Getting Personal: Speaking as an Ambassador
Chapter Seven
Speaking for the King
God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet. . . . (Matt. 28:18)
WE live in the age of the omnipresent video. It’s as if our lives are being lived on tape. Families videotape their holidays, birthday parties, vacations, and humorous pratfalls. They even hide a video camera in the family room to tape the babysitter and ensure that she is not abusing the children. There are security cameras at the convenience store, the supermarket, and the bank. Nothing of any note takes place in our communities—be it a celebration, parade, police chase, election, accident, fire, or natural disaster—without the video camera present to record the moment.
One day I was standing on a pier, watching someone videotape fish, when this question hit me: If someone were to watch the videotape of my life, what would they conclude about me? What would they say I am living for? What would they say is my mission in life?
My mind went further. How would they view my interactions with people? What, for example, would they say about the way I treat my family? What would they make of my marriage, my parenting, and my relationship to neighbors? What would they conclude I was living for?
As a counselor, I often find that when someone is telling me his story, he often does a much better job describing the actions, reactions, and words of others than he does his own. And I often find myself saying, “You know, we’ve been watching the videotape of your life, but there’s something curious about it: You’re not in it! It has all the important people in your life, with their reactions and words, but not you. Let’s turn the camera to see how you are dealing with all that is going on in your life. Let’s see what’s important to you and how you deal with the situations and relationships you encounter every day.”
I would like to do the same thing with you as a reader. Let me encourage you to focus particularly on your conversational life. If I watched a videotape of your life, paying special attention to your communication with the important people in your world, what would I find? What would I think you are seeking to accomplish? What would I conclude was important to you?
This chapter is about God’s mission for our mouths. We started this book by saying that our words belong to the Lord. They were created by him, exist through him, and are to be used for him. We were given the ability to communicate so that our words would help us do his work and bring him glory. He is the source, the standard, and the goal of all our talk. He is the Lord of our mouths! So, it is vital that we have a clear sense of his purposes for us in this area. Once we do, we need to review our videotapes and ask, Are we speaking for the King?
When we talk about God’s mission for our mouths, we are talking about a responsibility we have been given to carry out. A mission is a particular set of objectives that gives order and purpose to what a person or group does. It is a special assignment, an inner calling, to pursue a particular activity. Our question is, What mission does the Great Speaker have for our mouths? We need a clear answer to this question before we look at all the practical Scripture passages on communication. We also need to see how the Great Deceiver seeks to tempt us away from God’s goal for our talk.
No passage more clearly and succinctly defines God’s mission for our talk than 2 Corinthians 5:11–21.
Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than what is in the heart. If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sin against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Called to Be Ambassadors
One Thursday night I went to my son’s room to say hello and to discuss some arrangements that needed to be made for the weekend. I knocked on his door, walked into his room, and encountered a scene of total destruction! I don’t know how he found his clothes (I think all of them were on the floor at the time) or how he found his bed to sleep (a corner of it stuck out from under the rubble). There were college textbooks, shoes, magazines, music equipment, CDs, skateboard parts, and a host of other unrecognizable objects. My anger and frustration were immediate. I remember thinking, He is sitting here in the middle of this mess and it doesn’t bother him at all!
He greeted me rather warmly and I let it fly! I forgot all about saying hello or asking him about his day. Instead I went into a tirade on the condition of his room and how I was sure that it mirrored the condition of his life (which was actually not true). I angrily reminded him of how hard I work to provide him with the things that were strewn everywhere. I asked him what it would be like if his mother and I kept the whole house that way. I lectured on and asked questions—questions I didn’t give him any time to answer because they weren’t really questions. I was just venting. I told him I didn’t know how he could stand being in that room the way it was, but I knew I couldn’t. I told him that it better be cleaned up quickly and I left.
I walked down the hallway feeling angry and empty and threw myself down on the family room couch. It hit me then that I hadn’t discussed anything I had intended to discuss. I did my best to justify my behavior: (1) The room was a mess (very true). (2) It did evidence poor stewardship on his part (true). (3) He did need someone to confront him with this issue (also true). But with all of this, I knew that what I had done was wrong. This encounter would not produce positive changes in my son, and I knew that God was not well pleased. I prayed for forgiveness, got myself together, and went back in to talk to my son the right way.
Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5 explain in detail what was wrong with my “conversation” that night. If we are ever going to speak up to God’s standard and according to his design, we need to understand the practical principles that flow out of this passage.
1. We need to speak with an understanding that we are God’s ambassadors. A political ambassador is someone who has been called from his or her homeland to live in another and represent the message, methods, and character of his leader (president, king, prime minister, etc.). Paul’s message here is radical and dramatic: we have been called to be ambassadors of the King! God has put us just where he wants us to represent him. If I am ever going to speak as he has ordained for me to speak, I must be aware of my ambassador status. I am where I am because I am called to represent the Lord. Paul says that for the Christian, the old life that was structured around self-interest is gone. We are new creations; the old has passed away. Dead and gone is the life in which we only served our own interests and did just about anything to get what we wanted. No, Paul says we have been reconciled to God and this has given us a new ministry—his work of reconciliation.
We are not free to advance our own interests with our talk. Our communication must always have an ambassadorial agenda (the mission, methods, and character of the King). But we need to be honest here. There is no situation in life without a struggle between our own interests and the Lord’s. There are always things we want in certain ways and at certain times. It is always easy to move away from God’s purposes toward our own. The shifts between the two can be subtle and deceptive, especially since as believers we are still not free from the sin of self-interest. It remains one of the fundamental heart sins that lie beneath our words. This tendency toward self-interest is what the position of ambassador so pointedly addresses. You cannot be a successful ambassador if you are primarily motivated by your own interests! You cannot be an ambassador part-time. You must always remember that you are where you are because you are a representative. You have been sent by the King to speak for him.
There is another way to think about this ambassadorial calling. We have been called to represent the King in a way that incarnates him. To incarnate means to embody in human form, to personify. This is a position of majestic honor given to unworthy sinners. If we could understand the wonder of it all, we would be amazed that we could do or say anything that could picture God’s glory! But this is just what God has chosen us to do: to embody his mission, methods, and character on earth. We are his hands, his eyes, his ears, and his mouths. We put flesh and blood to who he is and what he wants for those around us. We are called to make his character and will seen, heard, and known. This was my job description the night I went into my son’s room, but I had lost all sense of my calling. I was there full of my own interest, and there was no incarnational agenda to my words at all.
When we live and speak incarnationally, we mirror the work Christ did on earth: he came to make the Father known. While he was here, Jesus said that the works he did and the words he spoke were not his own, but came from his Father (see John 14:5–14). Jesus was committed to the Father’s will in the things he did and said because he understood that his mission was incarnational. He had taken on flesh for the purpose of making God known. Now, in the same way that Christ revealed the Father, we are called to reveal Christ. We are called to incarnate Jesus, the Reconciler and Redeemer. This is why our words always have an agenda higher than our own purposes or desires.
I love the way Paul talks about this higher, incarnational agenda. He says that it’s “as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Cor. 5:20). To speak as an ambassador means that we are always asking what God wants to accomplish in our hearts and in our listeners’ hearts. What appeal is he making? The three words I have been using are helpful here: mission, methods, and character.
Speaking as an ambassador means speaking in a way that represents the mission (that is, the will and purposes) of the King. It means asking, Do my words capture what is valuable to the Lord? It also means considering the methods of the King. This means asking, How would the Lord respond to this person in this situation? Here we look to the Lord as our ultimate model of behavior. Our calling is to respond as he responded, to act as he acted, and to speak as he spoke. Finally, speaking as an ambassador requires thinking about the character of the King. Representing the Lord is not only a matter of right goals and right methods, but right attitude as well. Here we ask, As I respond to this person in this situation, am I faithfully representing the character of the King (see Col. 3:12–14)? If I had asked myself these questions that night in my son’s room, it would have dramatically altered my words.
