One of my favorite books is The Good News from North Haven by Michael Lindvall. In it, he writes about the quirkiness of small town living for a Presbyterian pastor and his congregation. It is the Presbyterian version of Jan Karon’s Mitford series.
One of the chapters is called “The Dreadful Omniscience of God.” It is the story of a pastor who uses an over-the-ear microphone for the first time and forgets to turn it off when getting ready for church. From the bathroom break before service to whispered words about people, it all gets piped into the sanctuary speakers over the stunned congregation’s heads. The point of the story is that with God, the microphone is always on and that we should live in that manner.
As we settle into the new year, what would that look like in the various areas of our lives? To use the words of our current preaching series, what would it look like to ‘start the year with God’ in all areas of our lives? What follows is a reflection on how faith shapes not just our Sundays but our ordinary, everyday lives.
Faith in Private Life
Faith in public is developed by faith in private. The private life is where integrity is formed, where our inner life is shaped before it is ever seen by others. This is the place of prayer, Scripture, silence, confession, and attentiveness to the Spirit. It is also the place where distractions, fatigue, and discouragement often show up most clearly.
To live faith in private does not require extreme spiritual disciplines or marathon prayer sessions. It requires regularity, honesty, and humility. A few minutes each day spent reading Scripture slowly, praying simply, or sitting quietly before God can reshape our hearts and minds over time. The goal is not information but formation.
Private faith is also about congruence. Over time, gaps can form between who we appear to be and who we actually are. The work of the Spirit often happens quietly, exposing those gaps not to shame us but to heal us. When our private prayers align with our public actions, we experience a deeper sense of freedom. We are no longer managing an image; we are becoming a person.
Starting the year with God in private life means asking honest questions: Where am I distracted? Where am I resistant? Where do I need grace? Faithfulness here is unseen, but it shapes everything else.
Faith in the Home
If private life is where integrity is formed, the home is often where it is tested. If you have or had family at home, you know this already. Home is where we are tired, familiar, and unguarded. It is where patience is stretched thin and where words spoken quickly can wound deeply. It is also where love is practiced.
Faith in the home shows up in diaper changes, dishes, carpools, bills, and bedtime routines. It is expressed in forgiveness offered quickly, in listening without defensiveness, and in choosing kindness when no one else is watching. The home is often the hardest place to live out grace because the people closest to us know us best and see us at our worst.
To start the year with God at home is not to turn the household into a monastery or to expect constant spiritual conversations. It is to cultivate a posture of generosity of spirit. It is to remember that the people in our homes are not obstacles to our spiritual growth; they are often the means of it.
Faith with others in the home also includes modeling the faith. Children, spouses, and extended family learn far more from how we handle conflict, stress, and disappointment than from what we say about faith. When mercy and humility shape our home life, faith becomes credible.
Faith in the Workplace
When I was working in business before going to seminary, this was an area my boss and I talked about often. My boss never felt the need to say he was a Christian but always wanted to live and work guided by his faith. I learned from him.
Many Christians feel a tension between faith and work, as if one belongs to Sunday and the other to Monday. Yet Scripture refuses that division. Our work, whether paid or unpaid, is one of the primary areas in which faith is lived out.
Living faith in the workplace does not mean ignoring professional boundaries or turning every conversation into a sermon. Nor does it mean setting aside faith in order to appear neutral or acceptable. Instead, it means being people of integrity, competence, humility, and grace.
Faith shapes how we treat clients, colleagues, employees, and supervisors. It influences how we handle success and failure, how we speak about others when they are not present, and how we respond to pressure or competition. People may never hear us articulate our beliefs, but they will experience the fruit of them.
Starting the year with God at work means asking how our faith informs our ethics, our character, and our work. It means resisting the temptation to cut corners, to inflate ourselves, or to dehumanize others. In doing our work well and treating people well, we bear quiet witness to the Lord we serve.
Faith in School
This is a lesson I wish I knew when I was in school. Like the workplace, school is a setting where faith must be expressed wisely and humbly. The pressure to conform is real, and the fear of standing out can be strong.
Faith in school does not require withdrawing from others or constantly signaling moral superiority. Instead, it calls for courage rooted in kindness. Students can allow others to make their own choices without compromising their own convictions. This posture avoids both judgement and accommodation.
Faith also offers a different vision of freedom. While it may restrict certain behaviors, it opens space for deeper joy, self-respect, and peace. Starting the year with God in school means trusting that faithfulness matters even when it feels costly or lonely.
Faith in the Public Square
The public square includes far more than civic life. It includes grocery stores, neighborhoods, church gatherings, community spaces, and increasingly, digital platforms. How we carry ourselves in public communicates something about the faith we profess.
Social media has become a particular challenge for Christians. ‘Keyboard courage,’ saying or writing things online we would never do in person, has made it easy to speak harshly, quickly, and without nuance. While Christians are called to bear witness to truth, the manner of that witness matters.
Faith in then public square calls us to speak seeking to persuade rather than to shame, to invite rather than to attack. Truth does not require cruelty, and conviction does not require contempt. Starting the year with God in public means remembering that every comment, post, and interaction reflects on us and on the Lord we name.
This does not mean silence or passivity. It means wisdom. It means asking whether our words are likely to open doors or harden hearts. The microphone is on here, too.
Conclusion
In the end, the call is simple and demanding: to be a person of faith everywhere. There is no offstage, no neutral space, no moment where faith is irrelevant. To start the year with God is to recognize that the whole of life is lived before him.
This is not a call to perfection but to faithfulness. We will stumble, grow weary, and fall short. God meets us there. As we continue into this new year, may we live with an awareness that the microphone is on, not to frighten us, but to remind us that God is present in every place, shaping us into people whose lives bear quiet, faithful witness to him.
by the Rev. Dr. John Fullerton, FPC Senior Pastor