Somewhere in the Bible I remember reading a passage that stated something like, “Always be ready to give an answer for the hope that you have.” And then another one that goes something like, “They shall know you by your love for one another,” speaking of world knowing the followers of Jesus Christ.

What is it that we are doing? Using sitcom tactics to build interest in God? There are different ways to look at this, and I thought I’d throw this one out into the cyber-void.

So, the questions that are being answered here correlate somewhat to this whole “James” idea, eh?

J.A.M.E.S. – Judgemental, Antagonistic, Mean-Spirited, Exclusive, Self-Righteous.
1. Care – nope.
2. Believe – Can, yes, will, no
3. Do – not really
4. Risk – no
5. Go – no

Why? Do I care about people? Not really. I used to think I did, used to think that others mattered, but when I really stepped back and took a look at myself, the person that mattered the most to me was me.

Here’s where I went in my thought train. Take a ride with me and see if you find yourself getting off at the same station I did.

When I wake up in the morning I dress myself. I think about the things that I need to do that day. I wish I had a better life and that my current circumstances were different. I want to struggle less and feel better about myself. I talk to myself about myself.

Less than ten percent of any given day do I actually turn my mind to concern itself with someone other than myself. That’s what I do.

What I don’t do is this:
I don’t call my friends all the time to see how they’re doing. I don’t call my wife up just to see how her day is going. I don’t visit my parents to say hi and tell them I love them. I don’t write a letter to an old friend with whom I’ve lost touch.

Those are the people that have impacted my life and whom I love and who love me.

I also don’t do these things:

I don’t think about starving people in other countries. I don’t donate any part of my income to purchase neccessities for people in my own city. I don’t bring any of God’s love to those incarcerated or ill. I don’t volunteer my time to help anyone out pretty much any given day of the week.

So, do I care? No. I’d like to think that I do, and I’d like to think that others cared about me, but when it really comes down to it, we only really care about ourselves and we constantly provide ourselves with excuses to continue only caring about ourselves.

Caring about something with a concern that matters is seen, not heard. I can care about my friend, but if I don’t do anything about showing love to that friend then I just don’t care enough to do anything; I care about doing something else more than helping out that friend, and that something else is usually helping myself to something.

Believing – Believing in what? Beleiving that Jesus Christ can take the responsibility off my shoulders to care for those who need the care? I beleive he can. Will he? Probably not. Not directly. Why? Because Jesus likes using people. But people don’t like being used. Because people who are being used are not helping themselves, they’re helping someone else get what they want. And Jesus wants us to care for each other.

Do – Do I show love to others? Yes I do, sometimes, but that sometimes is not a major portion of my actions. The greator portion of what I do is centered on doing things for myself.

Risk – What is the risk that we take when we show love to one another? Well, we risk expending energy on someone that may not generate a self-benefitting return. Why put money in a bank that gives that hard-earned money to starving kids in some undetermined third-world country when you can place it in a high-interest savings account or a money-market? And isn’t that okay too because it’s providing for your family, right?

Go – I go, you go, but where we go means diddly squat unless the above four questions were answered the way a good little Christian should be answering them. And we don’t care. We don’t love. We don’t believe.

Who shall save me from this body of Death? Thanks be to God, Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We must put to death our very selves each day and rise up anew, resurrected in Christ, and wage war against that with which we are born, the gnawing, overwhelming desire to appease the selfish evil within that distracts us from what we know to be truth: That this world is but a dream and we as ambassadors of God live not lives designed to bring glory to ourselves in the chronicles of Man, but to hasten the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven in worship to He who has made us and judged us and found us unworthy of paradise, yet paid in full our debt owed for our choice made to serve our selves only.

I am a sinner and the worst of sinners in the reality around my head in which I live. I am encased in my own cynical mind which constantly punches holes in every theory or doctrine or idea that enters its thorny walls.

This has gone on for too long already, so I end it here after this: Thank you Jesus for your love so great that you bore my shame and my disgrace and took it all upon your shoulders that I might stand before your Father on that last day and say proudly that I deserve to be in paradise. And when the Father asks me from where I receive my authority to speak such words, I will point to Jesus Christ and tell God, “I’m with Him.”

