Reluctant Ambassador

Sometimes when I have an opportunity to speak to someone about Christ I don’t.  I get nervous.  I am concerned about how they will respond.  I become more interested in what they may think of me than I am about their standing with Christ.  I am not proud of that.  It is my reality though.

This morning I was reading in Psalm 67:1 – 2.  That took me on a short journey through a couple of other passages:

• 1 Peter 1:10 – 12
• 1 Peter 4:10 – 11

The summary of what I saw is that when we speak to someone about Christ:

• It is by God’s grace not our initiative.
• We are being sent by the Holy Spirit.
• We are to speak as if we were speaking the utterances of God.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:20 that we are ambassadors who beg people to be reconciled to God.  Truth is more often than not I feel more like a beggar than an ambassador.

Somehow this mix of passages encouraged me.  I am not sure that understanding this will keep all the butterflies in my stomach at bay, but I am both comforted and challenged that when the opportunity to share Christ is there, God’s grace and the Holy Spirit have placed me there to speak “the utterances of God.”  I pray for that grace to overwhelm me.