I’ve just come back from the 30 Something “camp” at Hosanna Heights where God did some amazing stuff in people’s lives and really blessed a lot of people. Our speaker was Glenda Watson and she taught us some amazing stuff over the three messages she preached.

On Friday night Glenda was preaching on the importance of forgiveness when she started talking about being ambassadors for Christ which is a phrase that occurs in 2 Corinthians 5 and a thought occurred to me. If we were to go to a capital city and see an embassy made out of a few pieces of rusty corrugated iron with the ambassador sitting out the front in rags begging for food then we wouldn’t think much of the country that the ambassador was from. Instead we are ambassadors for the kingdom of God with all its riches and wonders and so our lives should display that status to those around us. Our lives should reflect the Glory of God and indeed we can know that God wants to display His glory in us, in jars of clay.

In pentecostal churches there is often an emphasis placed on the blessings of God to the people of God that I have sometimes found hard to appropriate for my life. When things get hard and I am not seeing the blessings that are so often talked about I look at where my life is at and I say to God “You are God and I will serve you and praise no matter what my circumstances whether things improve or not. Now we do need to hang on to God no matter what but this is missing the point:

If we are to be ambassadors for Christ then we can beilieve in God to change our circumstances so that His glory is better displayed in our lives. Whether or not we have received specific guidance and direction from God on the outcome of our circumstances we can believe that He will want to better display His glory in our lives for His own sake, let alone because He loves us with everything He has. Looking at it this way changes our desire for blessing from serving our own selfish ends to one to see God’s name glorified in our lives and our circumstances, and isn’t that the point of our existence anyway?