Do you believe? Before this morning, I would have said yes without the slightest hesitation. But this morning I was reading Esther, and as per usual I felt that triumphant feeling caused by Haman’s being hung, and the Jews being saved. And then God chose to nudge me. If I really believe that Christ came to die for every man and woman in the world, why do I feel happy that Haman died without finding God’s forgiveness? Shouldn’t I feel saddened by the fact that he didn’t find it? As if this wasn’t enough for me to think about, God kept nudging. If I really believe that Christ came to die for every man and woman, and loves them fiercely; if I really believe that nothing is greater than Christ and His love, then why do I look at this person and secretly think they have no hope?

Do you do? I do a little, but not enough to make a significant difference – at least not in my opinion. I’m not really doing anything spectacular; I’m here in Boise, Idaho, being a mom to a toddler and a wife who is doing her best to help her husband meet all the bill requirements each month. I’m not in Africa or the Philippines or where ever doing mission work; I’m not giving lots of money to those in need, or supporting missionaries; I’m not out ministering to people every day: I’m not sponsoring a child. It’s hard for me to remember that I’m not doing nothing. I am working with my husband to get us to a place where we can begin to give actively with our money. I am obeying the call on my life to be a loving mother and wife. I am going through Celebrate Recovery to get freedom from my issues (emotional slavery, pride, resentment, fear, etc.) so I can be a more effective tool in God’s hands. I am spending a good portion of my day providing care for a little girl who recently lost her mother.

Will you risk? As of right now, other than the risk of being completely open with those I’m going through Celebrate Recovery with, I am not risking very much, if anything. This is one of the issues I am working on – my fear, specifically of failure and the unknown.

Will you go? So long as my son is taken care of, I will. I don’t mean that in a ‘if God helps me, I’ll help God’ kind of way. He gave me the responsibility of caring for my son, and I will not abandon that task in an attempt to be an ambassador for Him to others. But as a mother of a toddler, I can touch the lives of women in similar motherhood and so through me they can be introduced to Christ. I do not have to abandon my son to childcare, or to a babysitter, to reach those women. As for other ministry opportunities that I feel God calling me toward (such as the youth group), I will first make sure my son is taken care of through babysitting or provided childcare, and then participate full-heartedly in what He is doing in, through, and around me.

1) Which of the five questions above is the area where you struggle the most?
I struggle the most with ‘Will you risk?’, because of my fear of failure and the unknown. This is something that I am working on.

2) What does it mean to you to be an ambassador?
An ambassador does his/her best to promote a good image of what he/she represents, whether that be a country, a people, or God. Unfortunately, there have been several bad ambassadors here in America, and of course those are the ones who the secular world looks to and says, ’see, we were right – they are close-minded frauds.’ My job as an ambassador is not to try to convince people of Christ’s goodness, but to show them with my life; to be ready with an answer for when the question is asked; to love the way Christ has loved us all; to be readily open and honest about myself and my shortcomings, and how God has redeemed me; and to model the behaviors God desires, as set down in the Bible – both for my benefit, and for them to see someone actually walking the walk.

3) In what ways do you accurately represent Christ? What areas are more difficult for you?
I think that I accurately represent Christ with my compassion for the hurting and broken, though I still have a long ways to go (i.e., I am not compassionate for Haman yet); and with my desire to help others. Perhaps there are more areas, but I will have to think on the question longer.
Humility – that is, true humility – I am very much lacking. I also struggle with the loving the person and hating the sin – that is to say, I struggle with communicating that, where as Jesus never seemed to have trouble. I have extreme difficulty loving those who are hurting or wanting to hurt myself or those I love. There are other areas, too, but again, I have to think about it longer.

In my previous comment on this blog site I said something like, “I don’t want to come on too strong and judge her because that would repel her.” But I realize now that what she really needs is to see that the consequences of her sin and her destructive lifestyle is only giving an open door to Satan.

