Healing with Our Hands // Living Life as an Ambassador of Christ, Pt 9

When we have a need – a real need – something we can’t do or fix or resolve for ourselves – what we need, is a helping hand. And if we get that helping hand – the person who’s attached to that hand, well, they go up in our estimation. They earn the right to say things that others can’t to us. Funny thing happens through a helping hand.

Whenever there's a disaster somewhere in the world, a tsunami or an earthquake or a cyclone or a tornado, it seems to me that wealthy countries like my own, the countries with the logistics and the equipment and the resources to help, it seems that we take forever to mobilise.

When people are buried under the rubble they have only days, perhaps hours to live. And what they need right then is specialist search and rescue teams with sniffer dogs and listening equipment. And the survivors, what they need straight away is medical help, food, water, shelter, clothing.

And the last thing I want to do is to be critical but it seems to me that it takes so long for the wealthy countries to mobilise their resources. We know these disasters happen every year, they just do and I'm always left scratching my head as to why it takes us so long to respond.

What those poor people need within the first 24 hours is a huge influx of capability to save lives. And these days you can pretty much fly from anywhere to anywhere in not much more than 24 hours and yet time and time again these disasters happen and it takes weeks for us to mobilise. Does that strike you as odd?

You know as a taxpayer in a relatively wealthy country albeit a smallish population but nevertheless a wealthy country, when I see the way public monies are spent the last thing I have a problem with is my government setting aside some serious money to establish and maintain some sort of rapid response capability to help other nations when disaster strikes.

But as easy as it is to sit here and criticise a government I wonder whether this lethargy in responding to need isn't something you and I experience in our personal lives as well. I read about an extreme example in a newspaper article recently. Have a listen to this short article:

A south Korean couple addicted to online games let their baby starve to death whilst raising a virtual daughter. Parents Kim You- Chul and Choi Min-sun spent up to 12 hours a day at a internet cafe tending to their avatar child in the online game Prius. But they left their real baby home alone and fed her just one bottle of milk a day. Police have charged the couple with child abuse and neglect.

Now it's pretty bizarre and as extreme as one might think, 'got nothing to do with me, I'm not like that, I don't neglect my children like that'. Well I hope not but what about our friends? What about our extended family members? What about our neighbours? What about the couple next door whose marriage is falling apart?

We hear them screaming and arguing but we never invite them over for a barbeque to share in their lives and for them to share in ours. What about the person in Church? You know the one, single, overweight, their life’s a mess, they talk a bit much and no one ever invites them anywhere to their place on a Sunday for lunch.

What about that man at work? You can see he's a workaholic. Ruining his marriage, neglecting his children, ruining everything. All for want of a friend who can show them a better way of living. Where are we then, you and I? I'll tell you where we are, we're online like that Korean couple. We're watching television.

We're doing all the things we want to do in the comfort of our own homes and our own lives. The more affluent we become the less we care for one another. But we justify that, we rationalise it away. We sit in our homes with more than enough, many of us more than enough, telling ourselves, 'We worked hard for it and now we need a rest'.

We're living virtual lives. Watching TV shows about cooking instead of cooking for our friends and ourselves. TV shows about travelling instead of travelling to see our families. Raising our virtual lives, our virtual gods and ignoring the real world. I know it sounds harsh but sometimes we need to be direct. Sometimes we need to call a spade a spade. God does that too. Have a listen. 1 John chapter 3, verse 17:

How does Gods love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or a sister in need and yet refuses to help?

Now, I know that's hard because there's such a need out there in the world. Sometimes we look at the news and see the misery and we just turn it off because you and I, we can't make a difference. Okay, I understand that although we always can make a difference, a small difference.

But there are so many people closer to home. Sometimes even in our homes or next door whom we have the opportunity to serve. To heal, heal with our hands with our service. Heal with what we do as well as what we say.

Speaking first hand here there is nothing, absolutely nothing that speaks more about Gods love into someone’s life than when we step in to help them with that one thing that they need help with. Sometimes it can be the smallest thing, a word of encouragement, a meal to someone who's just out of hospital, a visit, just a phone call.

Sometimes it's loving them over the long run, being there for them. Whatever it is, when we have a need and someone just comes along and meets that need there is nothing that speaks more about the love of Christ than doing that. Believe you me, I know, it was the people doing just that who played such a powerful role in me coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

In fact, their investment in meeting my needs bears fruit every day as I sit down behind this microphone. Listen again to what Paul writes about how he sees his role and ours in this world. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20:

So we are ambassadors for Christ since God is making His appeal through us. We entreat you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God.

Imagine now an ambassador of a really wealthy country who's taken up his or her post in a poor country. And one day that poor country suffers a tsunami or a devastating earthquake. And that ambassador from the wealthy country moves heaven and earth to quickly mobilise rescue and medical capabilities.

They come quickly, they meet the desperate need and then finally when the crisis is over what do you think the ambassador's actions have just said to the people of that poor country about the wealthy country that the ambassador represents? That ambassador's actions will have spoken volumes to this poor nation about how much the rich nation cares for them.

This simply isn't rocket science, it's true on a macro scale and it's true on a micro scale. It's true on a national scale, it's true on the individual scale. Do you believe in Jesus? I do and anyone who does is called to be an ambassador of Christ. And as the Apostle Paul writes it is through his ambassadors dotted all over the planet that God is making His appeal for people to be reconciled to Him.

His appeal to give them a new life. His appeal to give them an eternal life. And we don't have to look very far, you and I, to find people who need that. It's often right under our noses. And we can spend time in prayer and at Church and in worshipping God and all those good and wonderful things while babies starve, while marriages next door fall apart.

While people right next door to us or across the street live in fear. Or we can go, we can go and be ambassadors of Christ.

For how does Gods love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or a sister in need and yet refuses to help?