"We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us." — 2 Corinthians 5:20
An ambassador does not speak in their own name. They carry the authority of the one who sent them, the message of the one who sent them, and the reputation of the one who sent them. Their personal opinions are, in the formal moment, irrelevant.
Paul's picture of the Christian life is astonishingly bold. God, he says, is making his appeal through us. The same God who spoke light into being, who parted the sea, who raised his Son — is now, in this age, choosing to make his appeal through people like us. Through the member who shows up to Tuesday night prayer even when tired. Through the one who forgives when they had every right to retaliate. Through the family that gives to the building fund not because they are wealthy but because they believe.
The title comes with weight. Ambassadors can embarrass their country. They can misrepresent. They can go off-message. Paul knew this — the same letter is full of passages about his own weakness, his thorn, his afflictions. But the weakness of the vessel is not the end of the story. "The power," he writes in chapter four, "belongs to God."
At the Salvation Center we carry this identity into Randallstown, into Baltimore, into Ilorin, into Rosedale. Everywhere a member of this house goes, an ambassador is present. The question worth sitting with is not whether you hold the title — you do, by virtue of your new creation in Christ — but whether you are conscious of it when you wake up in the morning.