly engaged in the world. They had businesses, raised families, built communities. But all of it was conducted within the framework of a life devoted to God. Faith was not one of the rooms in the house. It was the foundation on which the house was built.

Our culture has moved so far in the opposite direction that this vision can seem almost impossible. We are a people of instant gratification, of perpetual entertainment, of relentless self-focus. Millions live as though the purpose of existence is to accumulate as much pleasure and comfort as possible before they die. The result is precisely what you would expect: hollow lives that shine on the outside and ring empty within.

What would it look like for faith to be the business of your life? Not just the thing you attend to on Sunday morning, or the category you tick on a census form. But the lens through which all of life is seen, the compass by which all decisions are made, the relationship that shapes every other relationship.

It begins with a choice. The Puritans made that choice deliberately and renewed it constantly. They knew that the life of faith is a struggle and that it requires perseverance. But they also knew from Scripture and experience that it was worth it.

Is faith truly the business of your life? Or has it become one item on a very long list?

Prayer: Lord, I want You to be the centre and purpose of my life, not just one part of it. Forgive me for the ways I have reduced faith to a compartment. Renew in me the vision of a life wholly devoted to You. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Pastor Ras
All Nations Community Church

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