Biblical Success - What Me? An Ambassador? Who Says?Sample

Appointed and Sent

Scripture: 

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.”  -- II Corinthians 5:17-20 (NKJV)

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” -- Ephesians 2:10 (NKJV)

One of the first questions commonly asked as we meet new people in everyday life is “So, what do you do?” It is a normal part of establishing a relationship, and it will almost always come fairly soon as we look to learn about one another. It happens across all of our levels of new contacts from the very brief and casual to the higher and deeper levels of potentially meaningful personal, professional, and private relationships. We answer “I’m a mom,” or ‘I’m in sales,” or “We have a business,” etc. We all pretty much have a stock answer that we use. We might say “I’m the CEO of New Bricks Corp.” or “I’m a Psychologist” Or “I’m a Teacher.” That gives the other person a title to help them begin to understand more about us. But what if, as is explained in our Scripture today, we taught ourselves to say “I’m an Ambassador! An Ambassador for Christ!” That seems kind of way out there at first, but wait! Isn’t that what the Word says? “We are Ambassadors for Christ?” Yep, sure does. Well, what does that mean? In our study, we are going to look at the role of ambassador both as commonly understood in the world and also from a Kingdom perspective. In both cases, Ambassadors are selected and sent -- not elected or by their own application for the job. They are appointed. In the world, they are appointed by the authority of their government. In the Kingdom, we become Ambassadors for Christ at our new birth and under the authority of God’s Word.

Let’s read the Word and then discuss our thoughts on what it might mean to be an “Ambassador for Christ.”