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Imagine this: You are sitting, having a nice cup of tea, when the phone rings. You answer and are greeted by an official sounding voice, “The President of the United States is calling.” Moments later you hear the familiar voice of the President who tells you that he would like you to accept a position as a United States Ambassador.

You are shocked because nothing has prepared you for this prestigious assignment. “Please tell me more.”

“As ambassador, you will be my official voice. When you speak, it will be the same as if I myself were speaking. Your every action will be scrutinized – you will be the face of the United States to that country.”

Now it isn’t likely that our imagined scenario will ever occur, but as a Christian you have already been given an even more important position. The Apostle Paul explains it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:20: “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.”

Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary explains reconciliation: “Reconciliation involves a change in the relationship between God and man or man and man. It assumes there has been a breakdown in the relationship, but now there has been a change from a state of enmity and fragmentation to one of harmony and fellowship.” The wall that sin has erected between man and God has been torn down.

Talk about an awesome responsibility. When we share the Gospel of Jesus Christ we are carrying a message of reconciliation. ”Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 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 people’s sins against them…” (ibid V: 17-21)

Adam and Eve chose recrimination instead of remorse and repentance. Adam blamed God (for giving him the woman) and he blamed Eve (for giving him the apple). Eve blamed the serpent. Recriminations are the antithesis to reconciliation.

Contrast the way Adam and Eve confronted their sin with the way King David confronted his. David had taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite as his own, then had Uriah killed to cover his sin. When the Lord’s ambassador Nathan confronted him with his sins, David immediately confessed, “I have sinned against the LORD.” (2 Samuel 2:13). His remorse and repentance are reflected in Psalm 51, where he pleaded, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” David opened the door to reconciliation with his confession.

On a more personal note, the message on our license plate lets people know that we are Christians. But, there are days, we must confess, when we are less than stellar ambassadors. Perhaps we need a license plate frame that reads,
“Not perfect – Just Forgiven.”
Jesus Christ Loves You

Verses of the week: 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Psalm 32:1: Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessings,
Your friends in Christ

God truly works in mysterious ways.

April 8, 1974, I unexpectedly found myself in Atlanta on a business trip.  I walked into the Howard Johnson adjacent to Fulton County Stadium and asked the desk clerk for a room. “Are you kidding? He said, “Everything is sold out around here.” Just then, the phone rang. I listened as the clerk took a cancellation. “I guess I have a room for you after all.”

“Do you think I’d be able to get tickets to tonight’s Braves game,” I asked.

“Not likely. The game is sold out.”

A woman who was standing in the lobby approached me with her young daughter. “My husband is caught in a business meeting and won’t be able to make it in time for the game. Would you like his ticket?” I offered to pay her, but she said that the ticket didn’t cost her anything, so she wouldn’t feel right selling it. I thanked her and headed for the stadium. That evening, I was one of 53,775 people who showed up for the game—a Braves attendance record – to see Hank Aaron hit homerun #715, breaking Babe Ruth’s record.

I wasn’t a regular reader of the Bible, but when I returned to my hotel room following the game, something moved me to open the Gideon Bible that was on the desk. I started to read and encountered a story about the Apostle Paul that was new to me:

Eutychus Raised From the Dead at Troas ⁷ On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. ⁸ There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. ⁹ Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. ¹⁰ Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” ¹¹ Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. ¹² The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted. (Acts 20:7-12)

That story tickled my funny bone. I thought about the times I had grumbled about a preacher giving sermons that were too long…, but here was a case where someone actually got “preached to death.” The story of Eutychus made me wonder if there were other stories in the Bible I had missed. That night, something changed for me. I read on for several hours, and the more I read, the more I wanted to read.

What some call coincidences, others call miracles. Author Squire Rushnell refers to what happened to me as God Winks. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. A woman was generous, not greedy. Dodger pitcher Al Downing decided to pitch to Aaron rather than walk him. The Gideon’s left a Bible in that hotel room where I could see it. My random choice of a scripture to read was that story from Acts 20. Just an interesting series of coincidences, or was God winking at me?

Psalm 119 contains 176 verses that extol the Word of God, the most familiar being verse 105: Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.  Many of the verses of this psalm have to do with the psalmist’s desire to follow the word of God. I, like the psalmist, have found that God’s Word is a lamp unto my feet, a light on my path. I am thankful that lamp started to burn so much brighter for me that miraculous evening in Atlanta.

Blessings, Your friends in Christ

Verse for the Week:  Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.” (John 8:21)

This is an experiment.  We are not pastors, theologians, or bible scholars. We are simply a Christian couple that loves the Lord. Each week for the past two years, we have written a brief devotional for a select group of friends in Christ. Now, we are adding a blog with the hope that we can touch more people for Jesus.

Your friends in Christ,

Don & Bon