Over the last couple years, I have really been convicted about compartmentalizing my faith.  It is something that I really never thought about much until I realized that there were people in my life that I see everyday that had no idea that I am a Christian.  This was troubling to me as I consider myself to have strong faith and am more than comfortable with my knowledge of the Bible and theology, but there is still something in our nature that wants to place a covering over our light.  There are many scriptures that speak to this in admonishing us to live out our faith.  In Galatians 2, Paul speaks of confronting Peter on this very issue of hypocrisy, Hebrews 12 lets us know that we have a great cloud of witnesses watching and more than a few Psalms remind us that God is watching.

With this conviction looming, I began to pray, asking God what I can do so that my friends, family, coworkers, neighbors and everyone else I meet all have the opportunity to meet Him through me.  As I considered the diverse beliefs within my family, my different groups of friends, co-workers and customers, I knew that I was about to embark on phase of growth in my faith.  Over the course of several weeks, asking God how I can share my faith without becoming an evangelist and handing out tracks, the Lord repeatedly reminded me that He was always in the room whether I acknowledged Him or not.  From that came the spiritual discipline to always be mindful of His presence.

When you are in the presence of God, what you do and say is radically different than what the natural man in you might say.  As I go into situations, the Holy Spirit is often telling me to be mindful of His presence. Being aware of His presence can have a huge influence on what you say, what you do, how you respond to needs, how you spend your money, and though I sometimes feel compelled to issue a proportionate response to L.A. drivers, I am always mindful to apologize to God for my actions.

Recently thinking about this part of my journey, I realized that there have been many blessings as I have attempted to remove the faith barriers in my relationships.  During this time, God has produced some fruitful experiences.  My nephew accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior and I was privileged to pray with him, my niece was baptized after her faith commitment and I have been able to pray with a couple of coworkers.  Last summer, I went to meet with the CFO of a shipping company.  We spent our two hour meeting talking about our faith and ministry, it was amazing and we still keep in touch.  We rescheduled later to talk about software.  In another series of events, I discovered that a wonderful girl I had been speaking with about business, has a strong Christian faith and as we talked over the months, that would later flourish into a more special relationship.  More recently, I have had ongoing conversations with a guy at the gym about faith and another that is more a discipling relationship with the goal of growing in biblical knowledge.

Now I do not share any of this to boast, but to demonstrate how our response to God’s conviction in one small area of our life can yield amazing results.  I firmly believe that these examples and many others are all the work of God.  My prayer today is that I would always be mindful of His presence, open to doing whatever He wants through me and that the peace of Christ would rule in my heart and conquer the anxiety that arises from outwardly living a bolder faith.