The Mission of the King
2. Ambassadors need to speak out of a clear understanding of the King’s mission. What is he doing on earth? In our lives? In this situation at this moment? What is his mission? Again, Paul lays this out very clearly for us. He tells us that God is working so that “those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:15). God’s focus is on our hearts and our tendency toward idolatry. As we saw earlier, the most powerful and pervasive of all idols is the idol of self. All sinners serve it in some way. Like Adam and Eve, every sinner has the desire to be God and to have the world operate according to his or her pleasure and will. Jesus lived, died, and was raised again to break our bondage to this idol. His goal for us is that we who once lived for ourselves would be turned, by his grace, to worship and serve him alone. As he changes us, more and more we will be like him. We will be able to truly represent him, and as his ambassadors, we will be able to speak in ways that contribute to his purposes in others’ lives as well as our own.
Notice that the target of our mission is the heart, the seat of worship, either of God or of idols. As God’s ambassadors, we must speak with the heart in focus. This does not come naturally to human beings. Most of the time, we talk about the physical stuff of life—jobs, homes, cars, people, and possessions. Our words reflect our attempt to get what we want or our frustrations when we fail. A husband yells at his wife when she is taking too long getting ready. A mom yells at her daughter over her messy room, or a son complains that his clothes make him look like a “geek.” A toddler throws a fit when he does not get to visit his favorite toy store, or a father blows up because he can’t find his newspaper.
All of this communication focuses on the physical world and flows out of hearts that worship and serve the creation more than the Creator. It subtly deifies the creation and forgets the Creator’s will and glory. Because this talk is itself idolatrous, God will never use it to accomplish his mission, which is freeing people from their bondage to all kinds of idols.
God’s agenda in these moments is fundamentally spiritual. He knows that only when he owns our hearts unchallenged will we relate to the world in the way he has ordained. For this reason, God is focused not only on the momentary solution to our problems but on a long-term change of heart. He wants to recapture the hearts of his people so that they will serve him alone (see Ezek. 14:1–6). To accomplish this, he is willing to sacrifice our personal comfort. He will permit situations to “push our buttons,” as my son’s messy room pushed mine. He wants our heart sins to be revealed because we need to see them in order to repent! Very often, our hearts are most clearly revealed by our words. When our words do more harm than good, most likely we are speaking at cross-purposes with the King. Most likely, we are serving our own self-interest rather than his redemptive agenda. This is what God is concerned about most of all.
That night in my son’s room, I had completely lost my awareness of the war that was raging for my son’s heart. I didn’t see him as an immortal soul. I didn’t see him as a creature of God who was in the midst of a spiritual battle. I forgot that my own struggle was not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers (Eph. 6:12). I forgot who both of us were in God’s eyes. Instead, I got taken up with the creation (my son’s room) and how I wanted it to be treated. Yes, I was on a mission—and unfortunately I was able to communicate my mission quite clearly! But I had forgotten that God had me there as an ambassador to represent his mission. In that I failed, and I missed a wonderful opportunity to be part of something higher, better, and more wonderful. I opted for physical bread and forgot the glory of the bread of life. Did the condition of that room reveal issues that needed attention? Yes, but only in a way that would represent the glorious bondage-breaking mission of the King.
The Method of the King
3. Ambassadors need to speak with an understanding of the King’s methods. An ambassador is called not only to say what the King would say, but to say it in the way he would say it. We are not free to accomplish God’s mission any way we see fit. The way we do what we are called to do must be consistent with his character and purposes. Again, this is part of being incarnational: our method of speaking should reflect the way God deals with his people.
Let’s go back to that evening in my son’s room. I was not only wrong in the goals I was pursuing, I was wrong in my methodology as well. How was I seeking to produce change? Through anger, guilt, condemnation, threat, and ultimatum. These were my “tools.” But the One I am called to represent would not use these tools; they do not produce the long-term change of heart that is supposed to be my goal. Proverbs says that harsh words stir up anger (Prov. 15:1). They escalate hostility and defensiveness rather than produce the atmosphere of receptivity and openness that a gentle answer can produce.
How does God produce long-term heart change in us? Or, as Paul says it, how does he “compel” us away from living for ourselves to living for him? Second Corinthians 5:11–21 clearly teaches that the thing that compels Paul—and us—is the love of Christ. Ultimately, the thing that turns us is not just God’s sovereignty, his holiness, his anger against sin, or his mighty power. It is the kindness of the Lord that leads people to repentance, we know from Romans 2:4. Paul says the same thing to the Corinthians—it is the love of Christ that draws us away from self and motivates us to live for him. Christ’s glorious, substitutionary love is his most compelling argument for change—and his most powerful means of accomplishing it.
