Loving With Our Hearts // Living Life as an Ambassador of Christ, Pt 10

It’s one thing to be an Ambassador of Christ – that’s what those who believe in Jesus are called to be. But there are Ambassadors …. and then there are Ambassadors. You know what I mean. And the thing that makes the difference – is what’s going on in their hearts. In fact, it makes … all the difference.

Over the last almost two weeks I guess, what we've been doing is taking a look at the different aspects of the Apostle Paul's assertion that he, and by implication you and me if we believe in the amazing, loving, compassionate, powerful Jesus, that we're ambassadors for Christ.

Have a listen again to how he put it. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20. He says:

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.

We've talked a lot about what it means to be an ambassador through whom God would make His appeal to a lost and hurting world. We've looked a bit at the way that Jesus was an emissary of God into this world when He became a man. How He communicated Gods message of grace to the blind and the poor and the diseased and the needy and the outcasts.

I wish we could spend weeks, months more taking a closer look at that. Maybe we'll come back to that in a little while. Because at the centre of everything everything is Jesus. The Son of God, the maker of the heavens and the earth.

So as we draw this series together today with so much more left to talk about, I had to decide on one thing, the most important thing and that most important one, the one that Paul at the end of 1 Corinthians chapter 12 calls, ‘the yet more excellent way’ is love. That's what we're going to finish up with today, love.

Had a friend who several years ago now was called into Christian ministry out of Australia into the UK. Now the particular place where he went to live and to work was, well it was part of the UK that was really depressed economically.

His job wasn't to work directly with the people but when I went to visit him, a few years ago now, and I'd wander around town I could feel the depression. There were derelict factories, rusting decaying remnants of the industrial age. There was high youth unemployment in this place.

And as I spoke with the people there seemed to be a hopelessness, a lostness, an emptiness in this part of the country and it really hit me between the eyes. See we Australians, I don't know if you've noticed, are by and large a pretty optimistic lot. It's in our natural character. We have this "can do" attitude that sometimes comes across to other cultures as being a bit brash.

And so when I was confronted with this sad community spirit it really leapt out at me. As I chatted with my friend over coffee late one night, he too confessed that he was finding it really difficult. Moving from one culture to another is never easy but the sadness and the listlessness and the hopelessness all around in this place, particularly coupled with a very long, grey, cold winter, was really getting him down.

Now please understand me, I'm not knocking the Brits. I love travelling to England but there are parts in that country and any Brit will tell you this, there are parts of the country where there's high unemployment particularly amongst the youth and its tough going. This was one such place.

Anyhow a year or so later I was chatting with this same man over Skype. He's a great guy, I love keeping in touch with him and so I assumed he was still doing it tough in this unfamiliar culture and I started empathising with him. And his response, his response really shocked me.

He said in affect, 'No, no, no, we love it here. Absolutely love it here. This is where God means us to be and it's really great'. Now, it's quite a turn around so I asked him, "What's changed? You've shifted your position a long way from where you were and what you were feeling a couple of years ago."

And I had a listen to him talk and it clicked. I could hear it in his voice. He had fallen in love with the people. God had touched his heart and he had a real compassion for the people out there. The unemployed, the people with that sense of hopelessness and listlessness and no future.

He'd become part of a local Church, he was part of the local community and he realised that the joy and the enthusiasm and the optimism that he had in his heart could be a light in that place. He had fallen in love with the people.

Sometimes we Christians feel like misfits in this world. There's a reason for that. As Jesus said in His prayer just before He was crucified in John chapter 17, He said:

That we are in the world but not of the world.

The Apostle Paul makes the point that we're citizens of heaven not citizens of this earth. We're misfits just like my friend the Aussie felt as though he was a misfit in his new surroundings. And when we're misfits the easiest thing to do is to criticise and to poke fun and to belittle them and to complain.

"I know Jesus. I have my life sorted. I know what's right and all those other people out there where somehow they're less than me." We criticise, we argue, we demean, religious superiority. You see it often happens between races and cultures. One race looks down on another because of their skin colour or their traditions or just who they are.

And I've seen people get this wrong over and over and over again. I love it when the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, it doesn't matter what gifts or abilities you have or what you do or how much you give to the poor, if you don't have love you're nothing.

And the love that Jesus showed, it was more than just love, it was compassion, it was empathy, it was kindness and gentleness. It was reaching out and touching the leper, not just healing him but touching him. It was having compassion for the hungry crowd and then feeding them.

There are two letters in the New Testament, 1 and 2 Timothy and they're written by Paul to his young protégé Tim. And in the 2nd one Paul writes these words. 2 Timothy chapter 2, verses 24 to 26:

And the Lords servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone. An apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth and that they may escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.

See the bit I love most in there is the bit about God perhaps granting they repent and come to know the truth, that they might escape the snare of the devil to be set free. It's so easy for someone who loves Jesus and who's passionate about Him. Who wants to see people's lives transformed, to start getting an idea that it's up to us.

You know we see many, many, many lives transformed through these radio programs all over the world. But let me tell you this, with all that I am nothing that I can do, nothing that I can say can change a life. Not a single one.

Just yesterday I received an email from a man in another country who wrote about a particular program he'd listened to over the New Year. He said, "One small thing you said, God took that and changed my life." He was an alcoholic and he had stopped drinking.

I can't do that, only God can do that. When by His Spirit He takes His Word and brings it to life in our hearts. That's Gods job. And when you or I become arrogant or pushy or superior in our attitude, we're working against God and God always, always, always opposes the proud but He gives grace to the humble.

I don't care what gift you or I have, how hard we work for Jesus, how much cash we contribute to His work, unless we have love my friend we are enemies of God and enemies of our fellow men and women and children.

These three things remain (writes the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13). Faith, hope and love. All really good but the greatest among these is love.

Whatever we do, however we do it, if we do it in love God can use it. Kind, gentle, patient, tender, that's what Paul writes to Timothy, the wisdom of a man towards the end of his life after many years of difficult, tough ministry. Bound in chains he is when he's writing this, about to be executed, writing to his young protégé just starting out in his career.

Kindness, gentleness, patience and love.