Business Matters: A Francis Kong DevotionalSample

IS CHRISTIANITY TRUE AND IS IT REAL? Some people call this a "religious experience." Others use terms like "regeneration", "renewal" or "being born again." It's not important to me what the terms were but my own life experiences convinced me that I have a personal one-on-one intimate connection with the Lord Jesus Christ for some 28 years now. As a young Christian, I remember how excited I was in going to Sunday worships and how enthused I am with anticipation of gaining new wisdom from God's Word. Yet on Monday mornings, upon entering the "real world" of business, I failed to understand the connection between my faith and the pressures of headlines, deadlines, and the bottom line. The rift between the holy sanctuary where God dwells and the corporate boardroom seems so enormous that I was forever on a search to bridge the gap. We live in an environment today that generally wants nothing to do with God. The challenge of effectively and consistently representing Christ maybe more formidable than ever. And there's a reason for this. "Today men are asking not so much if Christianity is true or if it is real. They ask if it really does matter in actual life?" Men and women are asking this question-especially those who spend many hours each week working in the stress-filled and unpredictable environment we call the business community. Is there relevance between faith and the bottom line? Consider this: Work is sacred. God ordained it from the beginning, before the fall of man. After the fall, it just got tougher, frustrating, exhausting, sometimes even boring. But work pursued with excellence and integrity is pleasing to God. Thru our work, we are honoring Him. God has equipped us with talents, which we use to serve other people, thru our businesses. Thru our Christian dealings we take the opportunities of proclaiming God, even within the realms of a broken, unredeemed world, through our virtuous example and by our honest words. Nevertheless, others have seen business and commerce as deeply Machiavellian; that doing business is exploitative and totally depraved and corrupt, in its pursuit for greater wealth. This philosophy has even left preachers, ministers and certain people of the cloth to think that people who are engaged in enterprise have no interest for spiritual things. This is of course farthest from the truth. Many successful business people I know have very deep faith and are deeply in love with Christ. They do business with impeccable integrity and they are highly respected in their business community. They have discovered that Christ and business do match and they know that it is God's will that we be productive and make the most of what He has provided. And when Christians show excellence and righteousness in their fields, their lives become testimonies of the greatness and power of Christ. Challenge: Is your work a masterpiece such that the signature of the Master is seen and recognized in it?