Think about this for a moment. In every setting and circumstance of life, we have been called to speak in a way that pictures the love of God. What a high and humbling standard! Who of us can say, “Yes, Lord, I am doing this”? Who among us does not need to honestly cry out and say, “Lord, I fall so far short of your calling. Come and be my strength or I will never speak in a way that makes your glory and goodness known”?
We need to humbly admit that the methods the Lord uses—and calls us to use—are very different from those we would naturally select. It is not my natural first response to bless the person who mistreats me (Rom. 12:14). It is not my tendency to forgive the person who is confessing the same sin for the seventh time that day (Luke 17:3–4). It is not my first choice to fight evil with good (Rom. 12:21) or to forsake revenge for peacemaking (vv. 17–20). I find it hard to be patient, gentle, humble, and persevering under provocation (Eph. 4:2). I would rather wait for the person who has offended me to come to me instead of going to him (Matt. 18:15–17). I find it difficult to settle issues and restore relationships before the sun sets; I want to hang on to offenses, and to replay the offense over and over again in my head (Eph. 4:26–27). I want to move people by the force of my hurt and anger, rather than by patient, humble forgiveness (James 1:20). I speak too quickly and find it tiresome to listen patiently and attentively (v. 19). I get caught up in the heat of the moment, instead of stepping back and preparing myself to speak in a godly way (Prov. 15:28).
But God doesn’t think as we think. He doesn’t do what we would naturally do, which is why we need to understand and follow his method. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:4, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” As ambassadors we are called to lay down the world’s ineffective, even destructive, weapons and take up the gospel tools that the King has put in our hands. He will use them to bring radical heart change into our own lives and allow us to share in that same work with others.
Paul points to three tools (methods) of change in 2 Corinthians 5: self-sacrifice, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It’s helpful to think of these terms not only as methods, but as boundaries for our words as his ambassadors. We cannot allow ourselves to speak words beyond these boundaries. Let’s take a moment and consider what this would mean.
First, it is clear that the work Christ did in our lives required self-sacrifice. Our salvation meant his death. It is also clear from Scripture that he has called us, as his followers, to die to ourselves in order to serve and love others as he has loved us. The call to die to self, the call to purposeful self-sacrifice as his servants, was a consistent theme that the Lord taught his disciples during his time on earth (see Matt. 10:37–38; 16:24–28; Luke 9:23–27; 14:25–27, 31–33; John 12:23–26).
Christ changed us through his own self-sacrifice. We have become partakers of his divine nature because he was willing to lay down his life for us! If Christ had held onto his rights and authority as the Son of God, we would be hopelessly trapped in the bondage of sin, irrevocably destined for damnation. But Jesus was not only willing to leave the glory of heaven to suffer as a man on this broken, fallen earth; he was also willing to die for sins he had not committed! It is to this willingness for self-sacrifice that he calls us as his ambassadors, so that our lives might encourage his glorious work of change in people’s hearts. Paul spoke of this to the church in Philippi.
If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking on the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (Phil. 2:1–8)
Paul could not be more forceful about this call to follow Christ’s example of self-sacrificing love. He says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.” Our everyday talk must live up to this standard! Personally, I find it easy to be motivated by my personal rights and position. I struggle when I am asked to give up my time, my plans, my schedule, my possessions, and my control. Most of the trouble I get into with my talk occurs when I am trying to hold onto these things. I will speak impatiently to the daughter who has the audacity to be in the bathroom when I need to be in there. I will get irritated with my wife when her plans conflict with my schedule. I will lash out at the child who has inadvertently broken the knob on the stereo, or I will be tempted to pout when the family doesn’t think my plan for the day is exciting and wonderful. What is wrong with all of these reactions? They are rooted in self-interest, so the communication that follows will not give glory to God or contribute to the work he is doing in my family.
The issue of self-sacrifice goes right to the core of my struggle as a sinner. Remember, the most powerful idol of all is the idol of self. The desire to be God resides in the heart of every sinner. This is the thing that God seeks to break in each of us so that we can live for his glory and not our own. As his ambassadors we are also called to die to self so that we may speak for him.
