I believe in you. Most of those ten things God wants us to remember on that old magnet in Bob’s office were straight forward … even though God has taken me in unexpected directions as I think about them. This one, however, really stopped me in my tracks. I believe in you.
I believe in God, but does God believe in me? Me, with all my faults, failures, sins. Me, with all my fleeting doubts, unknowns, and missteps? Me?
There is a passage in 2 Corinthians 5 where Paul speaks a truth that is very familiar to most Christians — that we are a new creation in Christ and that the old person has passed away. This happened because God reconciled us to Himself through the work of Christ Jesus. Paul goes on and says that God has committed to us His message of reconciliation. Then he makes one astonishing statement. “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” [vss 17-21 NIV]
An ambassador is one who speaks for a government, a nation, a monarchy. He takes the message of a ruler or leader and delivers it to others. An ambassador is trusted to deliver not his or her own message, but the message given by the leader. The power of the message does not rest in the ambassador, but in the ruler or nation that he or she represents.
God has committed to us His own message of reconciliation and He has sent us out, into this world, with that powerful message. He is making His appeal to the lost through us, His ambassadors. The power is His. The message is His. But amazingly, He has entrusted that message into our keeping. With the committal of that message, with the calling of us as His ambassadors, He is saying, I believe in you.
