Living as an Ambassador

I've been reading through Instrument in the Redeemer's Hand for a while now. It's one of those books that I'm having to move through slowly to absorb all the wonderful nuggets that are found within it's pages. After the 6th chapter Tripp begins to focus on how to live as an ambassador, whether it is in the formal ministry of the local church or personally ministry. The first way to live as an ambassador that Tripp talks about is Love.

Here are just a few of the nuggets that I'm pondering after my reading time today:

• The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness and sanctification center, where flawed people place their trust in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he has designed. The church is messy and inefficient, but it is God's wonderful mess - the place where he radically transforms hearts and lives.
• I am deeply persuaded that the foundation for people-transforming ministry is not sound theology; it is love. Without love, our theology is a boat without oars. Love is what drove God to send and sacrifice his Son. Love led Christ to subject himself to a sinful world and the horrors of the cross. Love is what causes him to seek and save the lost, and to persevere until each of his children is transformed into his image. His love will not rest until all of his children are at his side in glory. The hope of every sinner does not rest in theological answers but in the love of Christ for his own. Without it, we have no hope personally, relationally, or eternally.
  
• Paul says, "You are the recipients of Christ's love and nothing can separate you from it." This love offers hope to anyone willing to confess sin and cry out for transformation. Yet this is where we often get stuck. We want ministry that doesn't demand love that is, well, so demanding! We don't want to serve others in a way that requires so much personal sacrifice. We would prefer to lob grenades of truth into people's lives rather than lay down our lives for them. But this is exactly what Christ did for us. Can we expect to be called to do anything else?
  
• We cannot be part of Christ's life-giving work without being willing to lay down our own.