Pilgrim Soldier

Something that has become increasingly clear to me is that for many Church has become about what we can get for ourselves. At the best end of this selfish spectrum we see people enjoying the blessing of the Holy Spirit on their lives time and time again, and at the worst end Church has become little more than a kind of Christian working men’s club where people go to have a chat and be entertained!

Whatever happened to the Great Commission that shows that God’s only plan to save the world and to bring people back to Him is the Church? His only plan is the flawed group of individuals who can show the world what it is they are missing!

2 Corinthians 5:18-20 calls us to be Ambassadors for Christ. That means we are called to speak on God’s agenda at all times! The Ambassador of any country works both for the interests of that country and to promulgate the message that the country stands for.

My mind goes to an interview I remember with an Ambassador of a country which I forget at present, who, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, continued to argue the official position of the state. At the time I could not understand how he could possibly argue this, but then realised that this was his job.

Whether we like it or not, people who are not citizens of God’s Kingdom look at us and what they see reflects what they think the Kingdom of God is like. If they think that Christianity is boring, that’s because the type of Christians they see make it look boring! If they see the Church as irrelevant it’s because Christians are often more worried about the irrelevancies of the Christian sub-culture, than they are the troubles of the unsaved!

I’m reading The Drama of Scripture at the moment and one line struck me as I was thinking about this:

Those who follow Jesus now are called to be the harbingers of cosmic restoration yet to come. pg 28

We have a message that surpasses anything that any modern state has to offer. Let’s act as if we are the true Ambassadors that we have been appointed to be. Let’s take our message outside of those embassies in the world that we call churches and be what the Lord has called us to be.