God’s second tool (method) is forgiveness. It is amazing to consider that for reasons that only can be explained by his majestic love, Christ has fully and completely forgiven us! Paul says that God does not count men’s sins against them. If our King, our Judge, the One who is completely holy is willing to forgive us, how can we do anything less for others? (See the powerful parable of the unmerciful servant in Matt. 18:21–35.) It is because of God’s promise to fully and completely forgive us that we have come out of hiding, out of a life of excuses, blame-shifting, defensiveness, self-righteousness, and self-protection, to confess our sins. His forgiveness has been a powerful tool of change in our lives, and it will be a powerful tool of change as we represent him to others.
Sadly, the words I spoke to my son that evening were not spoken out of a forgiving heart. I had forgotten that I had been forgiven of much, much greater sins than the messiness of a room. I had forgotten the wonder of God’s love and patient grace for me. I had no compassion for the chaotic life of a teenager. There was no slowness to speak and quickness to listen that should have characterized me as someone aware of his own sin and his own need for forgiveness. I asked no questions to stimulate my son to search his heart. I did not wait patiently for his answers. I offered no words of encouragement. Instead, I spoke out of a self-righteous heart that had forgotten that I needed God’s grace as much as my son did. The two of us were not essentially different at that moment. We were and are the same—sinners in need of the forgiveness of God that brings radical change to our hearts. How could I forget the forgiveness I had been given? How could I not offer my son the same? God calls us to love as he has loved (John 13:34–35) and to forgive as he has forgiven us (Eph. 4:32–5:2). Our words must reach up, by the power of his Spirit, to this standard.
The third tool (method) the King uses to work change in us is reconciliation. To reconcile means to settle or resolve issues in order to restore a relationship. It is the work God does to restore our fellowship with him, the fellowship that was broken by sin. You can see this brokenness immediately after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. God came down to walk with them in the cool of the Garden, and he was confronted with something that had never happened before. Adam and Eve were hiding from him! Sin had broken their fellowship. Adam and Eve were now afraid of the God with whom they had enjoyed perfect communion. They sought to avoid him, and sinners have been hiding ever since. The fellowship with God that was the very purpose for Adam and Eve’s existence (and ours) was horribly broken by sin. A Reconciler had to come to bridge the gap that now lay between man and God. Jesus came and filled that gap with his life, death, and resurrection so that we could once again enjoy the fellowship with God for which we were created.
This is the message of the gospel—that God is at work, through Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The Lord goes on to use that restored relationship to work change in us. As we are brought back into fellowship with him as his children, as citizens of his kingdom, and members of his body the church, he can bring about the heart change that is his goal. He justifies so that he might sanctify. He reconciles so that we might be partakers of his divine nature, holy as he is holy. As Christ’s ambassadors, we must remember that this is the goal that should guide the words we speak to the people in our lives.
What does this mean practically? Yes, we want to solve the horizontal, earthly problems in our lives, but we want more than that. Human problems are opportunities God can use to draw the people around us into a fuller and deeper fellowship with him. This higher agenda is present in every relationship and every situation. God is working redemptively in all of them. We want our words to contribute to what he is doing. However, we will not be instruments of reconciliation if we are living in broken, unreconciled relationships with other people. We are called to speak words of peace, words that restore, and words that encourage fellowship and unity. We do this not just so we would be happy, but so that God would be able to work redemptively in the context of this unity and fellowship.
We are called to speak for the King. God has put us just where he wants us in order to make his appeal through us. We need to be committed to his higher agenda, living and speaking out of self-sacrificing love, humble forgiveness, and a commitment to reconciliation.
One of my most vivid learning experiences along these lines came during the early years of my pastoral ministry. My family lived in a twin home, with our landlady and her daughter living next door. For a while, our relationship was fine and living there was a pleasure. But then, for reasons we did not understand, things began to change. Bridget, our landlady’s daughter, began to respond to us in anger whenever we saw her. She yelled at our children. She accused us of saying and doing things we did not do. She played her stereo as loudly as possible late at night, waking our children. Life quickly turned from pleasurable to intolerable.