My husband pointed out to me that maybe she only thinks she is a Christian and that she really does not understand the true concept of being born again and accepting Christ. I sometimes assume that just because someone came from a certain church, like a Baptist church, that they are a true born again Christian, when what I should be doing is asking them, “Have you ever accepted Christ into your life and do you have a personal relationship with him?” I did not ask that question–I was assuming it was true.

Part of me wants to just tell her, “Hey, wake up! You can’t continue to sow these seeds and expect anything other than weeds to grow. What you are doing is wrong and it will only lead to more destruction!” She may be a “broken person” but she is also causing her own broken state!

It’s great to love someone to Christ and I’m all for it, but isn’t a part of loving them telling them, (when the time is right) that they have to give up the sinful lifestyle that is the very cause of their pain? I would be more specific, but I don’t want to betray a confidence. An example of what I mean by “sinful lifestyle” is living a lifestyle of drug addiction but saying you are following Christ and then not seeking help for your addiction.

What do you say to people like this? I am puzzled as to what approach to take with her. It is very hard to watch someone make horrible life choices based on sin and not say something to them about it, but at this point, I get the feeling that she just doesn’t want to hear it and I haven’t really been able to address this subject with her. Only the Holy Spirit can convict her of her sin and show her there is a better way.

If anyone has had a similar experience with someone they are trying to help, I would appreciate hearing from you.

what more can I say?

We use the term “reconcile” to refer to balancing our check book! When the statement comes, we should line it up with what is in the checkbook and if something is out of alignment we fix it and reconcile the problem. If we don’t reconcile every month, pretty soon it is a huge job to get it back in alignment.

When we accept Jesus as our Savior we are reconciled to God. It is an amazing covenant relationship, just like a marriage. He loves us with an everlasting, eternal love. Those of us who have walked with the Lord know that the alignment process continues throughout our lives. Not Him aligning with us but us aligning with Him.

This morning, the Lord reminded me, in His own gentle way, that an area of my life where I was struggling was because I was out of alignment with His desire for me and we needed to reconcile…I needed to come into alignment…not so he could love me again, that is not the issue. I need to be reconciled to His will, so that He can work through me to touch others that they too might be reconciled to Him.

I could beat myself up and live condemned because I have gotten out of alignment and waste a whole lot of time and energy. Or I can accept His grace and forgiveness, settle into His arms and begin the dance again, keeping in step with Him. If I really do care for the world around me, if I really do want to go and if I really do want the Lord to use me to reconcile others to Him, then I will gladly come into alignment with Him.

Last month, we missed a debit card use in our checkbook…we reconciled and moved on…reminding ourselves to keep our checkbook in order. It was a simple step because my husband is diligent to reconcile it every month. We have learned this lesson over the years, if our finances are out of alignment it limits our ability to help others.

What an amazing gift we have been given in Christ! The ability to daily bring our lives into reconciliation with Him, so we are out of debt spiritually and able to freely share the message of reconciliation with the world around us.

I think the area that I am currently struggling with the most is “Do you care?” Mine isn’t a case of not caring but a case of I care so much that some times I am paralyzed by it. When I see people who are broken by life, children that are sick or elderly that are forgotten I become so emotional that some times I think it affects my ability to “Do”. Even after I helping in some way I obsess about whether it was enough and what more I could have done. I pray continually to be able to have the same heart and desire to do the work I see needs to be done, but to be able to hand it over to God and know that I’ve done all that I could at that time and to be able to move forward to “Do” more.

I try everyday to be a good ambassador. I work in a setting that sometimes seems to be the cradle of sin. Between patients struggling with broken bodies, minds and hearts; to employees with attitudes of hate and resentment towards each other it’s hard to “Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.” But that is what I try to do each day. And I pray that at least one time every day my words or actions made a positive change in some one else’s day.

1. i think i struggle over those areas very little but I am young
2.an ambassador is one who should exemplify what he represents without falsehood, an ambassador should be without moral or ethical stains so that he may be esteemed as one worthy of holding the position.
3.I accurately represent christ by loving the fallen,broken who have yet to know him. I share my past freely and the power of my present that he has given me.