Being an ambassador is no cream-puff job

We had a long talk yesterday. I asked, “You came because you wanted help, but you spurn almost all offers. What are you expecting from us?”

She couldn’t answer. I asked more questions. I made myself vulnerable and told her how confused I felt about her behavior, and how helpless, because I love her so much and it seems nothing I do works for her.

She cried. I cried. We worked through a box of tissues as we shared our hearts. I found out why she hates her meds, how the challenges of handling ‘normal life’ seem enormous to her compared to being depressed and focusing only on suicide. She feels utterly incapable of being normal. At one point she said, “I don’t want to talk anymore” but in a few minutes was weeping again, and hugging me, and saying, “This is a good conversation, grandma.”

During our conversation I realized also the extent of spiritual oppression in her life. She is totally opposed to any direct statements about God. Oddly enough, she responds to biblical truth—as long as I don’t use the word Bible. It seems certain words trigger a defensive wall, but honesty and truth break down that wall.

As confused as I was about my role in her life, God clarified it this morning. 2 Corinthians 5 says, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

Don’t live for me. Live to honor and glorify Christ. He has taken me from spiritual death and separation from God and, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” I have His life and need to let that life govern what I do. I already knew that.

It says more, “God . . . reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation . . . He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”

A political ambassador represents their country’s interests to another country. A spiritual ambassador represents the kingdom of God to a world that mostly is unaware that kingdom exists. I need to be conscious of my role as an ambassador.

That can be dicey at times. Only God can help me maintain good relationships when someone outside of His kingdom is hostile or feels threatened. I realized yesterday that good news can sound like bad news to a damaged and confused person. Peace and freedom can be a threat if conflict and turmoil is all that person knows.

I’d like to go to ambassador school, yet realize I’m already in it. I also am deeply aware that my goal is not getting a good mark or even a passing mark. What matters is that the One I represent is glorified and lovingly presented to the heart of a deeply troubled and frightened person.