We were living on a meager income and right after we had moved into the house, our refrigerator had broken down. Bridget had allowed us to borrow hers. It was now summer and my wife’s parents had come to see us. In preparation for their visit, we had loaded the refrigerator with food. But the day after they arrived, we got a call from Bridget saying that she wanted her refrigerator back immediately. I asked if her mother’s had broken. She told me that it hadn’t, but that our refrigerator belonged to her and she wanted it back. I told her that it was full of food and asked her if we could return it in about a week. She said she wanted it back by five o’clock that day.
I was steaming by the time I got off the phone. This was the climax of all we had been enduring for the last few months, the final indignity! We took the food out of the refrigerator, placed it on the kitchen table in the heat of our ninety-degree, un-air-conditioned house, and returned the refrigerator to the garage. I walked out wishing that I would encounter Bridget because I had things to say to her! Thankfully, God had another plan.
That afternoon Luella was making bread, and as usual I asked her to make a batch of cinnamon rolls. As she was placing the rolls in the oven she turned to me and said, “You know, Paul, we ought to give a plate of these rolls to Bridget.” (Yeah—exactly what I was thinking!) “God tells us that we should overcome evil with good and that we should look for ways to do good to those who mistreat us. Since I’m making the rolls, why don’t you write a note to Bridget telling her how much we love her and desire to have a good relationship with her?” (Another brilliant idea, I thought!)
That was one of the hardest notes I have ever written. I was filled with my sense of being wronged. I wanted Bridget to hurt the way she had hurt us. I wanted her life to be as hard as ours had been over the previous months. I wanted her to feel what it was like to walk on eggshells all the time, only to be yelled at anyway. I found it hard to leave room for God’s wrath (Rom. 12:19) because I was so filled with my own.
But by the grace of God I did what Luella suggested. I took the note and the plate of warm rolls over to the adjoining house. Our landlady answered the door. When I told her that the rolls were for her daughter, she told me that I must be some kind of nut. (She had been very embarrassed by her daughter’s behavior.) I told her that I thought this was what God wanted me to do.
That plate of rolls represented our submission to God’s mission and methods in the midst of personal difficulty. We looked for every opportunity to do good and to speak kindly to Bridget. We sought to love and serve wherever and whenever we could. Yes, the old anger would well up, but we continued to encourage one another to overcome evil with good.
It was late one autumn afternoon when I heard a knock at the door. When I saw it was Bridget, my heart sank. I thought, What now? We have worked so hard to be nice! When I got to the door I could see that Bridget was upset. She asked if she could come in and talk to us. Luella and I sat down with her as tears streamed down her cheeks. She said, “I know that I have been impossible to live with and that I have done many things to make your life difficult. I don’t know why I have been so mean, so angry. I have alienated my family and all of my close friends. You are the only two people that I know for sure love me. I’ve come here because I need your help.” In our dining room that afternoon, we talked with Bridget about the help that only Christ could give.
Luella had been right. She had seen God’s agenda for our relationship with Bridget. My self-righteous, angry words would never have produced that scene. Allowing myself to be drawn into an ever-escalating war of words would not have produced it. I realized that afternoon that the whole situation had not been a mistake. We had not been in this trial because God had forgotten us. No, he had been at work all through it, sanctifying us, and he had also been at work through us. He had put us there as his ambassadors so that he might restore Bridget to himself. He called us to speak words of love and good, to speak out of hearts that were willing to die to self, willing to forgive, willing to be part of his work of reconciliation. And he gave us his Spirit to free us from the bondage to self so that our words could be gracious tools of change.
God calls each of us to live and speak as his ambassadors. We are on the job twenty-four hours a day. Everything we do and say reflects an awareness of the One we represent. God has called us to be part of an agenda higher than the horizontal need of the moment. We are called to carry his words of redemption into every situation of life.
Getting Personal:
Speaking as an Ambassador
1. Where in your life do you find irritation, anger, or frustration that reveals a commitment to your own agenda and not the Lord’s?
2. Where are your opportunities to be part of what God is doing in others?
3. In what situations do you tend to fight using the weapons of the world?
4. In what ways is God calling you to personal sacrifice in order to be his ambassador?
5. Are there people in your life that you have failed to forgive?
6. Where is God calling you to speak as an agent of reconciliation?